Last week was my first week of midterms. Oh what a hellish ride that was.
I don’t think I was satisfied with how I did on any of the midterms I wrote. I was disappointed and quite angry at myself for not working as hard as I should have. These were MIDTERMS. I really should have done many things differently. Now that I think of it, I am not satisfied with how I faced my first month of uni.
It was not until I finished my Chem 121 midterm last Thursday did I realize that I have gone through a month of being a university student. I never clearly noticed my transition into university mode-it kind of just happened as it did, and that makes me concerned if I’m even getting used to university properly. From navigating Connect to figuring out my schedules to writing my first 10 minute quiz to doing my first lab, I’ve been struggling to some extent.
Thinking about it, I find myself quite pathetic.
Here I am, surrounded by hundreds of my peers at a time, surrounded by so much confidence and purpose, and I myself don’t know what I’m doing. I know that I should be working harder to keep up, but somehow I always fall short from my goals. There’s no one else to blame that disaster on but me, and I’ve learned that the hard way.
For the past few days I’ve been thinking about how my approach to things could have been improved, and I’ve come up with a list of things I should improve as soon as possible. Learning from my mistakes involves addressing those mistakes head on, and here I am attempting to do just that.
Things I’ve learned:
- Sleep Deprivation is Absolutely Terrible The first few times I heard people tell me how important sleep was, I kind of laughed it off. “I’ll be fine,” I thought to myself often. “I’m strong I’ll still be able to function next morning” WRONG VERY WRONG NOPE THAT WAS A MISTAKE HAHAHA. When the homework for all the courses started to pile up and get more time consuming, I would sometimes do homework until midnight. Normally I sleep at around 11, so finishing homework after that seriously built up my sleep deficit. The next morning I would go to class literally barely able to stay awake, and that absolutely destroyed my ability to pay attention and learn in class. Sometimes after class my notes would be completely illegible because I was half asleep when I was writing them. (Or I thought I was writing things down when actually I was just scribbling) Yeah taking notes and paying attention sound important. Good job me. I actually had to start buying coffee or chewing gum/candy just to stay somewhat awake in class. This cycle probably continued for two weeks, right up to the days right before my midterms. Sleep is important. Go to sleep Katie.
- Have a To-Do List Everyday and FOLLOW IT. (always leave room for detours along the way) Since September I’ve been establishing a system for myself so that I redo/re-organize my notes I take in class during my lunch breaks. For the first 2 weeks this system has been working well, but as it got closer to the midterms and things got busier, my system kind of went all over the place and got derailed. I didn’t take into account all the factors that could prevent me from studying/doing homework as effectively as I wanted, so faced with these sudden changes in planning made me lose momentum and lose sight of my daily schedule. The unexpected made me stressed out that my study plans were being put to a halt, and that really messed up the quality of my work. This then created a negative cycle of my constantly pushing back things I should have gotten done sooner, until it was hard to re-establish my sense of order. Me being me, I really should have known that unexpected crap was bound to happen and not everything was going to go as planned. Sometimes I think Murphy’s Law was made for me. Tragic. From now on I know to leave room for unexpected happenings, and hopefully that will give me less stress and give me a better sense of how to finish my tasks everyday.
- Get Things Done as Soon as Possible but do it CORRECTLY With all my assignment due dates already planned until December, my stubbornly wired brain then insists that I have to get stuff done quickly because I will soon have other things due and other things to do (heh). If a pre-lecture quiz is due on Thursday, I would be doing it on Monday just to get it over with to prepare myself for the onslaught of assignments still waiting for me after that. (Some of my friends would be doing assignments literally hours before it is due, and that stressed me out so much like how do they do that -.-) Often when I’m doing these things beforehand, I have the tendency to rush and that results in me making careless mistakes that end up causing me time and marks that I can never get back. (so many regrets) I will still be trying to stay ahead of the schedule, but I will need to constantly tell myself to slow down and process everything clearly, instead of only wanting to get an assignment over with, and not actually taking in the learning material.
- School is Prioritized before Everything Else (within reason) What is university? SCHOOL. What are you supposed to do in university? SCHOOL STUFF. I’m also paying to be in school too, so anything not school/class related is secondary and should only be considered after school work has been completed. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my friends, family my hobbies, my clubs and everything not academia related, and I totally prefer all these things over school work any day. Unfortunately, if I don’t do well in school (darn you) I would never be able to enjoy my life properly with ease. I’ve been sidetracking and losing focus very often lately, and that needs to change. I have yet to find a balance to all these aspects to my life, and I’m working on it. Before that, I need to learn to be more resolute when it comes to prioritizing things that need to be done/things I actually enjoy. This is going to be hard…
- Start Preparing at least a Week Beforehand I always did that in high school. What kind of crazy person (me) wouldn’t do that for UNIVERSITY. Guess I was so sleep deprived and disoriented that all my priorities and sense of urgency got chucked out the window. Study plans need to be made and kept, for sure. Now that I’ve done my first round of midterms (and suffered mentally), I now know a little more of what midterms are like and how to prepare for the next battle. (I could also be equally screwed for the next round of midterms, but I don’t like thinking that.)
- Working 6 hour shifts for days right before midterm week was a really really dumb idea (Katie why) yeahhhhhhhhhh that was a terrible idea why did I ever think that was doable. Doing that resulted in my studying midterms for only one night before the midterm was happening. Sometimes even hours before. TERRIBLE idea.
And thus, I have created a list of things that caused me my mountain of regrets for my first midterms. I messed up, and I apologize to myself. I also realise that I’m just ranting to myself and sounding whiny. I apologize to everyone. Oh well here’s to surviving the rest of Term 1 😀
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