By: Krishtha Sahota (Residence Advisor – Ritsumeikan House)
Midterm season is officially here. Unfortunately. For many students midterm season is essentially a midterm every week until exams begin, for others midterm season is a term’s worth of midterms condensed into one week. It doesn’t matter what your midterm schedule looks like, as long as you actually know how to write one.
There are a couple of factors that come into play when you write a midterm. Here are a few that you have probably had to deal with: stress, time crunch, blanking out on information, and of course, hunger/dehydration/having to go to the bathroom.
Read the sections below to find out how to master the midterm.
Come Prepared
This should be the obvious one, but you’d be surprised how many people come to a midterm without a calculator or pencil. An easy way to remember everything is to put all your midterm supplies into a Ziploc bag/pencil case. Here are the essentials:
- 2 pencils
- Lead (if you use mechanical pencils)
- Sharpener (if you use regular pencils)
- 1 good eraser
- 2 pens (in case one dies on you)
- A non-programmable calculator
- A ruler (optional)
Midterms can be awkwardly timed and you may not always eat food before the exam, so make sure to bring some with you! A granola bar is your best bet when you get hungry. More important than food, is water. When you’re stuck on a question, there’s nothing better than drinking some water to calm the nerves and tackle it once again. Personally I like drinking coconut water because it has electrolytes and sugars that keep me refreshed throughout the exam. You can choose any drink, but avoid alcohol, coffee, and tea (all three will dehydrate you more).
Before You Start Answering Questions
When the prof says, “You may start your exam”, don’t start your exam.
Before you put pencil/pen to paper, take some time to look over the entire exam. Generally there are different sections in an exam, look over each one and mentally think about how much time you should allocate for each section. This should only take 1 minute (I’m being generous with that 1 minute).
This may sound counterintuitive, but you don’t have to start writing an exam from question 1. When you are reading over the exam, mark questions that look easy/hard. Start with the question that you DEFINITELY know the answer to. Starting the exam off with a question you know you got right sets the tone for the rest of the exam. You’ll feel more confident about the rest of your answers.
During the Exam
So your now writing the exam and you come across a difficult question. You think about it for a couple of seconds and you can’t find the answer. This is the time to fold the page/mark the question and skip it. Don’t spend your precious time on a question you don’t know the answer to, do the ones you can answer first.
You’ve now been writing the exam for a long time and you may be close to finishing (hopefully). When you get to the “10 minutes left” mark, this is the time to go back to the questions you missed.
Take Time for Yourself
Just because you are in an exam, doesn’t mean you need to give all your time to that exam. If you’ve blanked on information, you can take a minute and stop writing. Take some deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, drink some water or snack on something (just take your mind off the exam for a bit). Then go back in with a clear mind.
Sometimes people drink a bit too much water before the exam and end up having to go to the bathroom. You may not want to leave the exam halfway through, but if your full bladder is hindering your concentration, then just go. It’s much worse when half your mind is on the exam and the other half is trying to stop you from exploding.
Let it Go
The exam is now over. You’ve handed it in. There is nothing you can do to change your mark, so just let it go. When you get your midterm back, that’s the time to figure out how you can improve for the text one. Until then, don’t fret about the questions you may have gotten wrong. Remember that it’s only one midterm out of dozens of midterms that you’ll write in your academic career. In the grand scheme of things, no one will care what you got on your first math 104 midterm.
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