My old school had a dead week before finals, so I am somewhat familiar with the concept and the hectic studying that goes on during it. However, I feel that dead week here at Purdue is going to be a lot more challenging. This is probably because in high school most of my classes were fairly easy, whereas the classes in college are somewhat tougher, especially math. Math is absolutely murdering me right now, and I have no idea how I am going to pass the final. I suppose I will have to put in over 5 hours of studying every day! It's no surprise to me that dead week is going to be rough. In my freshman year of high school, I made the mistake of not doing any review before dead week, so I was in a mad rush to study everything before finals week. Four years on, I am in the same boat in my freshman year of college. The only difference is that I knew I should have studied before dead week, but with all the homework and projects in all my classes (especially ENGR131) I have had no time to study anything but what is taught in class on the day.
However, I am not totally unprepared for the madness of dead week. I have several strategies to maximize my efficiency and ensure that I am well-prepared for finals. First of all, I temporarily deleted all the games from my laptop and deactivated my Facebook account. Games and Facebook are my biggest two distractions from studying and sometimes hinder my productivity. Second, I have drawn up a timetable for all my studying. This way, I have spread out my studying over the entire week, organized every day into studying and non-studying blocks, accounted for homework that I still have to do, and focused on topics that I know I have trouble with. In my experience, this is probably the best way to go about studying during dead week, because otherwise you will feel overwhelmed by all the chapters you have to study.
Despite all the madness of dead week, there are two good things about it for me. One is that I only have to study for two finals - math and chemistry. The second is that, two days after dead week, I will be flying back home to New Jersey to enjoy a long Christmas break completely devoid of studying.
I've never had a dead week and have never needed to study much for tests and final exams so this will be an interesting experience for me. I'm not entirely sure of how to go about this but I feel that as long as I can get some good studying done before finals, I'll be all right since my classes that I have exams in aren't too horrible. I also have finals for only math and chemistry and I will have the most trouble with math. That is the one that I am going to study for the most. I also have not done much studying yet because of homework and projects.
ReplyDeleteYou sound like you have a pretty solid plan for studying that should work pretty well. I can't for a couple weeks completely free of any sort of class work. It will be a nice break. It will be great to spend some time with my family as well. Engl 106
I too have experienced the concept of a dead week before in high school…except we never called it “Dead Week”. For us it was the dreadful “Study Break”. In this week, we did everything, except, as the name suggests, Study. I guess that was a leverage we could have taken in high school because as you said in your blog, high school classes were somehow a lot easier than the classes in college. The story is very different now. To be honest, my first few days of dead week were as non-productive as they could get. However, later, I felt that the amount of studying that needed to get done was overloading on my shoulders. I told myself that if I don’t get a move on soon enough, it could end up crushing me. Even as of now, I am still behind schedule however I guess the matters could be much worse. I hope you do great on your exams and have a great winter break ENGL 106
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said about dead week being more challenging here. However, that is because a lot of my classes have had their final project due during dead week, which kind of defeats the purpose of the existence of 'dead week'. Also, not a single homework assignment has been cancelled, so I can say with conviction that dead week has been non-existent for me. This had been mildly annoying, to say the least.
ReplyDeleteHowever, like you said, organization and making a study plan can ease the stress placed on a student during finals week.
There is also the added motivation of going back home for Christmas immediately after finals!
ENGL 106