lthough it feels like it was only yesterday many of us migrated back to Gainesville to begin yet another Fall semester, we are now in our fourth week of classes. In college, the passage of time is accompanied by both the accumulation of knowledge and the piling up of assignments, both of which are indicators that, yes, exams are right around the corner.
Studying for exams in college is a tricky proposition. What you’ll be studying and for how long relates to how you carry yourself in other respects. For some students, the act of reviewing material is the icing on the proverbial study cake because they attend class on a regular basis and do their homework as it’s assigned to them. For others, studying is a leviathan to be conquered and slain, having spent their time texting in class and boozing it up on weekdays. Meanwhile, there are those students who never quite shook off their counterproductive habits from high school. Although they may be perfectly prepared for the task ahead, they wait until 3 a.m. to even open up their textbooks.
We’re not going to lord over the Student Body and say there is a right way and a wrong way to study for exams, but some methods are certainly more conducive than others. However, like we discussed in Monday’s editorial on hangovers, just because you know something is right doesn’t mean you’re going to put it into practice.
That is why we implore our college-aged readers to drop your damn phones and get to work. We get it, procrastination can not only be fun but also a super useful crutch to justify why you only got an 83, rather than an 89, on your exam, essay or insert long-form school assignment here. But check this out: What if you got that 83, but knew in your heart you had worked responsibly for it? Rather than playing out a fantasy where your every-scholastic failure was due to you not managing your time properly, or conversely, where your every victory HAD to come at the cost of sleep deprivation; what if you did well or failed simply by putting the work in at a reasonable time in a reasonable fashion? This may rob your successes and failures of some misplaced sense of high-wrought drama, but it sure as hell feels better than trying to go to sleep at 2 p.m. after being up for 36 hours.
Cramming material only serves to make you tired, irritable and, in all likelihood, less mentally sound to make logical decisions on your exams. Although the art of responsibly dividing up your study time is something many have yet to master — and many probably never will — it is an ideal that ought to be strived for rather than dismissed altogether. We’ve all spent nights at Marston or Library West crying into our triple-shot macchiatos. What we’re implying to you is: What if you didn’t have to?
