I remember Wednesday night’s review session last week for my Bio 93 midterm… never have I seen so many freshmen packed into one lecture hall. I kid you not, every single seat was filled up. Some students were even willing to sit on the carpeting. I remember pushing my way through the herd of students as I tried to find a seat towards the front. Minutes after I sat down, I saw that the students just kept on coming. The seats quickly began to fill up. Within less than five minutes, about ninety percent of the seats were taken.
Me and my friend (who came shortly after me) sat towards the front of the lecture hall as we waited for the peer tutors to begin their review session. I nervously turned my iClicker remote in my hands as I began contemplating my life choices, constantly asking myself whether or not I studied hard enough, trying to figure out what I did wrong.
Then the review session started. I took out my binder full of printed-out lecture slides and began making notes in the margins. I think I’m prepared for the midterm, I thought to myself as I frantically pushed multiple answers in for the iClicker portions of the review session, watching the numbers on the clock go up with each agonizing second that passed.
Fast forward to two days later, and I am sitting in the Biological Sciences Lecture Hall with my scantron, Dixon #2 pencil, and test booklet sitting on my desk. I frantically flip through pages back and forth in the test booklet, trying to find questions that I know I will be able to answer. Realizing that half of the content on the exam is material that I completely forgot about, I stare at the clock on the projection screen, rethinking my life choices, internally cursing myself for not studying more. My mind snaps back to reality as I hear someone flipping their desk down to the side of their chair across the room. Then another. And another. Pretty soon about twenty students are walking towards the front of the class to hand in their papers, and I realize that I am wasting my time daydreaming. With less than five minutes left on the clock, I quickly bubble in the answers that I think are right and hastily walk down the steps to the front of the hall to turn it in to the TA’s.
Moral of the story is, please remember to put school first, and learn to discipline yourself while studying! My mistake was that I procrastinated too much and I was very lazy with my studying, and I often tended to neglect my mental health. This is a big no-no! Learning to study without distractions is key to effective studying, because staying focused allows you to get more work done. And for the love of God, find a LARC sponsor ASAP before enrollment opens, because those sessions fill up FAST!