BEDA #23: boring academic stuff.

I'm writing this while waiting for Mad Men to load. 

This morning I submitted my essays. It was crazy. The library was filled with people, all the computers were occupied, there was a long line to the printer. I don't think I'll pass, though, because I did a really crap job. Last night I was calculating how much I needed to progress to next year, and found out that I was royally screwed because I didn't hand in last term's coursework. Honesty! Is the best policy! Don't tell my mum, though. 

Thank goodness I handed in the work this term. Then in a couple weeks there are exams, and I do better in exams than in essays. It's just been a bit hard to adapt to writing essays, and in junior college all the essays I had to write were during exams. I think for English Literature it was like 2 or 3 hours? I should remember. To answer 3 questions. Then for General Paper, it was 1.5h to write an essay. I got an A for that! :D 

um. So in theory I should be okay at writing essays. But I'm so not used to writing them when I'm not in an exam. All the rest of the subjects I took were science subjects-- Math, Chem, Bio, so I was "trained" to take exams and study science subjects. Obviously the way one would study math or bio is completely different from the way one would study, say, history, which is the closest approximation to what I'm doing now.

I think I've got to start studying for them soon. Remember what the different famous dead people say and their arguments. Be able to remember the evidence for the exam. It's like a Lit essay question, I guess. What we used to do is think of the possible things they'd ask, based on theme, plot, or characterization. Sometimes setting. And develop an argument for that. So you make notes on the characters and what happens and try to analyze, rather than narrate. 

I don't know; for some reason I think in high school I felt that we were being taught exactly how to write an essay, like you write the intro, then in each paragraph you'd have a quote, and then you'd analyze the quote. Now I feel like I'm just faffing around, because there's no set instructions. But there are revision classes next week, and what people would tell you to do (which I'd never do) is to prepare before the revision class so that you have questions. Guess I should do that. They have past exam questions available, which is great, because it's just the way I learnt how to study. That I'm familiar with! 

Felicia (who came to visit, and who's studying medicine) also says that she can't use JC/high school studying techniques anymore. I guess it's something I have to adjust to.