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finals...suck...

mine start on June 18, but I'm already studying. This year, the math and spanish grades actually count as opposed to last year where my scores really didn't matter. Any tips on how to get through the huge boxes of papers sitting in my basement?

By Anticatalyst (Anticatalyst) on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 05:52 pm: Edit

Take a big stack of them and just spread them out in piles on the floor. First sort them by whether you'll be keeping them or not (and trash anything repetitive or not too useful; the sheer number of papers sitting around is often half the problem). Then sort them by subtopic; with the Spanish papers, you could have one pile for grammar, one for vocabulary, and one for reading and comprehension. Then try to sort them in the order you learned the material. Then get rid of anything that's not useful. Honestly, the fact that you're referring with such dread to the "huge boxes of papers" suggests that they're half your worry, rather than their contents.

By Hunter1985 (Hunter1985) on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 06:38 pm: Edit

Mine are the last week of May.

I'd like to say I'm studying...but I'm not- go last minute cramming!

Actually on Wednesday I have to take my CC Calc test to get the actual college credit- and it counts for half my final exam...meh...it's math...one night will be sufficient.

Anticatalyst is right, it's what I do before I begin studying- sort it all out. It's pretty entertaining, especially when you look at beginning of the year stuff- look at the syllabus given out at the beginning of the year and see which rules were actually enforced and (if they made one) how far through the course outline they got.

I swear, in 8th grade we did the first 5 parts of about a 50 part outline .

By Glowingamy (Glowingamy) on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 08:57 pm: Edit

Oh, my attack plan was gonna be: fish a paper out, learn everything on it, repeat...
can you tell I'm a freshman? :P

By Anticatalyst (Anticatalyst) on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 08:59 pm: Edit

Eh, I'm a freshman too. Don't worry; that's what I did through much of middle school. Then I got this weird self-imposed OCD about studying...

By Sraid7777 (Sraid7777) on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 09:45 pm: Edit

well catalyst, they are massive. Every friggen spanish paper from this year (our teacher doesn't have tenure yet so we do every SINGLE department mandated sheet). I swear to you, we've done every actividad in the whole mother **** spanish text book. Nothing worse than a boring teacher. I don't remember the exact quote, but Dewey said something along the lines of, "teaching should be 99% percent about making hte students curious and 1% about content". My teacher is the reverse- 99% content, 1% interesting. But it counts for my gpa, so whining won't get me anywhere./..

By Crypto86 (Crypto86) on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 10:22 pm: Edit

Yeah, boring teachers suck but you are almost done with the class, so that is cool.

We don't have midterms, so all content from September to mid-June is on the final exam. That's a lot - though I only have 3 finals this year (due to AP US and electives - and english project instead of final!)

Next year as a senior, I will have 4 APs, and if you have a 90+ avg for the year, you don't have to take the final.

By Crnchycereal (Crnchycereal) on Monday, May 03, 2004 - 10:29 pm: Edit

I always end up studying for finals the weekend before they start (or if I'm feeling particularly productive, maybe the Thursday or Friday before). But every year, I manage to do it and do well on my finals. Here's the way I see it: finals cover the entire year's curriculum (in theory) within a very limited span of time. Thus, the finer points should be known, but not in great detail. The key is nailing the big ideas; math formulas used in nearly every problem, key historical trends and events, etc. Now, I also know you mentioned Spanish...as for that, I'm really not sure how one could study for that. Spanish is a language. As such, those skills should accumulate and be used on a daily basis (this isn't the sort of subject that one should just study for tests and forget later on). In any case, just as a general studying tip, keep your notes in chronological order, go over them in that order, run through them once, run through them again on sections you didn't quite grasp. Past that, don't bother; frying your brain isn't worth cramming what is probably useless knowledge.

By Korey (Korey) on Tuesday, May 04, 2004 - 09:08 pm: Edit

NO KNOWLEDGE IS USELESS!! ;-) I have final exams starting in three weeks...I'll study for them sometime soon...maybe...The only ones I'm going to worry about are Spanish, Trigonometry, Chemistry, and possibly English; the rest are going to be cake!