Attack of the Midterm Monster

Midterms start this week for me, which of course means that I'm blogging about them instead of studying for them, but it's only Tuesday, and I don't have any tests until Friday. To illustrate my feelings about midterms, or any exam really, I have made another graph for you, imaginary readers. It compares my preparedness for midterms to my anxiety about midterms.

With colors and everything.

Exams generally don't bother me that much, but I have two this Friday, both of which require me to actually study, and I hate studying for math tests. Cell bio just requires that we know everything there is to know about everything our Professor has lectured on, and calc requires me to be able to do actually complicated procedures that I should probably learn sometime this week.

What I don't like about midterms is less of the studying/test taking part, and more that once midterms start, they don't end until finals. The way my college structures exams, each class usually ends up having three midterms, with some classes having four, and they never seem to overlap particularly well, which means no really bad weeks, but also means having a test every week or two for the entirety of the semester. Or at least, that's how it was last year, and it looks like it is going to follow the same pattern this semester.

I tend to view tests in a very adversarial way. Exams are like battles. Victory necessitates preparation and strategy, but, ultimately a complex series of factors determine the victor. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the exam wins the day, but I have a pretty solid victory percentage.

Different classes have exams that resemble different battles/campaigns. For example, Physics tests late year were usually Pyrrhic victories, so I was Epirus and the class was Greece, whereas O Chem was the Fourth Crusade (my favorite Crusade) and I was the Crusaders, laying siege to and ultimately sacking Constantinople (the exams).

I guess one could say that I'm at war with my education, which is a little bit harsh, because I like being in school, and will probably be in school for a very long time, I just don't particularly enjoy midterms and the stress they come coupled with. I was quite enjoying this past month of being back at school but not having any exams, which I won't get again until January (although the first month of Spring Semester wasn't nearly as calm as September was last year, so I don't know if that's how it's going to be again this year). But that's over now, and I have to find some way to motivate myself to study, but that's what being in school is: a never ending series of exams coupled with a severe lack of motivation to study for said exams. Or maybe that's just me...