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Midterm Mayhem By Christopher Lee, Harvard
You never want to get into this state. After a week of reading, papers and problem sets, I had to gear up for midterms over the weekend. After a second week of midterms, I then geared up for a night of mayhem on Halloween. This weekend, I am catching up on sleep, recovering and reflecting. In most high schools, tests are mostly fact-based. Once you absorb all the information, it's a matter of how well you can regurgitate it out in the same form it came in. Just analyze the multiple-choice questions, strategize to think like a test writer and avoid the traps they lay. Open-ended essays are quantified AP-free response grading rubrics or SAT-essay grading scale. Even the most liberal English assignments are passable if you do everything the teacher tells you to do. Though not all high schools are the same, they are similar in that they clearly mark your progress (whether you are doing well or not in the class) with periodical tests. I thought college worked this way, and I am completely wrong. I took my high school attitude and tried to apply it to college. I encountered epic failures. In college, you get less feedback because the only checkpoints you get are weekly problem sets, the less frequent paper or the feared midterm. Professors assume that you are well-versed in the material, and they want to see how well you apply what you learned. They use grades only as a pedagogical tool to stimulate you to work smarter if there is still room to improve. Once you truly obtain this perspective, college becomes a more positive and enjoyable experience (give that roommates, nights of mayhem, and socializing in library cafes make it awesome anyway). The only advice I can part with (that I wish someone had told me when I was a high school student) is to try to enjoy learning. Try to deemphasize the importance of GPAs, the formula to get into college or the pressures of competition. Try to emphasize your curiosity because knowledge is not only limited to your class. It is everything tangible in the world. I know it can be difficult to enjoy learning if you don't enjoy the class, as the quality of a teacher can be a hit or miss, but never let a bad teacher limit your investigative spirit. If you are a student who has yet to obtain this eager drive, I encourage you to find your passion, because passion is dear to life whether it is in academics or not.
College
Is About Finding Your Niche | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
