Mike Abasov

The finals are coming up. Can you feel them? I can. 

Over the years of epicly failing and wining on exams, I have developed a list of tools and tips that I use to get through any test. Today I want to share them with you, and I encourage you to post your own advice in the comments!

Tools

1. To-Do lists. 
I use these a lot. For every assignment, textbook chapter or test, I have a task, a due date and other details. 

I also tend to divide chapters into subtasks like 13.1, 13.2, and 13.3 instead of “Ch. 13.” This gives me the satisfaction of crossing out something without competing the whole chapter.

2. iTunes U and Academic Earth. 
These apps save me time trying to figure out concepts that I’d missed in class (I blame it on you, Facebook!).

3. Double-sided highlighter.
Makes reading textbooks twice as productive! One side is red — for terms; the opposite one is yellow — for explanations. Mine is handmade, but you will probably look less weird, if you buy one.

4. iPod, Last.fm. 
I can study only with music. iPod for listening at a coffee shop, Last.fm for a perfect shuffle.

5. Coffee Shops. 
Starbucks, Blenz, Waves, whatever. Remember to check for free Internet access, good coffee, large enough single tables, and hours of operation (24/7 all the way).

6. Grades.
An awesome iPhone app that allows me to track my performance in every class. Replaced a lot of calculations I used to do myself every time.

Tips

1. First test is your  reconnoiter. 
Yes, I said reconnoiter. It doesn’t matter that much how well you do on your first midterm, but it matters a lot what you find out. See how the test is structured, what types of questions are there, how multiple choices work, how is the whole thing marked. 

The more data you collect, the better you’ll be able to do in the future by adjusting your learning style.

2. Raise the stakes. 
If I fail a course at UBC, I will waste 4 months, $2,000 of my parents’ dollars, get my ass kicked by the same parents and might as well loose my chance to immigrate. Surprisingly, I try my hardest not to fail or even get anything lower than a B+.

Raise your loss in case of failing. I don’t know, give a $100 to a good friend and and ask them to burn them, if you don’t get an A. Make a bet with another friend. Whatever you do, don’t leave yourself the power to change your mind — you will always cheat.

Good luck!

Only you decide what you get on your tests. Not a mean prof, not a crappy textbook, only you. Get used to this fact and show them how badass a student can be!

So what are your tips and tools for getting through the finals?

I’ve seen them all: high quality textbooks, not-so-good ones, and super-crappy textbook parodies (hello, homeland). Almost every official textbook I’ve seen was a proud representation of bureaucracy, misery and dust of academia. Most of them felt like empty vessels waiting to be filled with tears and blood of students.

Well, you get the point. I hate textbooks. And I believe that they were sent from hell to make us suffer. Wanna know why? Read on!

Why Textbooks Are so Evil

They are very unbelievably extremely too long
Textbooks are long and wordily. Every paragraph throws a good hundred of words at you, which become blurry and scary from the first seconds of reading.

Human attention span is short, and textbooks seem to be laughing about this important fact. Today, as we become more and more distracted by Facebook, texts, hunger and sleepiness, textbook authors come up with new ways to make our existence that much more miserable.

Evil Highlighting
Yes, there are normal designers that would use side notes, as well as bold and colourful highlighting for important points and definitions.

But then there are others: the ones that highlight 3 words out of 1,000 and think that that’s enough. Or even worse, the ones that would highlight some stupid things like companies’ names used in examples, making you concentrate on irrelevant parts.

Boring content
A rare textbook would contain some exciting information or, for god’s sake, be fun to read. Sometimes, even your interest in the subject is not enough to get you through a chapter without yawning.

Intentionally complicated
I think that textbooks are intentionally made so tough to read. The authors know that students don’t have any choice, so they make sure students would read every word without skipping irrelevant crap.

But the truth is that you usually don’t need to read the whole thing to get it. Get it, you, demonic writers?

The issue is that the authors can’t get by without filling their texts with bullshit. It would seem like if they didn’t work enough. Therefore, they won’t get payed as much.

What Can You Do

Other sources
I love resources such as Academic Earth or iTunes U that you can use to learn additional information, as well as relive your lectures from a bit different angle. Even TED is full of interesting perspectives on your boring textbook content.

Besides, you can try buying other books. The ones that become bestsellers and are created as any other product—according to customers’ wants and needs.

These books are different from the mandatory textbooks in one critical aspect—they are not mandatory. People are not going to read and buy them, if they don’t have to, so the authors work hard on pleasing the buyers.

Apply
Nothing works better for me than applying textbook content to a real-life situation. For example, I had made learning financial accounting fun by using it to analyze my personal financial situation (wasn’t happy about it though :-).

Suffer through it
As much as you can hate a text, it’s not going anywhere for at least the next 4 months. So just read it and forget it.

Signs of The Crisis

The fact that students would run around to buy used textbooks and then resell them; the fact that teachers reteach us again and again the same basic concepts every course; the fact that students look for ways to get by without using a text, all these facts indicate, in my opinion, that the system is failing.

I believe that with the new e-book technologies and the demand for high-quality texts, the situation will change for the better soon enough. 

Until then, textbooks will always be remembered as my personal educational hell.

What do you think?