My general test taking and grade tips

Tomorrow my students have their first midterm. Some of them were thankful to have a practice, some of them- well, not so much. Unfortunately, I’m afraid some of them won’t take the tips and advice that I’ve given to them to heart (I have a few “too cool for school” types). These are actually things that I noticed affect some people near and dear to me or things I’ve learned the hard way.

• Study ahead of time. No brainer, but I’ve seen this happen numerous times
• Do your homework. You just create extra stress by trying to learn things a few days before the exam when you should actually start learning the concepts when they’re introduced.
• Actually do the physics problems like you would on the exam. Just looking over doesn’t help matters. You have to actually figure and struggle a little. Watching the teacher do examples is not learning. I find some students think that watching me repeatedly do examples will make things click. It more than likely will not. I probably could do examples until my hand bleeds and I die, and there’s a good chance that they would not learn the topic at hand that well. Note taking, in my opinion, can be passive.
• Sleep well before an exam. Cramming the night before (or period) rarely helps matters and just adds to stress.
• Try not to worry too much after you take the exam. It is literally out of your hands, and you more than likely need some time to recover and work on other schoolwork.
• If you are concerned now about your grades, speak up! I think grades are like financial debt. It is bad when you are in bad places with them, but you cannot do anything about it until you acknowledge that. Also, like credit card companies or loan people, most professors/teachers are willing to work with students and help them figure out what to do and how to improve their grades. However, they aren’t going to be favorable with that if you are doing this last minute.
• Believe you can succeed. Thinking you can’t do something is defeating, because you have already convinced yourself of that. Try to think that you can weather the class/exam.
• There is light at the end of the tunnel. As much as I hope people enjoy school and class, I recognize that people end up taking classes that they don’t like, either because of requirements or because the class turned out differently than expected.
• You have to keep your eye on the proverbial prize. You may hate the class/professor/topic, but you’re in a class and you should at least be concerned about passing so that you don’t lower your GPA/not meet requirements to graduate/etc. At the end of the day, your lack of progress in a class only affects you.
• Be nice to those around you. Professors and teachers like helping people who have a good attitude, not the students who are hostile or apathetic. You don’t have to be genius to be liked by many people; effort and the right attitude means a lot. Even if you don’t love the person, you should definitely be nice. Yelling at them, treating them poorly, etc. is really just unprofessional (would you yell at your boss?) and doesn’t help your case for getting help or advice. No one likes dealing with nasty people.

Does anyone else have tips to succeed at school? I know to some people these sound corny, but I think you have to keep all these things in mind.

 

Last exam of my MS

If I do go back to school, this isn’t my last exam ever, but it is of my MS in physics.

I think the worst part of exams is waiting to take them. I have about an hour left, but I reached the point where I realized studying won’t help. I either know it or I do not.

I’m going to miss this class a lot. I forget if I mentioned it, but I chose to take a class outside the physics department. It turned out to be a much better choice for me than I had realized. I simply didn’t want to take astrophysics and had to search for a class that wasn’t setting me up for failure and that I could get approved.

I hadn’t taken chemistry since I was a sophomore in high school. I now regret not taking it at the undergraduate level. I thought it was really interesting to see how well chemistry and physics worked together. The professor was incredibly helpful in my research; he suggested two materials that made the research happen.

More importantly, this professor has me thinking more about doing engineering and taught me a lot about the field of science. I didn’t look at physics in a rose-colored glasses way, but talking to him made me realize that I should look at the big picture and that I can get where I want to go in other ways.

Wish me luck on my exam!

 

It could be worse

I got hit with a flu bug yesterday. The weather in Chicago went from a lovely 70 degress Farenheit to about 50 being the high in the course of a few days. My body does not react well to fast weather changes. On one hand, it’s better to have the flu now that I don’t technically have anything to do. On the other hand, it’s spring break and it’d be nice to be healthy again.

 

Starting to burn out a little

I have 2 problems left on my take home final due Friday, and I’m struggling to get them done. Not only because they aren’t simple, but also because I think I burned out a little.

I think I did almost take on too much this past quarter. Trying to hustle my thesis (with very little progress), TAing, classes, and keeping up in dance- that takes a toll on a person. This is the first time in my life I’ve actually experienced physical ailments (back hurting, stiffness) from being at a desk too much and not sleeping enough.

I look forward to taking a break. Even with research, I feel like next week will be better for me.

 

Let’s hope the good days keep happening

I’ve felt a little more cynical lately (and busy), so having a good day to write about feels great.

Today was P’s thesis defense. P’s topic was non-linear dynamics. Even though I really don’t care for simulation presentions (I like seeing pics of equipment and other experimental stuff more), I really enjoyed his presentation. P explained everything thoroughly and spoke slowly, which was nice, since I didn’t know much about his topic going in.

P passed. Seeing someone who has passed is always a good feeling. I can’t explain it, since I have absolutely nothing to do with his success. However, I feel good about it. P is hard-working and intelligent. While I didn’t doubt he would pass, I felt nervous for him. Having that kind of camaraderie is good.

We also had our last EM class for the quarter. That felt a little sad. I enjoyed that class a lot, even though it wasn’t easy. I learned a lot as well. I think endings in general are always sad for me. I become attached to small things that are blips on the map, like when I’m done teaching a class.

However, I must say that these endings mean I can relax more, which is always a good thing.

 

The end of the quarter and the beginning of finals

So finals are officially today. The last bunch of electronics students took their practical final yesterday. It didn’t go so well overall. It was a bit of a downer for me, since I wanted to see them succeed and I also got called mean. The reason is because I docked 40 points out 100 for setting up and explicitly explaining how to do the lab. How is that mean? I gave the kid everything imaginable, short of doing it myself. This was also the kid who has a history of lying with me (on late work), tried stealing my calculator in the beginning of the year, and then tried cheating on the practical with his friend in front of the professor. In 10 short weeks, it’s hard for me to not say it’s him and not me.

Overall, though, I’ll miss those kids. Very kind, very hard working. I’ll miss the kids in modern physics, too, but I’ll probably see them around more, since they are physics majors.

In terms of finals, I’m thisclose to finishing my final computational project. I stayed up pretty late last night working and woke up fairly early to work. Stuff like that is why I could never really be a computer programmer type; from what I understand and know about everyone in that field/major, they all do that frequently.

I’ve been writing my paper simultaneously with my program, so I hope to have that all done tonight as well as my presentation. The presentation is tomorrow evening, the paper and program are due Friday. I have one little thing to implement into my program, which I haven’t successfully been able to do. However, my program spits out really neat (and accurate!) Brownian motion graphs. The short version is particles take weird, random paths. That’s what you’re seeing in that graph; there are 200 particles and their trajectories in 3D for a few seconds. I think it’s pretty; to me, it looks like a ball of tangled yarn. The other graph is far less interesting (average displacement vs. time), but it appears to be fairly accurate.

I have homework due in computational, too , which is a shame. It’s tricky, so it look like from now until Friday, I will have to stay up late working. Oh well. Friday is my housewarming, which is a pretty exciting thing and then it’s Mardi Love workshop for two days, as well as working on my EM final.

I still hope to make the occasional appearance in this blog.

 

Finishing up the quarter

Firstly, I must apologize for the shortage of updates. Not having internet at home has killed the updating thing. The short version is RCN was confused on many things with internet. The good news is that we will receive a visit from RCN and that their confusion has resulted in a pretty sweet discount for 6 months.

The quarter is over on Tuesday. I had my last lab of modern physics.. They were doing a lab with radioactive sources. I sent cookies for them today, since they really shouldn’t have food in the lab for those things. It was a good way to end the quarter with them. One kid did a card trick for me while we waited for the proper number of counts to happen, and some others updated me on their lives. I really thought that they were a great group of kids overall.

The first bunch of kids took the electronics final. It’s not easy, since it’s a practical, meaning they have to setup a circuit by themselves, get it to work, and get data out of it in 20 minutes. This year it went better, because Dr. M (the prof in charge) set up a purchase plan. Basically, they could buy answers for a small (or large) penalty. I was surprised that my station was so difficult, but I think it stems from the fact it was from so long ago. In any case, I feel confident that they passed. There were no tears this year

As for my schoolwork, I hope to complete my computational physics project this weekend in order to finish the homework. I have no E&M homework, but I also receive my take home exam on Monday. I also should make some headway in getting papers and such read over break for research. Then there’s the Mardi Love workshop next weekend, which I plan to attend for both days.

Even with the internet being back tomorrow, I’m not sure how much I’ll be around