Mid-Terms
November 3, 2009 • written by Emily Beaver
It’s that time of year, time to barricade yourself into bedrooms and other secluded areas, time to discard the remnants of a social life and learn to function on only a few hours of sleep, mid-terms have arrived. Alright, so that description may be a bit overdramatic, but mid-terms are nothing to scoff at. They set the precedence for the remaining portion of the class, it’s when students discover which classes they need to devote the majority of their time to and which come more naturally. It is a chance to see your teacher’s/professor’s personality and their expectations for the rest of the class. Are they straightforward and easy going, or are they secretive and demanding? All these helpful parcels of information can be gathered through the days leading up to the big test and the moment when you look down and stare with butterflies in your stomach at the packet of paper sitting in front of you. Mid-terms in high school and college are similar in various ways, yet they differ in some aspects.
In high school most teachers tend to be fairly straight forward about tests, they may not go over every detail that will be included but most will kindly hand out a review sheet or practice problems. If you are lucky, as I have been so far, you will get a professor who will extend the same courtesy. I have a math professor who told us what to study, told us what the problems will be like, and even included various equations for us to use. However, not all professors are so kind, some will expect you to know what will be included, and will expect you to memorize every formula you touched on in class. Not a whole lot different than in high school. My Political Science professor gave the class a review sheet with all the topics to study included on it, the catch was that we had to incorporate various themes into an essay included on the test, and we did not know if we would be assigned an essay or if we would get a choice. Just like in high school, the amount of help and hints you get before a test depends on the instructor.
However, mid-terms in college are not all like ones in high school. For example, your professor may not even give the exam. This occurred in my Biology lecture, where the teaching assistants gave the test and walked around the lecture hall to make sure no one was cheating. Your exam could even be in a different building at a completely different time than your normal class. One of the main difficulties of taking a test in college is ending in the allowed amount of time. The average high school class at Park is about an hour and a half, so that is about an hour to an hour and a half to take a test. In some classes you get less then 50 minutes to complete your test, while in others you may get a couple of hours. It all depends on the length of your class. One of the biggest differences between high school test preparation and college is that teachers at the high school are more readily available than professors are. Teachers are required to stay at least a half an hour after school and many stay longer, not to mention come in early. Professors are also required to have open office hours, however, they can schedule them on any day at any time, so they can coincide with a class you must attend. In some cases, professors and TA’s will actually cut down their office hours, limiting their availability even more. All in all there are many similarities and a few differences between mid-terms at the high school and mid-terms in college.
Do or don’t PSEO rule for the week: don’t announce your status as PSEO on the first day. This rule is highly debatable, really it is a person choice and dependent on the situation, but my advice is to hold off a bit. If you do announce that you are PSEO you will frequently receive two responses. One will be positive, something along the lines of, “that’s really cool I wish I did that in high school” or “I did it too, what classes are you taking.” You may also get a negative response referring to your lower ‘status’. Some students may see you as below them because you are still in high school, that you have it easy because you don’t live the actual college life. I advise that you hold off a bit and get to know people more, then decide whether you want them to know or not. You may be surprised what you find out about your new friends, the might be PSEO too, and they are more likely to support you and react positively because of your relationship.
Filed Under Viewpoints
Tagged: emily beaver, midterms, school, testing
Email This Story
Print This Story
Loading ...
Comments
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!