Exams are the Wizard of Oz: a big nemesis feared and obeyed by all, but it turns out its set by a little old man with grey hair desperately working to scare everyone. Exams aren’t important. Being able to do things is important. But there are tens or hundreds of people learning to do things in your course, and exams are just the easiest way for the professors to check if students are vaguely aware of the course.
Because university terms are built around exams it’s far too easy to start thinking that they’re everything. But if you concentrate only on exams you’ll be sabotaging yourself. If you’re only worried about exam marks you start to care about them more than the material. The endless grind of exam preparation can crush your spirit, your free time, even your reasons for doing the exams in the first place.
Making mountains of notes and doing months of work for one little mark on a screen feels like a waste. And if you think it’s only for the mark, your brain will start to forget all that information as soon as you walk out of the exam hall. But you didn’t come to college or university to do exams. You came to be a Doctor, or a Scientist, or an Engineer, or another kind of Expert in Something. The exam is only a stepping stone towards that goal.
Remember that and everything gets easier, including the exams. Your real goal motivates you to go above and beyond. Why would you only aim for a fair pass when this is what you’re going to be doing for the rest of your life? No longer will you be annoyed at having to learn a long table of chemicals for an Organics test. You’ll understand this work as upgrading yourself. You’re making yourself better at what you want to do. Which is far better than feeling like a boring chore. Your future life is much more important than a piece of paper pushed at you in some echoing exam hall.
If you care about the course you’ll learn and think about everything. If you only care about exams you’ll start skipping over stuff you don’t think they’ll ask. Even if you ace every exam in the world, what will that get you? A job working for someone who couldn’t care less about exams and just wants you to get things done. Do you think they’d rather someone scrabbling for their old notes on textbook Chapter 14.5, or someone who deep down knows how to get the thing done?
More importantly, which of those people would you rather be?
Because university terms are built around exams it’s far too easy to start thinking that they’re everything. But if you concentrate only on exams you’ll be sabotaging yourself. If you’re only worried about exam marks you start to care about them more than the material. The endless grind of exam preparation can crush your spirit, your free time, even your reasons for doing the exams in the first place.
You didn’t come to university to do exams.
Making mountains of notes and doing months of work for one little mark on a screen feels like a waste. And if you think it’s only for the mark, your brain will start to forget all that information as soon as you walk out of the exam hall. But you didn’t come to college or university to do exams. You came to be a Doctor, or a Scientist, or an Engineer, or another kind of Expert in Something. The exam is only a stepping stone towards that goal.
Remember that and everything gets easier, including the exams. Your real goal motivates you to go above and beyond. Why would you only aim for a fair pass when this is what you’re going to be doing for the rest of your life? No longer will you be annoyed at having to learn a long table of chemicals for an Organics test. You’ll understand this work as upgrading yourself. You’re making yourself better at what you want to do. Which is far better than feeling like a boring chore. Your future life is much more important than a piece of paper pushed at you in some echoing exam hall.
If you care about the course you’ll learn and think about everything. If you only care about exams you’ll start skipping over stuff you don’t think they’ll ask. Even if you ace every exam in the world, what will that get you? A job working for someone who couldn’t care less about exams and just wants you to get things done. Do you think they’d rather someone scrabbling for their old notes on textbook Chapter 14.5, or someone who deep down knows how to get the thing done?
More importantly, which of those people would you rather be?
