With midterms in full swing, many of us at the University of Minnesota have been studying diligently to prepare for our exams. As these assessments often represent a large percentage of our grades, it’s very important to do well on them.
But there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to study every little tidbit of information you’ve learned since the start of the semester. It simply isn’t going to happen, especially because students often have more than one midterm exam.
Study guides help students to focus their efforts and weed out concepts that won’t be on the exam. This can save a huge amount of time. Not to mention, by ignoring the concepts that won’t be tested, we can spend more time on those we’re expected to know, increasing our understanding of the material and, hopefully, our test scores.
Not all professors allow students the luxury of having study guides, however. As someone who cares tremendously about my grades, there’s nothing more frustrating than having to study extra information that’s not part of an assessment. The less information I have to worry about knowing, the better I’ll learn it and be able to recall it in the future.
For these reasons, I think it’s incredibly important for the University to require professors to provide students with comprehensive study guides. Each individual college could delegate specific guidelines, but the policy should encompass the entire University.
As students, we can make this happen by informing both student board members and faculty of our desires. Hopefully, by doing this, we can prepare more effectively for our exams and perform even better than we have in the past.
Maddie Eaton welcomes comments at [email protected].