What's your final exam rituals?

[PittPoliSci]

I just wrote ODIN on my bare chest with magic marker to aid in my studying.

I'm not sure why it would aid me...but I've been awake for 29 hours now and I think I'm starting to crack...

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

1. I had 2-3 different places around campus I'd hole up in to do my serious,

desparate last ditch all nighters. Both were remote from my dorm room.

The first was in the science building my freshman year (not in a library). There were a few study rooms in a significantly out of the way part of that building.

The second, when I was an upperclassman, was in common/study rooms at the Business School, far away from my dorm.

At all times I had the ritual that on the morning of exam day (or paper turn-in day) itself, I'd head to a greasy spoon called the Mug and Muffin and have breakfast, corned beef hash and eggs and coffee. I understand that that particular dive doesn't exist anymore. When I was in medical school I modified that ritual to going to a greasy spoon called the Tastee Diner in Bethesda, Maryland on the morning of major exams, for essentially the same breakfast as I used to have as an undergrad. Occasionally some of my classmates would meet early on the morning of the test and have a "breakfast club" where we'd bounce questions off each other at the last minute, or go over old exams really quick.

As an undergrad, after the big exam/paper blowouts, the key ritual was to go to "No-Name" seafood house, bring bottles of Grolsch beer and eat gigantic seafood platters (fried).

Two nights up in a row was as much as I could do, I think I did three one time. I remember once, after finals, after being up 2 days straight and having one of these No Name seafood and beer blowouts, falling asleep in the middle of a phone conversation with one of my friends. I woke up, the phone was still off the hook on the floor, and the tell tale puddle of drool on the pillow. My friend had wondered what happened to me since I dozed off mid sentence.

[PittPoliSci]

2. i've never gone longer than 36 hours.

i like the part about falling asleep on the phone, a friend of mine did that before to me.

[Dastard Stepchild]

3. :)

I stayed up for three days, taking two hour catnaps every now and then to recharge my batteries. By the end, I was talking some silly, silly shit. Who knows what actually ended up in those papers. :)

[WindRavenX]

4. I wear my lucky Yankees hat

And wear sweat pants. Finals week = no pants week

And coffee. Oh...lord.

Once I had a Chem final that I don't remember taking.

[PittPoliSci]

16. my friend always wore a viking helmet.

i have a guinness knit cap i wear. :-)

[Ladyhawk]

5. Sleep deprivation did make me crack once during college.

The choir had just returned from a three-week trip across the country. During the trip we had little sleep and I never could study on a bus. When we were staying with hosts, I would be asleep.

When I got back, I found out a prof wasn't going to give me any extra time to study for a test, so I decided to pull an all-nighter. After a couple of hours of studying, I got so sleepy, I decided I had to crash, so I set my alarm to wake me up at 2 a.m. (or some such ungodly hour) and went to sleep.

When the alarm went off, my sleep-deprived brain somehow got the idea that the lamp on the swing arm was making that horrible racket. I reached over and started whacking the lamp. It wouldn't shut up, so I reached over and unplugged it. It still wouldn't shut up. Finally I half sat-up and started unscrewing the light bulb.

My Armenian roommate walked over from her side of the room and said, "What are you doing?"

I made some kind of incoherent remark about my lamp making noise and that it wouldn't stop. My roommate reached over and flipped off the alarm. (It's a wonder any of my roommates could stand me.)

About five minutes later I finally snapped out of it and started laughing. I was lying on my stomach and the big, stifled belly laughs were shaking the bed.

I got my lowest-ever grade on the test I took at 8 a.m. It was a C.

[PittPoliSci]

17. i've been pretty good at all-nighters so far in my career.

i'm bracing for another tonight :-)

[CarpeDiebold]

6. i wear the same shirt to every test

all the way back to college. (i wash it, lol) worked wonders when i was in college

it might fail tomorrow(maybe it just works as long as you're sitll in college...)

[PittPoliSci]

19. i have lucky shirts too.

i usually mix them up so i don't wear out their luckiness.

[CarpeDiebold]

23. but wouldn't that dilute the luck pool?

or does each shirt come with it's own preset luckiness? i was always told there's a finite luck pool so i assumed it's best to concentrate it into one shirt.

i should consider this option. that poor shirt might tear and i'd be, er, shit out of luck.

[PittPoliSci]

26. i believe in seperate finite luck pools.

i wear my lucky political shirt (darkest hour - hidden hands of a sadist nation) if i have a polisci test. i have different shirts for different subjects. and i only bust out the big lucky guns if i have an important exam, other than that i rely on my intelligence. hah!

[DS1]

7. lessie

1) Don't panic
2) give yourself plenty of time for a good, hearty and relaxing breakfast beforehand
3) don't try study at the last moment waiting for the prof to show up
4) ignore the other clowns in the class doing exactly that

[PittPoliSci]

14. thank you!

i usually feel pretty confident by the time i'm in the room, i laugh as they scramble. mwhahaha...i'm feeling cruel.

[Maddy McCall]

15. 3) and 4) - - - - EXACTLY.

You confuse yourself by scanning your notes before the test. And the numbskulls who are panicking and trying to cram it all in, in the classroom, 5 minutes before the test, will confuse you to, so don't listen to them. Indeed, don't walk into the classroom until the prof arrives and is ready to hand out the exams.

[bammertheblue]

8. sugar free red bull

[CatholicEdHead]

9. When I was in college I planned ahead from the start of the semester

and kept up enough in class and kept my regular sleeping schedule. All nighters did me in come test time.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

10. I hate your kind! Seriously though, good for you, LOL.

[Maddy McCall]

11. Hey! Best wishes on your finals! These were my rituals when I...

was a undergrad and MA student:

1) Must eat tuna when studying, because tuna has oils that aid in brain activity.

2) Must take two tylenols before each exam, because Tylenol will loosen up the brain and get the neurons sparkin.

3) The sacred pen. A Uniball Roller. Must have the sacred pen for every exam. If no Uniball, no exam.


Best wishes on your exams. Don't fret it, and get some sleep. Did you know that your brain will function much better if you get 7-9 hours of sleep before you take the test?

:toast:

[PittPoliSci]

12. thanks!

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

20. This assumes that you don't need to learn critical amounts of new material

in that 7-9 hours that will enable you to pass or ace the test, i.e. you are not a procrastinator.

Did you know that your brain will function much better if you get 7-9 hours of sleep before you take the test?

[Maddy McCall]

21. Yes, it does assume that.

But there's hardly any way to learn four months of lecture and reading materials in seven hours, anyway.

[PittPoliSci]

28. i think it really depends on the subject.

for my western civilization class, the topic is so broad that you only have to know main events, main events you can crush into one evening if you're so dedicated. but finer subjects like neuroscience or physiology, well...you may as well just sleep if you wait till the last second.

[dxdem]

13. I've found

that ritual sacrifices usually help. If they don't, then darn it, they're just plain fun...

[TransitJohn]

18. Bonghits.

Maybe some porn.

[TimeChaser]

22. Bawls

:)

[Beware the Beast Man]

24. I used to drink a gallon of home-made iced tea, aka "Liquid Crack."

18 bags of Lipton tea and 2 cups of sugar to one gallon of water. Instant all-nighter.

[PittPoliSci]

27. i think i'm going to try that tonight.

i'm writing a paper on the Killer Angels right now for a Civil War history class, i feel like i'm in high school again, but i wanna put the effort forth just cause.

[Beware the Beast Man]

30. Great book, by the way.

I had to read it for my college Civil War class. It may be fiction, but it paints a pretty vivid picture of Gettysburg.

[PittPoliSci]

31. i read it years ago.

this is my last ditch effort to try to write a paper about something i already vaguely remember. i really enjoyed the book, though. i'm feeling lazy as hell.

[swag]

25. I only dream about them any more. I haven't attended class all term,

I can't find the exam room, I'm not wearing anything, and I have to go to the bathroom, so I make my way to a vast basement lavatory/locker room with a cold damp floor and a strange maze of oddly shaped toilets and urinals.

[Jamastiene]

29. This time around, nothing.

Usually, I will look over my notes and study anything that is not fresh in my head. This time around I had a math class that I was worried about and I had studied so much all semester. The grade never seemed to improve no matter what I did for regular tests. I ended up not studying for the final and made a 95 on it. Go figure. Studying was working against me. I need to not study all the time I didn't even realize it.

[deadparrot]

32. Um...staying up until 3AM on Facebook?

Yeah, tomorrow's gonna suuuuuck.

[PittPoliSci]

33. i think i'm one of the few college age people not on that yet.

that and myspace.