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Students: Educational and Student Success Center

Mastery

Planning for Finals

It’s hard to believe, but finals are just a few short weeks away, which means you are probably buried in papers, projects, presentations, and unit tests. Don’t let this sneak up on you! Planning for your finals doesn’t have to be difficult. With just a few steps you can go into finals focused, prepared, and ready for the challenge. Make a plan now so you are primed when the time arrives.

Focused on Finals

Being focused means that you know what you plan to accomplish. One good way to approach this is to make two sets of goals: what you need to accomplish, and what you want to accomplish.

Need to Accomplish. Think of these goals as your minimums. Look at your class performance over the semester. What scores do you need to make to achieve satisfactory performance in each of your classes? Distinguish the classes that will require more effort from those where you already have high scores.

Want to Accomplish. These goals are what will please you. In answering this, make sure you keep these goals realistic. Don’t set impossible goals for all your finals. Set these goals class by class to help keep them achievable.

Balance the two sets of goals and determine a goal for each class. This will help you focus your time management and study strategies to achieve your goals.

Prepared for Finals

Preparing involves more than just going over notes. It’s strategic. It starts right away with time management. Clear your calendar as much as possible and set a study schedule. Then find out whether your tests are comprehensive. If they are comprehensive, then you will want to begin reviewing past material right away. What do you know and what do you need to study? You can’t prepare for a comprehensive final by reading a semester’s worth of notes two days before the final.

Find a way to create notes that allow you to test yourself, especially in content where you are weaker. The more you practice retrieving information, the better your test performance will be, whether you are trying to remember information or applying your knowledge. Self-testing will reassure you that you know what you think you know.

Ready for Finals

Being ready means you have set goals for, and learned as much as you can about, each test. You’ve stuck to a study schedule, and carried out a study plan. It doesn’t mean you won’t be anxious. Ready means that you have done what you need to do, to the best of your ability, for the goals you set.

Take control and plan for your finals now. Don’t wait until the last minute. Getting started now will help reduce your anxiety and make you better prepared when the time arrives.

Mastery: Telling the Story

Part of mastery is telling the story.

The author of this quote worked for many years in the neonatal unit of a major hospital in the Chicago area.  As she observed, many families lovingly recite the details of the births of their children.  There almost gets to be a ritualized procedure in the retelling of these stories at subsequent family get-togethers.  When the relatives gather for birthdays, for holidays, for weddings, and even to mourn together for funerals, how often the conversation turns to pulling back together these reveries, to remembering.  The same portions of the birth stories are told in the same order by the same participants.  The expectant mother tells how nervous the cabbie was when he arrived at the house and during the drive to the hospital, no matter how she reassured him that she was not going to deliver on the way.  And, oh yes, she had to give him directions.  Her mother chimes in to narrate how her grade school principal came to her classroom door to tell her she needed to leave immediately for the hospital a month earlier than her daughter’s baby was due (for you youngsters, there was a time, not that long ago, when there were not cell phones).  As she tells of her hurried drive, she still trembles with that same anxiety she felt that day.  And so it goes: the father tells his side, the other siblings pipe up, extended family add bits about where they were and how they heard.  Telling the story is one way of mastering this life we live.

Tell Your Story

And here you are, conceiving all sorts of new thoughts as a student at UAMS.  In due time you too are expected to deliver.  What sort of story will you tell?  Who are the heroes?  Who are the villains, the trusty sidekicks, the crusty trainer, the comic relief, the love interest?  What are the unexpected plot twists, the obstacles to be overcome?  Is this a feel good tear-jerker?  Is this the story of a small-town girl who becomes the family medical expert?  What sort of character development have you undergone here?  You are here to master your material, to become a master of your trade.  Part of your mastery is telling your story.  Make it a good one, and tell it well.

Susan Johnson Kline. “The Voices on Obstetrics: Participants and Partners.”