This Freshman Took 95 Hours to Study For a Midterm Because He's Still Doing the Readings for Recitation

Midterm season is upon us, and Bruce Patterson, C '21, has his first college midterm coming up next week, so he took some time to reflect on the best ways to study. It's a history class, so Bruce made it very clear that doing the required readings for his recitation section seemed very crucial to getting a good grade on the exam. "The professor emphasized over and over again that we had to do the readings our TA assigns for recitation, so I assume that content is going to have a really big weight on the exam," he told us.

Bruce has spent so much time reading, highlighting, and annotating fifteen 40-page long readings that he still hasn't gotten the chance to look over the lecture slides, the study guides, or the practice tests from previous years. "Some upperclassmen told me I should skim the readings, but I just think that's not right. What if there is a question about the bibliography on the bottom of page 32 in the excerpt from The English Historical Review?"

We spoke to Bruce's TA, as well as other members of his class. According to them, the exam will be multiple choice, and almost identical to the practice test from Fall 2015. No questions based on readings will be included whatsoever.