Final exams: late nights with lots of caffeine and snacks

Final exams week is here. I feel this fall semester just flew by me...and here I am getting ready to take my first finals in the graduate program in just a matter of hours. Surprisingly I'm not too terribly nervous. After a long weekend of late nights, study group meetings with classmates, lots of caffeine, and many snacks and candy wrappers, I feel confident I can do very well on my exams.

Throughout this semester though, I noticed a difference between when I was an undergraduate student and now. While in undergraduate school, there was a lot of memorization involved and one could cram in a lot of information right before the exam and forget it as soon as the exam was over. In addition, it was a lot easier to get distracted and procrastinate. However, graduate school is different: graduate school work requires you to always stay on top of your studies. You need to constantly be prepared for class by reading the case studies and completing all assignments before class. The class discussions then are more insightful and help you better understand and retain the new information, so when midterms and final exams come around, you already have a solid foundation about the subject matter at hand. In graduate school, you learn how to think critically and apply the concepts - principles that stick around long after the final exams are done.

Now it's time for me to get ready for my first graduate school final. Good luck to all the students (graduate and undergraduate) who are taking their final exams this week! :)