As an old TikTok goes, “the height of luxury is drinking three liquids at once… one for fun, one for hydration, and one for energy”. But instead of luxury, imagine midterm season. I must admit that this round was more challenging than last semester for a variety of reasons. For example, I took three classes with exams and one with a paper, while last semester I took two of each. At Williams, balancing paper and exam classes can make or break midterms for many, which I witnessed from first-hand experience. The dynamics around these formats differ in how “useful” certain resources can be for surviving and succeeding in said formats.
With exams being the focus of this season, I heavily invested in utilizing resources around active learning such as study groups, office hours, review sessions, and practice problems. This materialized into spending plenty of time in the science building and library, in particular late at night in study rooms so as to have access to chalkboards (my new favorite thing). Looking back, I feel that I invested in strategies that worked towards my strengths, which favor group settings and active recall, but I highly recommend that others will pursue whatever strategies work best for them (even if they may seem weird or going at it alone). If you do favor the more independent-oriented approaches, please remember to take care of your mental health with breaks and self-love as it is often the case that we forget to do so while in the midst of our studying storms.
In regard to papers, I still used office hours and peer aid quite heavily. This looked like conversations with professors about my ideas and hopes for my paper while getting feedback and critique from tutors at the writing center. I am fortunate that professors at Williams are heavy to push for these kinds of interactions and support since I have seen many of my friends not even know these opportunities exist. A niche opportunity is getting coffee with professors before their exams to ease fears and enjoy a nice treat on the college’s dime.
That is all to say that you should explore any and all resources available to you so as to get a feeling for what works best for you. At Williams, cooperation brings you closer to graduation, thus I push for getting together with friends and professors to work through the turbulent times that are midterms. This also provides an opportunity to maintain social lives since if everyone is busy, at least you’re busy together. This does not mean you should use all your social life to improve academics, because the diminishing returns in working can only go so far without burning you out. College is a marathon, after all, no need to sprint through this.
As always, please feel free to contact me!
Best,
Chris Flores