- Hard work pays off, but only if you see it through to the end. To quote Will Smith, “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.”
This semester my marks have been quite high. This can be attributed to the fact that I only had four courses and thus I had enough time to spread between all of them. However, as the term neared its completion, the wear and tear was evident and rather than fighting through it all the way to the end of the exam period, I stopped to lick my wounds. This has resulted (at least in my mind, since I don’t have concrete marks yet) in a less than stellar performance on my exams. - Size (of group) does matter. If the guidelines to forming a group for a course mention five or less members, try to get five people. On the other hand, if the course is not organized, with clear goals and expectations and enough work to go around, limiting the number of members to three will minimize dissonance.
- Fight for what you deserve. The worst that can happen is that that you don’t get it.
- I am getting too old for all-nighters. I used to be able to stay up all night working, go to bed for 4 hours then be like brand new. Not any more.
Dan's Landing
Adventures in the air, on the ground and in between
Size of group is important, but I’ve noticed that the make up of the group is SUPER important too. I used to be a typical Eng Mgmt student and thought that Commerce students were not helpful.
In one case, I was right, but that’s because I came back late in Jan from a conference and got stuck with a group of “leftovers”.
However, I’ve had GREAT group experiences with groups that were composed completely of Commerce (excluding myself of course) as well as Engineering. I’ve also had crappy pure engineering groups.
My favourite is a mix of top students for both. Everyone is motivated, and our schedules don’t all overlap on the same exams.
Hard work pays off… only if you see it through the end….
Woody Allen once said that 90% of success is just showing up. This is completely true. Last term I could get 60′s and 70′s in simple courses such as programming simply because I didn’t bother doing the assignments or after getting near 100% on midterms and assignments, not bother even looking over the exam material (my marks would be 100%, 0%, 95%, 0%, 94%, 0%… overall 65%).
This term, finishing all the material for the course, I went into the final with a 56/60 (and from my feelings of the final I’m looking at a 11 – 12 guaranteed… if not I will hunt down the person responsible for marking my exam)
Fight for what you deserve. I cannot stress how important this is. The fact is, most TAs are stressed out students like us. They mark tests by following the marking sheet and not really reading your question. Many times I’ve gotten tests back which were hastly marked and often I got 0 marks in a 10 mark question just because I made a few silly mistakes. Making sure you don’t lose out of deserved marks and just going that extra mile to talk to your profs about getting the midterms fixed pays in the end.