It seems like school barely started and it's already exam season! With midterms starting this week, I'm sure everyone's working themselves into a tizzy trying to manage school and exams. Here's why midterms are worse than finals.
1. You have to manage classes, schoolwork, and exams.
During finals week, all your time is dedicated to your tests. You can spend all your time at the library if you need to, and your focus is solely on the exams you have to take. However, midterms don't work out the same way. Not only do you have three exams in one week, but you also have to balance class, homework, work, and studying. It's overwhelming!
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2. You have no idea what to expect.
The first round of midterms is always the hardest. You've never had to work with this professor before, and thus you have no clue what the exam's going to be like. All multiple choice? Free response? Super long or extremely short? By the time finals rolls around, you have the prof's ways down to a T.
3. There's more stress on getting a good grade.
With finals, you can usually calculate the lowest score you can get on the test to pass the class and feel pretty good going in. However, because a lot of class's first grades are midterm scores, there's an extreme amount of pressure to get a good grade on the exam. Who wants to see the first score in the grade book as a 60 percent?
4. There are more distractions to help you procrastinate.
Oh, is there a function Thursday night? Guess I should just start studying Friday. Or are a group of people going to play soccer Tuesday evening? I can just begin my work after that! Midterms are in the middle of normal life, so there's a lot more reasons to keep you from studying. Life seems to get put on hold during finals, so all there really isto do is study.
5. It doesn't seem like school has really even started, yet.
The beginning of the term is always the most fun of the year. No one has real work to do yet, school isn't stressful, and all you want to do is hangout and have fun with friends. So by the time midterms roll around, it seems like they've come out of nowhere. How has it already been four weeks of school?!
No matter how much we don't want to admit it, it's actually time to buckle down and get your work done. Happy studying!
