#group study

The posts this week have been taking a bit longer to deal with due to some of my classwork quite literally trying to break me. However, this craziness has opened up my eyes to what is probably a universal experience for all students who are known to procrastinate: group cramming. 

Having two big tests/exams in one day is not fun for anyone. This is exactly what happened yesterday: one was in the morning and the other was at the end of the day. Most people I know spent all of their time Wednesday night trying to study for the first test by doing any unfinished classwork for the class with the early morning test. There was a last minute tutoring session that almost everyone in class attended and proceeded to use as an extra resource for last minute studying for about 2 chapter’s worth of content. Everyone was trying to get the teacher to explain topics that were being gone over in the homework, but were hard to understand, in fear that the test was going to be just as hard as, if not harder than, the homework everyone was rushing to do. 

People went to bed late, barely understanding the content and just ready to get the test over and done with. The next morning comes, and so does that first test. We all get that out of the way with varying levels of confidence and move on to the next topic of panic: the second test.

This new panic shoots into the hearts of the people as they rush to understand about 4 weeks and 4 complicated chapters’ worth of content in just 3 hours. Now, this is where all people join in to bring a great sense of camaraderie. There are about 10 students who normally don’t hang out with each other standing in front of a whiteboard going over PowerPoints in an attempt to isolate all of the topics the teacher said were going to be the most important. One person was sitting in the middle of all the chaos speed reading the textbook and taking more in-depth notes of at least the first 2 chapters that everyone forgot about. 

It is a beautiful sight with the whiteboard that no longer has any blank space as it is filled to the brim with notes in colorful expo markers and the students all discussing what they all understand as they start to actually feel prepared for the test. In theory, everything was going great.

However, all of our preparation was thrown out the window as soon as the test came out. It was completely different from what most of us were preparing for. 

This story may not have a happy ending, but it was glorious in the moment as you watched the panic of a decent-sized group of procrastinators turn into resolve to do the best that they possibly could. 

This past week was not the best show of how to handle procrastination, but I plan to show some ways to avoid this giant feeling of panic so that maybe, just maybe, this isn’t as much of a constant occurrence.