Student Work Day – Day 3-6
I just took my last Prelim (Cornell word for midterm) tonight, so that will be the last test until finals in December. Studying for it was reasonably spread out over four days, but as always things could be improved. I ran out of steam at 5:30 today (the Prelim was at 7:30) - I had a practice prelim in front of me and no other distractions in sight, but for some reason my the computer screen continued to just come in out and out of focus, while my mind wandered, despite a running study timer and attempts to focus my attention on the questions. So, I concluded I probably wasn't going to get any more productive study time in for the Prelim. After surfing the internet, I grabbed dinner and chilled before taking the test. In total I think I spent about seven 50-minute blocks on the Prelim as well as about 4.5 hours in my AEW (extra CS tutorial class), at a review session, and asking other people related questions.
Heading into the Prelim I thought I would have liked another 2 study blocks to solidify some definitions and concepts, but looking back, I don't really think that would've helped at all. Either way, I think it's important to forget about what you "could have" done when taking a Prelim - let go of the guilt and concentrate. I never have problems though because usually enough adrenaline kicks in to help me out.
Day 3-4 (Saturday & Sunday)
Saturday and Sunday were great days, as you can all guess (they are break days!). I spent my 'free' time working at my part-time job online, giving piano lessons, running errands, and reviewing Japanese and Vietnamese flashcards (it's my hobby, and pretty low-key since the only pressure comes from myself). After getting stuck at a puzzle in Portal I was bored and called some people up but everyone was busy studying. Haha. So I browsed MIT OpenCourseWare and watched the first video lecture for 6.000, their intro programming course. It was actually pretty interesting because the professor started talking about computer architecture, among other things that I have/had no idea about. On Sunday I'd finished my three study blocks by 10:30 AM so after another piano lesson, I headed out to hit a prelim review session. After that I walked to downtown Ithaca with my boyfriend, where we bought Girl Scout cookies, a used book called "Your First 100 Words in Vietnamese" (he's learning Vietnamese, sort of), and picked up some books at the library.
So there's an example of some good 'rest days,' although I really need to learn how to have more fun, heh. I wonder if there's a "fun bar" you can fill up just like in The Sims, and if there are some ways you can fill the "fun bar" more quickly so you can get back to work? Hmmm.
Day 5-6 (Monday & Tuesday)
On Monday studying went great. I looked ahead at my assignments for the week though and found that time might be tight Wednesday through Friday, so I attempted to block out some extra time in the evening so I won't have any nasty surprises (staying up late) later in the week...but it didn't really work. I did finish off some homework for my writing class but that didn't save me very much time.
..It should be OK as long as the problem sets aren't impossible...but they have been at least once so far this semester, and it's dangerous to bank on them being reasonable...Yay, rising tension!
I felt vaguely sluggish as I started out studying today (Day 6), but overall it was alright and I can't complain too much, other than an intense desire to nap at 3 PM (which I indulged for 10 minutes..so not really). Some people claim that an afternoon nap is a good way (or the only way) to beat the afternoon slump, while others say you just need to eat right and/or eat a good snack. I'm not sure at all - seems like something to experiment with?
