Josh Thomas’ Top Tips for Tests (And Quizzes)

Joshua Thomas

Undergraduate/Broadfield Social Studies

Hello Flip Side! Josh Thomas, afro, etc. By now almost all of us have been through our first and some of us even our second round of midterms. I don’t think there’s a soul out there who would argue with me if I said the way we test and testing in itself is fairly flawed, but its existence is something we accept in our daily lives. How did you do, Eau Claire? I think I aced political science, but I know I failed my history test. Whatever, it was a bullshit test and I’ll just do better next time now that I know what the professor thinks is test-worthy. And so will the rest of you if you study Josh Thomas’ top tips for tests (and quizzes). Don’t be stressed!

Tip #1 Don’t study for a test as if you never attended a day of the class you’re taking it in. Believe it or not, you can actually learn about the subject at hand in discussions, lectures, and labs which you probably attend in-between classes. If you approach studying as memoriz­ing a set of isolated facts you’re wasting a huge amount of time. If I already know the surface temperature of the sun is 5778 degrees kelvin then studying that isn’t go­ing to do any good for me is it? If you already know something then you don’t need to study for it. The more you learn in class and the less you learn because you’re studying for a test, then the more you ac­tually learn and the less you flush the sec­ond you’re out the door.

Tip #2 There is nothing wrong with doing your studying the night before a test as long as you give yourself some time to do it. Most of us can accomplish an as­signment or a study session in one sitting and that’s usually about all we need for it, unless you’re a bio/chem major in which case may God have mercy upon your soul because this institution will not. They say it’s never too early to start studying, I say “they” can go to hell. It’s never too early to start learning, but that need not mean preparing for a test becomes an ordeal; you should certainly set aside time to pre­pare for it and whenever that is is fine. I have yet to meet more than a handful of professors who think it’s never too early to start grading something, if you know what I mean. We aren’t even being paid.

Tip #3 A failed test isn’t a failed life. Sometimes it can feel like every mistake takes us a little further away from reach­ing our dreams but we cannot make the mistake of associating a bad grade with bad character. Some of the people the buildings on campus are named after, the “great leaders” of the university, never had doctorates. Those pieces of paper weren’t as important as they are now, yet these men are of those whose names remain with us even today. Any new field takes time to set up how it wants to accredit its members but that doesn’t stop those lucky enough to get into it first from making history. Do not let tests have so much power over the course of your life, so many other things will shape and mold it in much more important ways.

Tip #4 There is a very good chance that the right answer is staring you in the face or hiding in the back of your mind. Relax, don’t stress out in the middle of taking it, and remember tip number three. Is it multiple choice? The answer is there, get rid of what’s wrong and you’ll find what’s right. True/false? Just choose what seems right, it’s not easy to trap a true/ false question. Fill-in-the-blank? Reuse terms if you’re not sure, 50% of one right is better than the possibility both are. Matching? Just start matching, you’ll get most of them right either way. Now an essay question is a little harder. You prob­ably at least have the basis of an answer up in your head; start with that and fill in the rest as best as you can. A bullshit es­say may not get top points but a blank es­say will not get you any. Above all else: fill out the entire test, do not leave anything blank.

Tip #5 Your goal should be learning, not acing everything. A 4.0 does not make anybody a genius, it just makes them good at passing tests. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, it’s a wonderful skill and anyone who possesses it will make more money than I ever do, but it’s just a skill, not a definition of your knowledge or your character. If you study so hard you end up hating the subject or just dump ev­erything after the test then you’ve wasted a lot of your precious time on the Earth. The man I’ve learned the most from in this university ended up never finishing his major. I never found out why, my best guess is that he never had a strong enough drive to, but that didn’t make him any less intelligent. If he is lucky enough to find a place for himself that makes good use of that intellect then one day people may look up to him as an exemplar in his field but that won’t make his test scores any better than they were.

As I reflect on what I’ve put down, I realize the absolute absurdity of it. How can someone who has to compete against hundreds of students who would gladly do whatever they need to do to become a doctor or a lawyer have a competitive edge unless they also participate in what I had advised against? As someone who hopes to become a teacher I am ashamed to say I have not quite found the right answer to that yet. Your lives will be very different from my own and perhaps that answer needs to be discovered by you and not by me. Just don’t let testing make you compromise learning.