This has been one LONG-ass week, let me tell you. After neglecting my schoolwork for two days last week while I worked my body to the skeleton (heh... don�t I wish!) trying to get this hovel in good enough shape to pass muster with the evil landlords, I found myself seriously behind in a couple of classes. Except for a gorgeous Friday afternoon I spent gallivanting around the countryside in search of a piece of artwork for a class project, I got no respite whatsoever from the work-work-work ethic I�ve got going on lately.

Saturday I spent all day at the computer lab catching up on Illustrator projects. Saturday night was spent working on the assigned drawing of an egg that was due in class on Monday morning, and since I was feeling all hyped up from adrenaline and just a little bit cocky, I made TWO drawings. Time out to catch a few hours of zzzzzzzzzzz�s and then Sunday morning it was off to the library to gather books for a report, and more time spent in the computer lab working on other stuff.

I�ve been so stressed and hyper lately, I feel like I�ve been sleeping in fast forward mode. I hit the sheets flying at midnight, toss and turn for an hour until the kava kava kicks in, sleep as hard as I can, wake up with a heart-pounding start of anxiety and spring forth to greet the darkness at 5 a.m.

This week, in addition to keeping up with my current assignments I�ve also had to study for a make-up quiz in process color. And once that was out of the way, I was then free to spend every spare moment studying for midterms.

The really bad part is, it turns out that the class I missed on Thursday morning was the one in which he reviewed the material that was to be on the midterm, and then in lecture he gave the class a bunch of new material that was to make up about � of the test. And Ramblin� Man doesn�t teach from the book, either. The book is just overview and the rest of the lecture is stuff he pulls out of his own brain and occasionally other orifices; so missing class left me with a huge chunk of important knowledge missing.

So I borrowed a generous fellow student�s notes, pored over the chicken scratch until I was able to puzzle out most of the main ideas, and set about scouring the textbook, reference books and the internet for whatever information I could find on the topics.

I haven�t studied so hard since... probably my English research paper from hell 3 years ago? Except I had weeks to study for that. I only had one night and one morning to cram all the stuff I needed to know for this midterm into my poor overworked brain. I did it though, and I was surprised to find that I was much better prepared for the tests than I expected to be. I actually was pretty confident of the answers to most of the questions, and I THINK I did pretty well on all the tests this week. I say �I think� because there always seem to be a few oddly-worded questions where, even though I know the topic, I�m just not sure what answer they�re looking for. Like for instance, multiple choice questions:

1. Which of the following items are considered �white space� on a printed page?
a. Any area which does not contain text or graphics
b. Space deliberately left between paragraphs as part of the layout
c. Anything colored �white� or �none�
d. All of the above

This one was a bit of a nail-biter. I know �a� is correct, and I�m about 99.9 percent certain �b� is correct, but I�d have sworn �c� was NOT correct. But if both �a� and �b� are correct, and there can be only one correct answer, then it�s probably �d�, right? Unless this is one of those stupid cases where the teacher tells the class after the fact �I accepted either �a� or �b� as the correct answer." I HATE this kind of shit on tests. Hate, hate, hate. And really, why do they have to get all detaily nit-picky on such a DUMB little factoid? Are future employers going to be impressed by my deep knowledge of white space, which is, basically, NOTHING? �I know everything there is to know about nothing� doesn�t sound like much of a brag to me...

Anyway... I still think I did pretty much ok, which is a great relief considering the near-nervous-breakdown I was having over all the recent shit that has been whirling through my proverbial fan lately.

And I have to say, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my Prince. Not just for putting up with my hysterical, shreiking drama-queen ass through all of this shit, though he certainly deserves a medal for that too. But he also deserves a rather belated thank-you for teaching me how to study.

Funny thing, how a smart person can reach the age of 38 without having any idea how to study for a test, but I did. See, I never really had to study in high school. Partly just because I just didn�t care about my grades, but also because if I bothered to show up and put forth the least amount of effort on a test, I usually aced it. (I once got a �B� on a test over the periodic table after having skipped almost every class on the topic. Somehow I managed to osmose the information just from sitting in front of the chart for a few weeks.) With most subjects, I simply had to listen with half an ear in class and maybe skim the appropriate chapter and I could walk away with an �A� easily.

Imagine my surprise when I started taking college courses and discovered that method no longer stood me in good stead. Even in a community college, the ideas are bigger and more complex than in high school and so are the words used to express them. The spoon-feeding of information also comes to an abrupt end. No more lovely dittoed handouts with all the information neatly presented for my learning pleasure... now I�m expected to pay attention in class and take actual NOTES from someone who talks a hundred miles an hour, largely about irrelevant bullshit that may or may not be on the test.

My initial attempts at �studying� were pathetic and ineffectual. I�d sit me down with my notes and the textbook made of 100% desert-cured sawdust, and read over the information until my eyes went crossed and my mind began to wander aimlessly (usually after all of about 10 minutes into it.) I�d read and reread and reread the same paragraph over and over without absorbing or even understanding any of it. It was torture and I hated it.

My darling Prince patiently explained to me the study method he had used in college. After taking notes in class, he�d write those notes out again and again, rewording, reorganizing, summing up, paring the information down into little succinct nuggets of knowledge that would fit tidily into the answer spaces on the test. He even took notes while reading the textbook and then condensed them down in this manner.

At the time he shared this information with me, many many quarters ago, I don�t believe I was suitably impressed. In fact, I�m pretty sure I snorted. What do you mean, take notes on the reading assignment???? Why would I want to do all that writing when it�s all written down RIGHT IN THE BOOK, and all I have to do is go through with a highlighter and mark all the relevant bits for further study? (Never mind that I hadn�t had much success with that method up to that point...)

So I continued to do things my own way until it became abundantly clear that it wasn�t working so hot, and then I grudgingly began to take a few notes from the textbook, and maybe rewrite a few key ideas from my notes. And was amazed to discover how much I was able to learn this way. The writing enabled me to focus on the material, and the more I wrote, the more it burrowed into my brain and a lot of it STUCK there. And as the months have passed, it�s actually becoming second nature to me that if I need to learn something, I should just write and rewrite and rework the idea until it eventually imbeds itself in my brain.

I can�t believe they don�t teach this in grade school. Or maybe they do and I just missed it somehow? But at any rate, I am very grateful to my husband for teaching me such a valuable skill, in spite of my pigheadedness in thinking that surely MY method of studying (staring at the text while the words simply swam mockingly in front of my eyes, stubbornly refusing to make the long journey through the optic network and into my brain where they might be processed into actual knowledge) had to be much more efficient than doing all that tedious writing, for god�s sake.

I�ve done more writing-based studying for the tests this week than I�ve ever done before, and at test time I discovered I was better prepared than I�ve ever been in my life. I even figured out a new trick on my own: there were two very similar, slightly technical definitions that I kept getting confused; even after writing and rewriting many times I kept mixing the wording up. I finally hit upon the idea of breaking each definition into lines, like a poem:

Spectral power distribution
The relative amount
of light
at each wavelength

Spectrophotometer
Measures the amount
of light energy
at several points
on the visible spectrum

See? I did that from memory!! Isn�t that cool? I was ready to pound my head against the desk this morning before I tried this method a mere 15 minutes before the test. (Hehehe... I know this is of no interest to anyone but me, but damned if I wasn�t as pleased as punch to figure this out. )

Ok, I�m even starting to bore myself now, and it�s almost time for my sweetie to come home and watch Survivor, so I�ll sign off this mega-monster-bore-a-thon now.

S.H.I.T... So Happy It�s Thursday! Three day weekends rule. :)

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Last Five
Crappy job crap, weird neighbor, and someone whose baby I apparently want to have - 2006-05-08
Live from the dump - 2006-04-09
Kind of like a muzzle for your brain - 2006-03-29
...and then she fell ass-first into my cereal bowl - 2006-03-28
Playing catch-up - 2006-03-27

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