December

When Exams Don’t Go So Great

It’s December! I hope your first semester at Mac has gone well and

that you’re excited for winter break!!

In this month’s post I’m going to be sharing my experience writing

exams at Mac for the first time and what I learned. I’ll also be sharing

tips and personal experiences from other upper year mentors so that

you can see the variety of experiences students have during exams. I

hope that after reading this post you’ll learn some tips for managing

exams!

My Experience

During my first exam season at Mac I was on a roll since I’d crushed

my first two exams and I was also feeling pretty confident about my

calc exam coming up. I did as many practice questions as I could,

redid past assignments, the whole 9 yards. Everything was going as

planned until I opened the exam booklet and my mind went blank. I

felt panic rising up in my chest as I scanned through the problems

and saw the numbers swimming in my vision.

I knew I couldn’t let that be the end so I started with easier problems

to get my confidence up and sure enough what I studied started to

come back to me. However, there were still 2 or 3 questions I knew I

answered wrong so I finished the exam feeling uneasy. After I

handed in my exam, I remember looking out over the sea of IWC

examinees and wondering if anyone else had found the exam tricky

or had blanked out at some point like I did.