{"id":778,"date":"2016-05-11T10:45:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T10:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/?p=778"},"modified":"2017-10-12T11:37:49","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T11:37:49","slug":"exam-tips-confessions-of-a-professor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/?p=778","title":{"rendered":"Exam tips: confessions of a professor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HK<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Helen King offers some advice on how to survive exam season with your sanity intact…<\/em><\/p>\n

‘So you must be really good at exams, yes?’ That’s what everyone assumes when you get an academic job. Well, yes – and no. I recently tweeted my personal three rules of exam success, which go as follows:<\/p>\n

Answer the question.<\/p>\n

Answer the question.<\/p>\n

Answer the ****ing question.<\/p>\n

A former student commented, \u2018seriously I still find myself quoting this mantra. I remember in the Anc Med exam looking round & seeing people muttering this.\u2019 But I can go further. I\u2019ve picked up some techniques along the way and I\u2019ll share some of those here. They worked for me, and maybe they\u2019ll help you too.<\/p>\n

1. Breathe. Don\u2019t panic. I used to do my panicking a few weeks before the exam, so by the time I was sitting in that hideous gym or hall I was past all that. But even so the first five minutes were hideous, as those around me turned over the question paper and immediately started to write. Do you know what? These people are writing complete rubbish. They haven\u2019t read the questions; they\u2019ve just spotted a word and gone into overdrive. Don\u2019t follow their example. Sit back. Read the questions. Circle or underline some words. If the questions aren\u2019t what you hoped for, never mind \u2013 there will be something you can answer, and possibly you\u2019ll produce a better argument simply because you are thinking rather than regurgitating. Look at the person next to you \u2013 wow, on to their second page now! \u2013 and feel sorry for them because they aren\u2019t answering the question. After five minutes of thinking and breathing, start to write your plan.<\/p>\n

2. Read the question carefully. Questions aren\u2019t written to catch you out, but to help you think about the course material. No question will ever be \u2018Tell me everything you know about\u2026\u2019 but some answers will be to that question, rather than to the one being asked. The more obvious questions aren\u2019t always the ones to answer, because your words of wisdom are going to be compared with some very good answers as well as some rather iffy answers. But nor do you want to be the only one answering the question \u2013 an examiner is unlikely to give you a top mark without seeing from looking over the field that you really are the front runner. Ideally, you want to be one of a group of answers in which it\u2019s clear that yours is the best. That may mean picking the question carefully. And, unless you read it, and think about it, and make a list of the main points to cover and the examples you could use in answering it, you\u2019re not going to get that right.<\/p>\n

3. Passing exams isn\u2019t entirely about what you know, but how you present it. There\u2019s a lot to be said for that boring old structure of an intro saying what you\u2019re going to say, three or four paragraphs each focused on one example which contributes to answering the question, and then a conclusion which pulls the examples together to make that answer very clear. So that rough plan you wrote in the five minutes while those around you failed to address the question must address the key words in that question. By all means, leave some lines blank, then write the essay and go back to do your intro. But in many situations you can do the intro first, on the lines of \u2018in order to answer this question I am going to do the following\/examine these cases\u2019.<\/p>\n

4. Give the examiner something a little different. At university I made a conscious effort to include in each exam script at least one point from a course other than the one being examined. I reckoned this would liven things up for an examiner faced with their fifteenth \u2013 or fiftieth \u2013 answer to that question. It also showed I could make connections between subjects, and that has to be good. Avoid too much creativity here \u2013 a friend at university made up a whole tribe for an Anthropology exam \u2013 but a confident and accurate mention of something that wasn\u2019t part of the syllabus looks good. If you have a really bad exam, don\u2019t write a letter to the examiner apologising for your poor performance (yes, I\u2019ve seen those). And don\u2019t take a banknote out of your pocket and reproduce it on the answer book (yes, I\u2019ve seen that, but only the once). There\u2019s \u2018different\u2019, and there\u2019s \u2018no\u2019.<\/p>\n

5. Leave 10 minutes at the end to read through your answers. In exam conditions it\u2019s very easy to write \u2018Romans\u2019 when you mean \u2018Greeks\u2019 or to miss out the word \u2018not\u2019. Reading through will also give you a chance to make your handwriting a bit clearer if you\u2019ve been in a hurry. If you can\u2019t read your own writing, the examiner hasn\u2019t a chance.<\/p>\n

6. Go home. There\u2019s little point hanging around as people share what they wrote for each question. Thinking \u2018Oh no, I totally misunderstood that one!\u2019 or \u2018Why did I forget that brilliant example?\u2019 will only depress you. Onwards to the next exam, after a well-earned sleep!<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: You can find Helen King on Twitter @fluff35<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Helen King offers some advice on how to survive exam season with your sanity intact… ‘So you must be really good at exams, yes?’ That’s what everyone assumes when you get an academic job. Well, yes – and no. I recently tweeted my personal three rules of exam success, which go as follows: Answer the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[74,71,73,72],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teach","tag-exam","tag-exams","tag-revision","tag-study-skills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":789,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions\/789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/classicalstudies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}