The past two weeks have been my finals, which is the name for our third year exams here at Oxford, although that is a silly word because I do have to sit exams again next year. Anyway, I have had seven exams over the course of the two weeks, and they all involved me putting on my silly little subfusc (academic dress) outfit, pining the correct colour carnation to my chest (white for your first exam, red for your last exam, and pink for all the ones in between) and heading into grand the exam schools building to sit my papers. As the weeks went on and I completed my exams I filled in a little reflection on each of my papers and thought I would share them on here.
Me standing outside Teddy Hall before dressed in my subfusc before heading over to exam schools for my first exam (hence the white carnation).
13th May: Field Work and Interdisciplinary Paper
Today I sat my first of my third year 'Honour School of Geology and Earth Sciences' exams, the fieldwork and interdisciplinary paper. This is a weird one that we are actually the last year to sit, but basically it aims to combine all aspects of the course and encourage us to have a holistic view of geology and how the topics all interlink. We get a choice of 5 essay questions, of which we need to answer 2. It was a confusing exam to revise for as you can't exactly cram the whole of geology ever the night before but the exam itself went alright. Like maybe a 7/10. I wasn't a massive fan of the questions, I was hoping for something along the lines of 'How might a changing climate affect ocean circulation' which of course did not come up. I ended up writing essays on deformational processes and observing climate change through sedimentary rocks. They could have gone better but I mean I did manage to write a half decent answer for both so overall I'm feeling okay about it.
After the exam I had a quick lunch with my friends and headed to the library to revise for the volcanology paper on Wednesday. My exams are spaced out quite nicely this year so I have a day between all of my exams in this first week. Overall stress levels are actually quite low so I'm doing good right now.
15th May: Volcanology and Igneous Processes
This exam was alright, I knew it was going to be one of my better papers and I'm pleased with how it went. There was however a slight technical issue in the printing of the papers which meant that end of one of the questions was missing. As you can imagine this caused a lot of confusion both in the exam room and afterwards as we tried to figure out how they are going to mark a question that was missing a big part. Most of our exams are a chose to answer two out of the three questions type situation so I just chose to answer the other two. This would seem like the sensible thing to do but obviously people have different areas of knowledge so if the question that was missing the end was your area of knowledge then some people did attempt to guess at what the question would have asked and answer it anyway. I'm not entirely sure how they are gong to go about marking this as we have a lot of questions regarding how they are going to keep things fair, especially as it's an optional module so not everyone on the course was sitting the exam. But honestly, I'm glad it is over and the mess up didn't affect me too much so I have more pressing issues: aka revision for the next five exams.
Post exam I had a tutoring session going over plate tectonics with one of my tutees (which is what I do on the side to earn some extra money) and then headed to the gym to clear my brain, that at this point was feeling pretty mushy. I don't have an exam tomorrow so taking the afternoon off was ok and I really want to try and avoid exam period burn out so I decided that was my best option.
If you're wondering, I did then spend the entirety of the next day in the library revising so don't go thinking I'm slacking off.
My carnations sitting happily on my window sill in between exams. I can tell you the red one did not look this happy by the end of the two weeks when it finally came time to wear it!
17th May: Quantitative Paleobiology
Going into this paper I was not sure what to expect. I had spent the whole of yesterday in the library trying to figure out the maths parts of the course and ultimately came to the conclusion I was better off avoiding the maths question if I could. However, on opening the exam paper the maths looked pretty easy, and one of the other questions looked pretty grim, so I gave the maths a go and I am like 75% sure it turned out alright. The other question I answered was like a 7/10 in my opinion, and overall the paper went fine, not a lot to note.
Now I have the entire weekend to revise for the next four exams. I'm once again choosing to take the afternoon off since I have two full days of revision before my next exam so I sat in the sun for a bit, went for a swim at the sports centre, called my mum and had dinner with my friends .
20th May: Biological and Physical Oceanography
I knew that this was definitely going to be one of my harder exams. This course is split into two: biological and physical. The biological side is very interesting and pretty easy to wrap your head around. However, the physical side is a lot of physics and equation based fluid dynamics which has never been my strong point. The exam is split so that there is one question that is just biological, one that is just physical, and one that is half and half. Most people, myself included, went into the exam with the plan of doing the biological question and the half and half one in order to minimise the need to do physical oceanography. The issue with this is that the half and half question had the biological bit focused on a very niche part of the course that a lot of people, again myself included, had not properly looked over as it was on the last few sides of the last lecture. This put us all in a tricky position.
Lucky for me, I had actually chosen to go over the physical stuff on Saturday just in case and the physical question happened to be the part I had gone over which was a big win! Because of this, I do think the exam went better than I thought it was going to and I'm pretty pleased with how they have all been so far, hopefully it will stay like that.
Once again I have a day off tomorrow so spent the afternoon going to the gym and doing a little bit of revision in the college graveyard (which is our college garden as the library is out church, its not an actually like used graveyard) but nothing serious.
A very friendly little robin that came to join me when studying in the Teddy Hall garden. In front of me is the church which is home to our college library.
22nd May: Natural Resources
This paper actually went great for me and I think has been my best one so far. It was all essay style questions which is what I enjoy doing (zero maths involved) and on topics that I had done revision and had case studies memorised for. The paper was actually pretty predictable and had questions that had been asked in previous years, very nice of the examiners, so the general consensus was that it went well for most people.
I now have my last two exams tomorrow and the day after. Despite this, I made the decision to spend my evening at cheerleading cuppers (the annual intercollege competition). Was that a productive idea? No. But I had a lot of fun and the social interaction as well as exercise was just what I needed. I find it really hard to go straight to the library after an exam and stay concentrated so I had a pretty miserable afternoon trying to stuff plate tectonics knowledge into my brain and was feeling pretty mentally drained. Going to cheer perked me right up again and I even got some flash cards done afterwards.
23rd May: Plate Tectonics
This paper was maybe not my finest work. At this point in exams my brain is so mushy and I really don't think I had the capacity to keep any more information in my brain than I had. Unfortunately, the questions that were asked didn't really correlate to the information that chose to stick around in my brain so I did have to waffle my way through them. I'm confident there is some scientific knowledge in there to at least scrape me a 2:1 and given the rets of my exams have gone ok I doesn't matter too much that this one didn't.
This afternoon I'm going to try my best to cram all my knowledge of the climate course into my brain and then head to gymnastics. I have still been going to gymnastics sessions even when they finish at 10pm and I have an exam the next day. As I mentioned before, I find getting to chat to my friends and do some exercise is a lot more beneficial to me than sitting in the library procrastinating. I do however, chose not to tumble the day before an exam. I have a bit of a track record of injuring myself when tumbling and I don't want to end up in A&E the night before an exam so my session tonight will be more of a chat and basics session that doing any big flips.
24th May: Climate Dynamics
Last exam done!!! Was this a good exam for me? Definitely not. But I tried my best. The questions were just not very nice and my brain is just so over it. I think if I had had this exam in the middle I would be a bit more upset about how it went but because exams are now all over I'm honestly more excited about that than I am bothered this exam didn't go very well!
Me outside exams schools just after finishing my last exams with soem lovely flowers coutesy oif my lovely friends.
Coming out of exams schools I was greeted by my friends with flowers and I am now free to relax for the rest of term (mostly). Overall I feel my exams went ok, probably could have been better but definitely could have been worse. We have been told we will get the results in two weeks time which is a pretty rapid turn around from department so I guess I'll know soon how they went. Until then I plan to spend my time lying in the sun in uni parks, having bbqs at friends houses, and doing other summery things. I can't wait!
Comentários