This past Thursday I had a test for both of my classes. Since I knew that my Financial Accounting class was going to be over a lot of material (6 chapters!), I decided to get started studying early. Friday night (two Fridays ago, now), I hunkered down at my desk and started working on the homework for the class that had been suggested but not assigned. I figured, what better way to study for an exam than to go over the problems from each chapter that the teacher thinks we should know how to do, and make sure I know how to do them.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never studied so hard in my life. Once I started Friday night, I basically didn’t stop until the day of tests.
Studying like WOAH
Since blogs are (mostly) for the writer anyway, I’m going to record the craziness of my schedule last week, for posterity, if nothing else.
Friday night: I started with listening to the recording of a class I had missed a few weeks ago. I wanted to make sure I had all the notes before I started studying.
Saturday: I woke up around 8 am, puttered around the house doing chore-type things for an hour or so, and then buckled down. I spent most of Saturday studying just Chapter 7 and doing the homework. I was feeling a little stressed out at the end of the day, because I knew that there were five more chapters to go, studying wise. I think I went to bed at midnight-thirty.
Sunday: I got up at 7:30 (I thought it was 6:30 and was really excited, until I remembered that we had “sprung forward.” Stupid daylight savings time.) and got right to work. I finished studying Chapter 8 by lunch, but Chapter 10 took me most of the rest of the night.
Despite the fact that I knew I had to get up for work the next morning, when I got done with Chapter 10 at 8:45 pm and decided to start on Chapter 11 (after taking a short break to talk to my husband, who’s out of town on business).
Monday:I did some Chapter 11 studying during lunch at work, and then the rest when I got home after running some errands (despite my hectic study schedule, I needed groceries, or I would go hungry during the rest of the week).
I finished with Chapter 11 around 9:30 and started right in on Chapter 12. Fortunately, Chapter 12 was a smaller chapter, from which we only needed to know a few concepts, so I was able to finish my studying for Chapter 12 on Monday.
Tuesday: Since I was done with Chapter 12, and we hadn’t yet gone over Chapter 18 because there had been no class the previous Thursday, I decided to listen to the lecture I missed from my Managerial Accounting class during lunch.
When I got home after my Financial Accounting class, I listened to the rest of that missed Managerial class and then I went to bed. I knew I should have stayed up and studying some of Chapter 18, but I was so tired, and I felt the onset of a cold. I didn’t want to get sick the week of my two tests, so I decided to try to do a little pre-emptive sleeping.
Wednesday: I started the day at work off strong, planning to do some studying of Chapter 18 during lunch, and then the rest when I got home that night. However, around 11 am, I started really feeling my pending illness (my sleeping the night before hadn’t helped as much as I would have liked), and so I told my supervisor that I needed to go home.
I napped on the bus home, which made me feel a little better, so I decided to get some studying done on Chapter 18 if I could. I made it through to dinner time with only a brief study break in the middle, but then my brain and body gave out on me, and I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up and decided to have some tea and watch some mindless TV to get myself back into the studying mood. It worked well enough, and I was able to review the flashcards I had made for both my classes for about an hour each before bed.
Thursday: TEST DAY I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck, but I knew I had to pull myself together if I was going to be able to sit for my tests. I took some DayQuil, started to feel a bit better, and focused on reviewing the test material for my Managerial Accounting class, which I hadn’t really had time to look at until then (other than the flashcards I’d made).
I made it through the first test (barely) although that was less a function of the fact that I was feeling a little under the weather and more a function of the fact that the test was freaking HARD (17 pages; in 1 hour and 15 minutes. And they weren’t simple questions). More on that after we get our tests back this evening.
I wasn’t originally planning to go the second test since I had received permission from the teacher to take it the following Tuesday, but I was already downtown, and as ready as I was going to be to take it, so I thought, ‘What the heck,’ and went to class. The second test actually went much better than the first, and my DayQuil didn’t even start to wear off until half-way through my bus ride home, which was a blessing.
My weekend, after all that
Friday I spent sleeping. I think I got up three times. It was glorious.
When I woke up Saturday morning, I felt (almost) like a real person again, but to play it safe I spent the day puttering around the house, not thinking too hard.
By Sunday I was fully recovered, and even did a little reading of the next chapter (13) for Financial Accounting.
Three tests down…
Last Thursday’s tests mark three tests down (two for Financial Accounting and one for Managerial Accounting) and four to go (two for Financial, two for Managerial). We may have a discussion with our Financial Accounting instructor about the pace with which we’re moving through the material relative to how much he expects us to know, and how complicated his tests are. We’ll see how that goes.
