Technique to pass in Exam by Mr S

Below is an article read from the forum :

I had never been a hardworking student. Since I was a young student, I felt that memorising text from books was a complete waste of time - and I was never good at it.

Even though I knew I could obtain higher marks if I did it, I would rather settle for a pass. When I first entered Polytechnic in 1972, I was excited that I would be learning technical stuff, especially Electronics, which seemed high-tech enough that I would never need to memorise books again.

But, to my dismay, I found that the opposite was true. Despite being in the Electrical and Electronics Department, I found that we had to study subjects that were - to me - totally irrelevant. Worse, because nobody understood what the lecturers were talking about, everyone had to memorise the notes and regurgitate.

Sometimes the lecturers themselves did not know what they were teaching. 'OUTRIGHT BORING' Even Electronics, which was my biggest passion, was outright boring in the first two years. This was my second year in course, learning about radio and TV technology. As a result of those 'lectures', these straightforward and exciting technologies became a nightmare.

With the borrowed notes, I decided to skip the classes completely. By the time I reached my third year, there were about eight subjects. I was skipping classes for every subject except for Electronics. This was because the Electronics subject had moved on to cover Digital Electronics that, I knew, had a lot to do with computers.

It was also very logical, objective and interesting to me - no memorising required. It was about logicgates. You just needed logical thinking to understand it. On top of this, it was taught by an old but experienced lecturer. He liked to talk about his industrial experiences. He even joked about some of the absurd things he saw in school. I found it very refreshing and attended every one of his classes.

Finally, I devised a way that would significantly improve my efficiency. I reckoned that all these boring subjects would have no use in my life. Why waste my time copying them? The only reason was to pass the examinations.

Hence, I decided that I would only copy them just before the examinations. When I was copying, I was sort of 'studying' them for the examinations too. They went into my short-term memory. Immediately after the examinations, I would forget them completely. It was that efficient. In one instance, I was totally desperate. I needed to study one topic in a very boring subject whose classes I hardly attended.

This was a 'sure-to-come-out' question that I had zero clue about and I needed to answer it to get enough marks to pass. This was just an hour before the examination. Everyone was glued to his notes for last-minute studying. I could not borrow the notes to study fromanyone. I went to my best friend, KW. He was also studying hard and could not spare me his notebook. But I realised that he was not studying the topic I needed desperately.

(In) the nick of time, I came out with this crazy idea. With all the graciousness in the world, he consented. I took his book and tore it into twohalves - I returned him his half and borrowed the other half to study. The question did come out and I attempted it. I only spent half an hour studying it and passed the subject. It was a very close call.

In general, my method was that whatever I could remember from the note-copying exercise, I would write them down as the examination answers. The strategy was to err on the 'more' side. If you remember something, but are not sure if it is right, just write it down. I reckoned that you would not get penalised for providing wrong answers, but you would get marks for correct answers - it is worth the risk.

Moreover, it would make your answers longer. I guessed there would be some points associated with the length of the answers. BAD GRADES I managed to sail through most of the examinations in this way. But not with good marks. 'Cs' were common, sometimes a 'D', and occasionally an'A'. As the world has changed tremendously over the past 20 years, I am not recommending my techniques to any students today. You would need to formulate your own strategy to tailor it to the prevailing environment. I still think good old-fashioned hard work will pay off better.