It’s finals week, and you know that means, well you do if you’re in (or were in) college! Late nights. Cramming. Textbooks. No room in the library. Nowhere to park. Calculators are missing… Oh what fun.
Finals week during college is very different from finals week in high school in the sense that you’ve only taken the class for sixteen weeks (sometimes less, sometimes more) and now you’re expected to regurgitate a semester’s worth of knowledge. In high school, while they are cumulative, the knowledge is all built off the previous class and you should have a solid foundation of knowledge. While my International Trade class is ultimately based on micro and macro principles there are new graphs, new theories, and new concepts that start day one, we didn’t spend the first half of the semester reviewing what we should already know.
Finals are different based on the classes you take, the professors that teach the classes you take, the accreditation rules at your particular university, etc, etc, etc. Basically, finals are different for literally everyone. A math major is likely going to have a short response test of their ability to problem solve, an IT major will probably have to write a short program, a business major is taking a lot of scantron type exams.
I’m an economics major so pretty much all of my exams consist of vomiting a textbook onto a scantron, and that’s literally what it feels like. For a solid couple of days I’m doing nothing but rote memorization and then reiteration. I had one exam this year that was essay response and I f*cking wanted to kill myself.
The only college in Florida (the ONLY one) that requires you take econometrics as an economics major is UNF (this is according to my Econometrics professor). Do you know why? Because Econometrics is applied calculus one and calculus two. I’ve never taken Calculus. I took math studies my senior year of high school (where the hardest thing we had to do was a chi-squared table by hand) and yes I took Business Calculus but that was nothing compared to the intensity that filled econometrics. Our final exam was for us to test and solve an economic theory that has yet to be proven. Yes, your professors will ask you to solve the impossible. Literally, economists have been trying for decades to figure out this problem, they can’t. W.T.F.
Finals, will drive you crazy. You can prepare all you want and think that you know what you’re talking about but it’s still not easy. I’m always prepared, always organized… Yesterday I drank six cups of coffee. Six. A ‘normal/okay’ amount is four. Bah.
Anyways, I apologize for the ranty/disjointed post but it’s finals week and I’m a bit overwhelmed.
Team Santana 