Lords of Misrule 2025 presentsExamsas sent in by one SuperNerd / UQAU

Originally, I had something very different and more complex planned to submit, but I didn’t have enough time to prepare it, as I had… exams. It was tough! However, over the past years, I’ve learned and discovered many ways to make the exam-taking experience go better, and I figured I might submit that instead.

• Stay engaged throughout the classes, or at least show up: even if many classes now post materials online, there is much value in physical, human-to-human teaching. Class is structured and multi-sensory in a way online materials aren’t. Plus, past exercises often show up again on exams, sometimes without any changes! If you pay attention, you’ll have already done them in a low-stress environment, rather than seeing them for the first time in the exam.

• Study thoroughly. In most classes, plenty of material is provided: for example, past assignments, textbooks, and the notes that you’ve hopefully been taking! The best materials are the ones your teacher provides, as they're the one giving you the exam. Don’t be fooled into not doing enough by having a long time before the exam. Time will slip past if you don’t use it—I’ve learned this the hard way. If you need to memorize many things, writing them on cue cards and quizzing yourself is quite helpful; even just writing the things down will help you remember them.

• A piece of advice you’ll consistently get is “don’t cram studying until the last minute!” While this is true, it’s not the full story. The brain has multiple systems of memory, and your perception transfers and is transformed between these stages of memory over time, with lots of information getting lost along the way. However, the storage capacity of each successive stage becomes larger. It’s kind of akin to RAM vs. hard disk on a computer. It is definitely helpful to do a bit of looking over the materials just before the exam so the information doesn’t get lost, but you must be selective in what you look at: namely, the things that are hard for you to remember otherwise. Don’t cram, have a snack!

• Your brain works not just on ideas, but on connections between ideas. Use this to your advantage for what’s harder to remember: make connections between them and the things you know and/or love. Get as silly as you want: in fact, silliness will improve memorability.

• Go to the bathroom beforehand.

• Use all the time you have for the exam. You may think “I've done all the questions; I’ll finish early to impress everyone with my mad smartz!”, but fast does not mean smart. Check your answers thoroughly as many times as you can, and I promise you’ll notice mistakes and potential improvements. I’ve prevented myself from making many dumb errors this way!

• After a certain amount of struggle on a question or section, you should move onto another. Otherwise, you’ll get stuck on it and not complete the questions you know, forfeiting some points. It’s often useful to go through and answer every easy question, then circle back for the harder ones—which you can do at the same time as checking for mistakes!

• There are often ways of confirming your answers without cheating. The wording of other questions will sometimes give you clues, like ruling out an option on a multiple-choice question. When doing math, you can use your calculator to test if your answer is the right one; modern scientific calculators, even the non-graphing ones that are mandated by many tests, are more capable than you’d think.

• Don’t be too disappointed if your results aren’t as good as you’d have liked. Fundamentally, all an exam teaches about you is how well you can respond to certain questions on a certain day, not how smart or worthy you are. Look at your mistakes, yes, but learn from them, and don’t let them stop you.