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- So in the first semester everything went quite well with History. I was doing well with my thesis and I went to tons of classes in the afternoon. I did pretty well in my exams and finished the first semester with a good average.
- However, things took a turn in my second semester basically because my thesis deadline coincided with the first wave of History midterms. I was a little bit behind schedule so I decided that I would not go to classes that semester and would dedicate myself to the thesis and would try and see if I could have good results in my final exams without going to the lectures.
- That semester I was taking four classes with around the same level of difficulty (Classical Culture and History, Pre-Classical Culture and History, Something about archaeology and a class on history methodology). The easiest class out of the four in terms of amount of material to study was methodologies. One of these classes I particularly liked, and that was Pre-Classical Culture. One of those classes I particularly disliked, which was the class about archaeology which name I can’t remember. This is important.
- I went and finished my final exams, and this is what happened:
- I had the equivalent to an A+ in one of them. This is the class that I really liked, Pre-Classical Culture.
- I had a good grade in methodologies, which was a class that was not particularly interesting but had less materials to memorize and study.
- I had an average grade in Classical Culture, which was a class with a serious amount of information to learn.
- Finally, I actually flunked the last class, and that was archaeology.
- The interesting thing about this experiment is the following: first of all, I can see a clear relationship between the perception I had of those classes and my final results. The class that I enjoyed the most was also the one that I spent the most amount of time investigating and studying independently. I went beyond the class materials and experimented with more detailed examples and informations and I believe that was the main reason why I got that grade.
- The second interesting thing that I noticed was that my grades were in order of actual completion. So the four final exams took place in the same week. The first exam I finished was the one I had the best grade in and the last exam was the one I flunked.
- This experiment shows me two things. In terms of self-learning, you will end up favoring a class with a topic that you like the most, and that will be reflected in your grades because you will be dedicating more time and focus to that class in comparison with classes that you don’t like as much.
- Secondly, it shows me that there’s a serious difficulty in managing time when you have a big amount of evaluations in the same week. I was able to dedicate a lot of my attention to my first exam but not that much attention to the others that followed. Also, I was probably tired from all of those evaluations and that also would end up reflecting on my grade.
- Another thing that I noticed was that in almost all of my exams, the information that we were being evaluated on was basically never mentioned in the official materials in the course’s bibliography. After checking with notes from my classmates, I noticed I big discrepancy between what was being taught in lectures and what was being taught in the support materials and the assigned textbooks. That means that for us students that were studying part-time, we had a serious disadvantage over classmates who were able to go to class on a regular basis.
- Lessons that I take from my experience:
- If you can go to class, go to class. The information will always be different and you’ll benefit from that summary.
- If you have back-to-back exams or finals, schedule your study sessions in advance, but seriously. You’ll never be able to study with the same productivity as you thought you would after your brain is exhausted from those first evaluations

F T C : This video is sponsored by Skillshare.

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