When I was in high school, I always thought that somehow squeezing the last drop of studying in right before taking a test would be helpful, and you would always see me with a book or notes in my hand right before a test (there were no smartphones back then), either reading while walking in the hall (thus further solidifying my nerd status) or busily scanning pages at my desk before the exams were handed out, hoping to gobble up the last morsel of information that might somehow give me an advantage on the test. In law school there were still others like me who did that, but much less due to the open book nature of the test and theoretical nature of the exams, where it was more about analyzing the problems and applying one's knowledge, not just regurgitating some memorized information or knowing as many terms as possible. That's when I started thinking, maybe last minute cramming isn't so great after all?
Nowadays, as a 31-year-old computer science student, my philosophy on last minute cramming has transformed. The morning of the test should be about consolidating one's knowledge into summary form, making sure one sees the big picture and is able to master the knowledge well enough to gather all the facts and organize them in one's mind, ready to be applied to any question that comes up, not just as a temporary stopgap. What those last minutes of studying might do is actually overemphasize one area of the test that may or may not be on the test, and get one's thoughts mixed up and confused.
The night before the test, actually, in my opinion, is the one where you have to get the most sleep, not as the proverb indicates, cram everything into one's mind in one night. Testing, like an athletic competition, involves some performance, too, and the mind needs to be fresh and clear to be able to bend a little depending on what questions are thrown up. I find that I am able to spot "tricky" questions and traps easier with a fresh brain, so I try (sometimes in vain) to get 8 hours of sleep the night before. The best example of this was taking the LSAT in law school, where I was all set to take the test the night before, there's really nothing to memorize, it's all just being able to perform and get through the questions quickly on exam day, but my roommates had a big party on Friday night before the Saturday morning test and I didn't do as well as I hoped, which was the difference between USC Law School or a Top 14 law school (and probably a few $10,000 of scholarship money!). Urg.
This next test I'm taking is not as high stake, but it's no joke (장난아니야! in Korean) and I'd like to able to do well on my first computer science test and get the degree off to a good start, or at least have it be a gauge of whether I should stay in the program or not. Like the LSAT, I don't think last-minute cramming will do as much, it's more of reading a code and knowing what kind of mistakes were made and what violations of the code rules (called logic errors in computer-ese) and being able to correct them, or know what weird unexpected result they produce if output.
MJ and I are like college students, both having classes in different majors. MJ's method of last-minute cramming is to have me drive her to class while reading notes in the passenger seat for about the 20-minute drive down the I-10 West to Santa Monica College. She claims there were instant results cuz she got a good grade on her first exam, but then again her classes are more about rote memorization. So different strokes for different folks!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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