Reading Mindy's journal

College is so stressful. I am now in my second year of college and I am just feeling so overwhelmed.

I failed my first exam ever last week in my first upper level divison course. And for those who know my parents you know how crazy they are about "perfect" grades. When I told my parents what I got they went blastic. It makes me wonder if I am college material.

I knew that this test would be harder then what I was used to not only because it is a upper level divison course but also because the professor is just extremely difficult. Therefore I studied my butt off for it, went to bed early the night before all of the "good test taking" skills that people always tell you.

At the moment I am taking a break from my current regime of studying just to take a little breather. WEll back to work. If anyone has any advice I am more then welcome to it. Lata.

Mindy,

You seem like a hard worker and from what i can tell you want to do well, but you shouldn't be pushing yourself to such an extent. As we all know parents want us to do well (extremely good) but there's always valid reasons for mistakes and failures. Just because you failed this one test doesn't mean you're destined to fail forever. Your only in your second year, things will change if you change your approach to them, and that's what you've done. It shows you're practical, sensible and human. This should be a wake up call in a sense, take a break, do things that make you relax but at the same time don't loose your focus.

I'm not telling you to drop your standards and that of your parents, but it is your life and a person can only take so much. I do think that if you keep going the way you're going, you're going to do much better than you think. Just take it easy and you'll do fine. Hope that helps,

>Lotus

the end is the beginning.

College is so stressful. I am now in my second year of college and I am just feeling so overwhelmed.

I failed my first exam ever last week in my first upper level divison course. And for those who know my parents you know how crazy they are about "perfect" grades.

College, as you know, is a significant jump from High School. While it can be relativly easy to get 'A's or higher, it gets much more difficult later on as college tends to focus on content of products as opposed to the superfical artistic content normally found in high school.

This is particulary important, since you are choosing some form of advanced or accellerated stream. These are much harder than normal, and failing indicates that you are placing too much of a workload on yourself (or that parents are demaning too much because a random IQ test gave 150. Generally, such parents don't understand basic concepts about difficulty.)

The acceptable standard for most students would be a 'B' or higher, which is generally around a GPA of 3.0. This is a fairly reasonable goal, where such a grade in advanced is equivalent to an 'A' (GPA 4.0) in a regular stream.

Therefore I studied my butt off for it, went to bed early the night before all of the "good test taking" skills that people always tell you.

Massive bursts of studying tend to be fairly inefficient. A slightly better method is to study intellegently by organizing your notes (easier with a computer.) As you study, you can put aside notes that you are already familiar with, so that you won't have to waste time.

Studying what you already know offhand would only lead to burnout - the primary cause of "gifted" children being disadvantaged in college/university courses, as they never really needed to study during highschool.

The "good test taking" skills courses should be providing other helpful studying methods more efficient than basic memorization - if useful information can be taken from such a course, then you might want to put it to use.