Finals Fall Term 2011

Katie D.

December 4, 2011 - 5:47 PM

Here we are again, at the end of yet another academic term. My final year at the University of Oregon is disappearing so fast! I have attended my last Fall Term class as a Duck.

And finals have arrived. Each ten-week term goes by so quickly, it always feels like a bit of a surprise when essay-writing and exam-studying time rolls around. And, as usual, finals season has brought cold weather with it, and the evenings settle in early over a library full of frantically cramming students.

As a grad student in the humanities, I don't have to worry about in-class tests and the kind of proficiency quizzes present in the math and science fields. My friends used to study constantly for Organic Chemistry, and were so often defeated by a single equation that was only partly memorized by exam day. I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to prove my course competency by writing self-directed final essays, which engage the course material while also pursuing deeper research in my areas of interest. Generally, I find this to be a very expressive and expansive way to "test" my overall understanding of the class. I might not remember the statistics or dates surrounding one concept or another, but I can narrow a focus on a personal passion, and then follow that interest through the framework of the course. I have written at least twenty end-of-term papers over the last couple of years, and some have turned into larger projects or research efforts since. I'd rather write an essay than take a test, no question.

By now I have a kind of rhythm to essay writing. I do research as the term progresses, with a refined resources searching through the UO library, which leads me through bibliographies and abstracts to a full bibliography by half way through the term. Then I skim through and mark up the readings, and spend some time processing my thoughts. This is the process I understand the least, I think. I sort of keep my essay topic in the back of my mind, and mull it over for several weeks. However this works, by the time I sit down to write my essay, it is usually three or four days before the due date. I write in three or four big chunks, then edit and turn it in. I don't outline, and I don't write drafts. I just plug in the research into whatever I've thought through in my processing time.

When the system is working smoothly, the whole process is relatively painless and sometimes is quite fun.

Of course, nothing feels particularly fun when it's the day before the deadline. My essays are proceeding well for this finals week, but I've still got a long way to go this weekend before I can call the end of Fall Term a done deal. I'm currently slogging through the second half of an essay on collective trauma in divided societies, and am "mulling over" the Marxist links with theories of gifting vs. purchasing as a medium of exchange. This all while carefully avoiding the thought of the stack of essays I'll be grading as a GTF later this week.

So it's going well. Finals is actually a great time of term: we're all pulling together through our individual efforts to get done with term and into winter break. We're a real community as we pour over readings and frantically chase down some obscure journal in the library. It's a time with lots of tea drinking and Facebook breaks. So this blog comes to you as "Homework avoidance technique #42: Work instead of homework."

Wish me luck! Just a few thousand words to go.