Finish by the midterms

In this post, I’m going to try to convince students to follow a simple principle for success:

Aim to have completed your semester by the midterms

What this means

It means anything in your power to control – readings, assignments, papers, cheat sheets, exam prep – you have completed by the midterms.

It won’t be possible to control everything by the midterms – you can’t take the test early and some teachers will assign a good amount of work later in the term, or not tell you the instructions right away.

Do your best; do ask the teacher for more details. But if the teacher isn’t helping, you control what you can control.

In some classes, there will be little that you can “control” by the midterms. In others, the teacher will give you everything right at the beginning.

Your goal either way is to do as much as you can.

Who this is for

Any student doing coursework (high school, college, grad studies). This is based on my experience as a PhD student and a few years of teaching.

Why this is possible

You might be wondering how I can be so sure that it’s possible to complete the bulk of schoolwork by the midterms. The reason is quite simple:

This is how 99.9% of students already study

The only shift is that, instead of doing most of the work near the end of the semester, I’m saying students should do most of the work at the beginning.

Don’t believe me? I have been systematically showing my students this for many semesters now: they usually waste a bunch of time and effort and also don’t try hard enough for the first two-thirds of the class.

Most students do the vast majority of the coursework in the last third of the semester.

They might be doing things that look like work beforehand, they’re often wasting a disproportionate amount of their time. But in terms of work that actually counts for the class, most of it is done near the end.

In the last third of the class, because they’ve fallen behind, they start asking questions and putting in focused, stressful work until the end of the semester.

My advice is to flip what most students do: rather than being first inefficient/lazy, then industrious, first be industrious, then leisurely.

Put in the same effort, just do it earlier.

Benefits

Now that we’ve established that it’s even possible – in fact, that everyone is doing it – let’s look at the benefits. Strap in, the number of benefits is enormous.

1. You’re ahead of schedule

Because you’re working hard right from the beginning, you are prepared if a class is more work than expected. You are always ahead of your classmates, never behind. It helps say no to extra work shifts or social engagements, and it gives you a clear metric by a third of the way through the semester if you’ve taken on too much.

Plus, the latter part of the semester can be spent perfecting work.

2. It’s harder to “procrastinate”

You might be saying, I can’t start, I don’t know how. I procrastinate etc. You won’t know anything more about how to start later in the semester than you do right now. So at least this encourages an urgency to seek help or try something different. More tips on this below.

For now, I’ll just say it’s harder to procrastinate using this framework because it gives a clear yet flexible goal. Finishing early requires dedicating quite a bit of time to studying right at the beginning of the semester – usually about two hours of studying for each hour of class time. And that time can be filled with anything that gets one ahead: reading ahead, making exam review guides, finding a topic for a paper, or other assignments.

Everyone knows it’s good to “get a head start on one’s semester” but my framework gives a clear and measurable objective, with a desirable reward for doing so: getting to relax while everyone else is grinding.

3. You and your teachers are less tired

We have our best energy at the beginning. For most students, this opportunity is wasted. Most students do the schoolwork when they’re already tired, which is far less efficient. That encourages, rather than discouraging, procrastination.

Students should work furiously right at the beginning when they have energy, and when your teachers have the most enthusiasm for helping.

4. Communicate – when your teachers have time & energy

At the beginning of the semester, teachers spend their office hours listening to the crickets. When the midterms roll around, students suddenly have a lot of questions.

Therefore, students using this framework will see their teachers when there is little competition from other students and when those teachers have the most energy and enthusiasm to help: at the beginning of the semester.

5. It’s impressive

Students who adopt this ambitious goal of finishing by mid-semester will impress their teachers – who are their graders and potential employers (hiring you in their lab, writing recommendation letters, thinking of you when opportunities arise, etc.). The same is true in the workplace: people will be impressed that by people who work and think far in advance. Students like this stand out in a great way. For instance:

• You will show up at the teacher’s first office hours wanting to discuss your topic for a paper that is due in four months.
• You will be sending them potential sources by the second week
• You will be sending reading notes to see if you properly understood readings happening in over a month.

More on this below.

A small minority of teachers may react badly to what you’re trying to do. However, by working ahead, being organized, and asking for guidance, you will impress more people than not. More importantly, you will impress the people worth impressing.

6. Teachers will set their curve to your level

Imagine a teacher gets a test back and about half the class, including you, got question 6 wrong. But the teacher remembers that you were in their office over a month ago asking questions about the material that question 6 covers (more on this in a moment).

They’ll remember how serious you take the class and therefore, rather than blaming you for getting that question wrong, they are more likely to blame themselves: “maybe I didn’t teach it well; maybe the question was unfair, etc.”

This is what you want.

They are then more likely to discard question 6, or make it a bonus question, or just correct your answer to the right one.

In other words, you want the teacher to assume that because you got question 7 right, that the question was fair; and because you got question 6 wrong, the question was unfair.

You want the teacher to grade the test assuming that you’re an A student. That is what will give you an even better chance of being an A student – not because of your performance, but because of impressing and building trust with the teacher.

7. Class is your practice exam

You might be thinking that reading ahead sounds like a lot of work. After all, if one is doing readings so far in advance, it’s hard to know what to read for. The teacher will just explain this material later, allowing you to skim the readings. So many students think it’s more efficient to do the readings after the lecture.

However, the opposite is the case.

Setting aside for now the research showing that reading first is better for retention, there’s another reason that my advice is to read for comprehension and use the lecture as a practice test.

If you read first, you don’t need to study later.

Let me explain.

During the lecture, if you’ve read in advance, you already have some familiarity with the concepts. Therefore, you are focused on either testing your knowledge (e.g. the teacher asks “does anyone know what a normal curve is?”).

Whether you speak in class or not, you will find out whether you know or not. Either way, you are likely to be one of the few to already know the answer, because you’ll have come to class prepared, which again is impressive and will cause the teacher to grade assuming you deserve an A.

If you don’t know the answer, you can adjust your study strategy and either way, note down that you need to study that concept for the actual test. This makes your studying far more efficient and focused.

You are using the teacher’s prompts as opportunities to test your knowledge, and moreover, as hints about what’s on the test. Therefore, your notes are a lot more focused on the hints the teacher is dropping about what’s important, than about the content itself.

Try it both ways. You will find that when you don’t understand the material already, in class you need to focus 99% of your attention on understanding, and can’t focus on gathering intel about the test. Also, because you’re prepared, you can ask the questions you need and set the agenda of the class to serve you, rather than being confused and lost, and losing that opportunity. Otherwise, you have to make up that learning on your own later.

Whereas, if you come prepared, you will know by the end of the lecture whether you are ready for the test, and you’ll know exactly what you need to study and what you don’t need to study.

That way, you don’t waste any time.

Imagine you’re taking a stats class: you’ve already read about normal curves, even if you don’t entirely understand it. The teacher presents a few things, and whether you speak in class or not, you’ll understand far more than most of your colleagues. If you speak, the teacher will notice that you are better prepared than 99% of your colleagues (because you already did the reading into the next chapter as well).

The teacher then says “there are three things to know about normal curves…”

Hint, hint, these three things are on the test. So rather than trying to both understand stats and prepare for the test, you already have some grasp of the material and can focus on what will be on the test.

Students who treat class like a practice exam have a massive advantage.

8. You influence the exam questions

As we’ll see in a moment, students following my advice will do the readings many weeks in advance. And since they’re, for instance, doing readings due in three weeks for a quiz that’s in five weeks, they need to take notes. They’ll review for the quiz but the bulk of the studying will be done weeks in advance.

For this reason, the student needs to consult with the teacher about whether those notes are adequate (more about this soon). Because often the teacher hasn’t presented this material in class yet. So the student has no way of knowing what’s important in that material or not.

Not only is the teacher jawdroppingly impressed by a student who is asking so far in advance if their study notes are adequate, keep in mind that the quiz has likely not even been written yet. And so the teacher will either tell you what you should have noted (hint, hint, it’s on the quiz) or when drawing up the quiz, will design the quiz around your conversation, or both. Advantage you.

9. You’ll get better at doing this with practice

Practice makes perfect.

Learning to work in advance is a great life skill.

10. The Bricklayer and the Architect

Students are doing work like bricklayers, laying down stone by stone. But the ultimate result needs to look like what the teacher, the architect, has in mind. Like a bricklayer, students shouldn’t do too much work without having some way of knowing if it’s what the teacher, the class’ architect, wants.

The most effective way to work is to collaborate. Do a small amount of work and then you ask the teacher or some other expert “is this what you had in mind?” Rinse and repeat until you are nearly certain to have a mutual understanding before doing too much work alone. You check that the topic is good, that your notes on the readings contain what they should, that your outline makes sense, that your introduction covers everything, etc.

Asking colleagues – which is what most students do (if they ask anyone at all), because they’re afraid to look dumb – is risky business. This is the blind leading the blind.

Unless you are a mutant with alien genetic material, you cannot read your teacher’s mind (and neither can your colleagues). Teachers are not expecting you to. If you have a question, they expect you to ask. Asking is hard and it’s work, but if you do, advantage you.

Asking questions is non-negotiable in order to finish by the midterms. By wasting very little effort by validating that every block is in the right place, the work will advance extremely efficiently.

Moreover, procrastination will be avoided by asking questions.

11. Using the help available

Aiming to finish everything by the midterms encourages students to seek as much help and guidance as possible (they consult writing centres, librarians, teachers, parents, the internet, and colleagues). This is a good thing: this leads to better learning outcomes, as learning is ultimately relational and not autonomous. Moreover, the teacher – not the student – decides the grade, and so seeking as much guidance as possible is advantageous.

It feels like extra work, but their guidance is precisely what prevents you from wasting any effort at all. Ultimately, this is far more efficient: particularly for getting a good mark.

12. No time for perfectionism

Your goal is to get 100%, or as close to it in the class, as possible. However, if the goal is to finish by the midterms, the student does not have time to be a perfectionist. The way most students operate is they put off making decisions, then when deadlines loom, they make arbitrary decisions and the quality of the work suffers.

On the other hand, by aiming to finish by the midterms, a sense of urgency is there immediately, discouraging procrastination and encouraging decisiveness. Decisiveness is different from arbitrary decisions made at 3 a.m. out of exhaustion because the paper is due the next day. The goal here is to use help from librarians, teachers, other learning support staff and other resources to make the best, most efficient decisions possible.

13. Encourages planning and teaches time management

To finish by the midterms requires practicing the art of planning ahead. To finish a paper by the midterms means having, for instance, a topic validated by the teacher in week 1, at least five quality sources validated with a librarian by week 2, etc.

14. This practices the art of collaboration, not grade-grubbing

Grades are important, but they’re not the most important thing. This method teaches the most important thing: how to understand requirements, how to collaborate and ask questions, how to work efficiently, so you can co-create the best paper possible.

Students who don’t collaborate just simply grow a lot more slowly.

TLDR; Version

The advantages of attempting to finish by the midterms are as follows:

• Encourages collaboration, receiving help, validation, efficiency, planning, getting 100% in the class
• Discourages procrastination, wasted effort, perfectionism
• You impress teachers
  • Don’t worry about students judging you: just say you’re working now so you can relax in the 2nd half of the semester
• Because you impress teachers, you set the curve, you set the agenda of class discussion, and you may even determine the test questions
• You’re ahead, not behind
• You’re grinding when you’re fresh, not when you’re already tired and fed up
• This method is less effort overall
• In class, you listen for what’s on the test, not for comprehension
  • Because class is your test, you need to study less
  • Because you validate your notes and study guides with teachers or other experts, you know you’ve studied the right things

When spring hits, you’re sitting in a park reading a book for pleasure, while all your colleagues have locked themselves in the library. Yet you’ve done better work than them.

Image credit: Mathias Arlund on Unsplash