I was confident that I would do decent, because I understood the material, and I had studied a lot beforehand. The midterm itself did turn out to be fairly simple but the questions were broken into parts that took up a lot of time. My issue was that I spent too much time on one section that I didn’t leave myself much time to work on the other questions and parts… I’m also a bit of a sloppy worker so I don’t know if I did everything in that one section correctly. It’s just very upsetting to me to know that I possibly failed that exam even though I was comfortable with what was on it. My homework grades in that class so far average to an 85 and they don’t have much of a weight… I’m just extremely sad, angry, and frustrated right now with myself. To anybody who has faced something similar, how did you get better with timing yourself? Is it even possible to do better at this point? The material’s only going to get harder, and I really don’t want to fail.
Many colleges have a study skills area in the counselling center.
Well, it’s good to know that you have a test-taking problem; that’s more easily fixable than straight-up not knowing the material. You can definitely do better, though how your grade will be affected really depends on the weight given to that exam in grading. I struggled with being a slow test-taker too; I think that it’s pretty common to not know what to expect on the first exam and do poorly as a result. My suggestion would be to start working on speed when you do practice problems. If your professor gives practice exams or back tests, definitely time yourself taking those.
Been there, done that. I did really poorly on one of my first college midterms because I spent too much time trying to write up a good solution that I didn’t have time to really think about other problems.
As @OnMyWay2013 said, if your class gives any practice midterms, definitely do those under timed conditions.
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Your college has some kind of study center…go to that and learn about studying and test taking strategies
Is it better to do the easiest questions first and then go back to the harder one? Figure out how much time you have for each question? -
Do you have some kind of learning disability? E.g. has one been diagnosed before? Then you may get accomodations for extra time.
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How well did other students do? They may have not done well and there may be a curve.
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Talk to your professor about suggestions on how to attack the test…you felt you knew the material just couldn’t do it fast enough.
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Practice problems so you can recognize them and do them quickly.