Tips #9

Posted September 25, 2001

It was my third year of graduate school. I was taking an intermediate level statistics course from the psychology department. I hadn't taken a statistics course for fifteen years, but I had taught algebra, and I knew that I had a good grounding in probability theory. The course had a lecture component and a computer lab section. The lecture tests were hard, but I managed to do about as well as the rest of the class, even though I did not spend any time working on problems or reviewing the material. I also earned most of the points on the lab assignments. The labs seemed easy. We began with a set of data, performed statistical operations, then we brought back our data the following week. Each week we learned tests to perform on the data. I just followed the steps that were given each week without really understanding what I was doing. I did not practice using the statistical program outside of the lab.

I had great excuses for not putting much effort into the course. I was busy. I was taking 15 hours, teaching two classes, doing all of the production work on a journal, and traveling each weekend to stay with my fiance. I took the course knowing that I would never do statistical research by myself. Psychology was not even my field. The bottom line was that this course was at the bottom of my priorities.

I did not know what to expect on the final exam. I stayed up late the night before the exam studying. I figured that since I had done okay throughout the course that I would get by on the final. However, when I received the final exam, I knew that I was in trouble. We were given a set of data, and we were told to perform various statistical analyses. I had not set up the data since the first day of class, and I could not remember how to get started. becasue this was a test, I could not ask anyone for help as I did during lab time.

I spent twenty minutes trying different ways to input names and scores, but I was doing something wrong. I was tired from being up all night, and I was not thinking very well. Because the data were not entered correctly, I could not perform any operations, even those few that I knew how to do. After lots of frustration, I turned in the exam, leaving most of the answers blank. It really felt awful knowing that I had just gotten an F on a final exam. I spent the next two weeks worrying about whether I passed the course; I needed at least a B- to get any credit. When I received the grades for the semester, I found out that I was lucky. I had just barely managed a B-.

I learned some valuable lessons from my experience:

1) Do not work just hard enough to get by. Aim higher than what you need, so that if you come up a little short, you won't fail.
2) Review regularly the material that you are learning. A semester is a long time, and you will forget most of what you learned during the first few weeks if you don't review.
3) Test yourself. Do not assume that you know how to do something if you have not done it on your own. Create a practice test, take the test without any help, and see how well you do. Study what you miss.
4) Give each class your best shot. Do not allow yourself to make excuses. Spend enough time thinking about the material to learn it well.
5) Ask the professor (or to other students who have taken the course) what you need to know. This is especially important on comprehensive exams.
6) Do not compare yourself to others. We sometimes think that if everyone is doing poorly that the professor will just raise everyone's grade. It does not always work that way in college.

If you are like most people, you will struggle in some classes, and you may do poorly on some tests. If you get a bad grade and you worked hard, sought help, talked to the professor, found tutors, reviewed the material regularly, found active ways to learn, tested yourself, and studied with your classmates, then you have no reason to be ashamed. Talk to your advisor to plan the best course of action. However, if you did not give a class your best effort, if you made excuses, or if you do not study seriously, then you have wasted your time and money. You will regret that loss.

I still regret that B-, not so much because it was my lowest grade in graduate school, but because I could have done so much better and learned so much more with some extra effort.