Exams Over.

This is the kind of post I try to avoid -- quotidian and biographical. But I am done with my exams, and that deserves mention, even if I don't have anything interesting to mention about it.

The English exam system's one merit is that it really does force you to review everything carefully. The time constraints are such that you must at least be familiar with the questions that you're asked if you're going to finish the requisite number. There is no time for slack-jawed thinking when you have to write the whole time, so I couldn't bank on my time-tested strategy of studying as little as possible and figuring it out during the exam. This, and being told that LSE exams are the sort where you have to leave believing you got 100% correct to get graded at a 70%, made me study harder for these exams than I ever have before. Reviewing the material at the end of the semester was actually pretty rewarding. A lot of things came into focus in a broader context, and my ability to waltz through econometrics problem sets that I recall taking days to work out eight months ago leaves me thinking I may have learned something for my money.

Not that the exams were that difficult, I think. (Hopefully I won't have to eat my words when I get my results.) Most of the questions were familiar, and answering was a matter of simply reproducing answers you already knew (if you had studied). The one honorable exception was my graph theory exam, which required a little creative thought and was the only one where I failed to answer a couple sub-questions (but so did everyone). And of course, most of my courses were undergraduate-level ones, and the exams next year will be much tougher.

Anyway, three months reviewing material you've already learned was well plenty. It was getting boring. I have been unable for the last few weeks to actually stick to just studying examinable material, and now I can deviate without guilt. The summer is on!