Today marks the start of midterms for the 2012-2013 school year. For sophomores, juniors, and seniors, the schedule is a new one; for freshman, it’s just the beginning of a long four year testing schedule.
Midterms are 9% of your final grade – that’s a lot of emphasis on one test. Though they don’t count for seniors’ midyear reports to colleges, they still matter for your final grades. Seniors, go study!! For those of us who haven’t taken a midterm before or are just feeling stressed, the Banner would like to offer some study tactics to help you through the the week.

1. Start early. Because midterms are usually comprehensive and cover everything you’ve learned in the first half of the year, it’s important to allow yourself enough time to get through ALL of the material. Really, you should have started at least two weeks before, but if you haven’t already there’s no time like the present to start!
2. Write things out. Even if you haven’t heard it before, it’s time to commit the phrase “writing reinforces learning” to heart. Try rewriting notes from the beginning of the year to get yourself around to remembering their contents. Note: typing does not help as you think it will. Yes, you are still going over the information, and that helps. But to get the full benefit of written study guides, make them just that – written.
3. Find your weak spot(s). Nobody is perfect. Even if you’ve had straight A’s since middle school (if you have, maybe you should be writing this and I should be reading it…), everyone has done more poorly than they’d like on a test and/or skipped over some details for the sake of time. Guess what? It won’t go away. Take a look at old work and go over either what you missed or are still confused over. Which brings me to my next point…
4. Go over old work. By now, you have a good idea of your teachers’ styles and methods for testing, and the midterm is nothing more than another test, albeit a really stressful and long one with heavy weighting. Some teachers will pull questions from old tests to use on their midterms and finals, so knowing answers to things you’ve seen before is a pretty big help.
5. Get external help. So you’ve studied on your own and you’re still lost. Or maybe you have trouble creating a schedule or just need some reinforcement. Getting help, be it from a tutor, teacher, or fellow student, is a good idea because it’ll help you see your problem in a new light. We encourage you to take advantage of the NHS tutoring service. If you go on the NHS eboard, you’ll find a tutoring form — it’s easy to fill out and NHS will match you with a tutor ASAP. Alternately, many teachers will stay after school and hold review sessions before big tests like midterms, so find out if any of yours are hosting after-hours study groups. If not, most are willing to stay after for a student who approaches them for help, so don’t be shy!
6. Put the laptop away. Sometimes it’s helpful to collaborate, but the Internet is usually more distracting than it is helpful. You might not realize how much time you’re spending online until you stop doing it. It doesn’t count as an hour of studying if it’s spent with a textbook open by your side and three Facebook chats going. Yes, you might feel tempted to get help or sympathy from friends, but typing isn’t as useful as writing down the problem and trying to work it out by hand. (See #2)
7. Compilation, not consternation. When you’re working together with a friend, keep your time productive. It might feel good to let off some steam by complaining about how your English teacher assigns far too much work and never grades or by criticizing your math teacher’s mannerisms, but this won’t help your grades at all. In fact, feeling so negatively can distract you from the task at hand; anger breeds apathy in this case. So forget your relative fondness for each teacher and give individual classes the time they deserve. Don’t complain, just focus on the facts of the class.

So good luck with your tests and hopefully this helped. The Banner will continue to post updates and tips via this site and our Twitter, so check us out when you’re taking your (obviously infrequent) study breaks the next few weeks!