You're struggling to get through today's lesson, or even stay awake for that matter, as your math teacher stresses the fact that you have a big unit test at the end of the week. The classroom starts exploding with all sorts of emotions. One kid is having a mental breakdown, while another calculates how every possible score on this test will affect his average. Your teacher somehow manages to calm the class down and strongly recommends you to review one lesson a night for 30 minutes in order to be fully prepared, but you, like any other teenager, decide to not take that advice. Why study for a week when you can just cram it in the night before. You think reasonably.
After a mind-boggling school day, extracurriculars, and dinner, it is 7:30 PM when you begin to dread the next few hours of your life. You (surprisingly) do all your homework after binge watching an entire show, which means that you have plenty of time to complete tonight’s review. Perfect! You think sarcastically.
As you begin to take your math textbook and packets out of your backpack, you hear a ding. A text from your friend pops up on your screen, so you have no option but to click on it and respond. What could possibly be more important…definitely not studying for math, right? Wrong. Before you know it, you are in an intense and deep five hour conversation with your pal, with math nowhere near your mind. After your conversation, you stare at your textbook as you start passing out on your desk.
Little did you know that the next night, the same thing would happen. This time, the conversation even gets boring to a certain point, yet you don’t do anything to end it. You are that desperate to do anything else besides math… yikes. What could you be doing instead? Anything else - just not studying for math, that's tomorrow's problem. It’s okay though, you still have two more days to review, right?
On Wednesday, you receive a packet highlighting all of the topics that are going to be on the test. You turn to the first page of the packet and start to attempt the problems with no clue on how to actually solve them. You mindlessly stare at the ceiling, the sky, the smartboard…
everything except for the packet right in front of you, since if you don’t look at it, it does not exist.
After wasting the period doodling all over your packet while everyone around seems to have completed the assignment, you start to get a little stressed. However, you decide to not let this get in your head and make a plan for the next two days: I will take one hour studying tonight, one hour studying tomorrow night, and I’ll surely ace this test. I actually have so much time (2 days = 8 hours each), now that I think about it.
That night, you decide that tomorrow is the day that you’re going to study, your reasoning being that you’ll be able to retain all the information in a 3 hour cram as opposed to two nights and you are tired. I am not going to be tired tomorrow night so I’ll study then. You promise yourself. You are torn for some reason, but decide to sleep early that night anyway.
On Thursday, you are determined to study and be productive, or at least you want to think you are. In class, you take out all your notes from your bulky binder and start rereading them, one by one. You are so invested that before you know it, the bell rings and you haven’t even completed one question on the review sheet. The teacher announces that there is extra help tomorrow morning as you sigh in relief. You have a long day of studying ahead of you!
It’s 8:30 PM. You copy the teacher’s work and try to piece the reasoning behind the unnecessary numbers (in your mind). How does one get an answer from the question being presented? You’ll never know… well you have to know for tomorrow. You look over your notes again and convince yourself that you understand the rest of the material after two cups of coffee (and ten napkins drenched in tears). After “finishing the review sheet”, it’s almost midnight. You start yawning, and decide that it’s ready for a good night’s sleep since that will definitely help you perform better on the test.
The next morning, you rush to extra help and see that a bunch of other students are already there. You ask the teacher for additional review, so she gives you some practice on DeltaMath. The first question pops up and you are more confused than you have ever been before. What the hell is this? We didn’t learn this!!! You start solving, and type your answer into the answer bar. The dreaded words “this answer is not correct please try again” pop up. OH NO! You then “rethink” the problem and type your final answer in, only to see a big X marked in red. You think that this is just a hard question, the questions on the test aren’t going to be this difficult. The next answer you submit is also incorrect. So is the one after that, and so on.
Oh God. You pray your cramming the night before will pay off as you dreadfully walk out of the classroom. Luckily you have lunch right before math!
The day seems to be moving at a rapid pace, WAY quicker than usual. After each bell rings, you get a gut-wrenching feeling as the math test is slowly upcoming. Before you know it it is lunch time! Yay! One more period to cram! You quickly gulp down your lunch as you start to take out your study material. You read through it all until you have “memorized” every single piece of information.. You have exactly one minute to get to class. You arrive to class, and the tests have already been passed out. You take a deep breath and race to the finish line.
The test goes by in the blink of an eye. Your last minute studying definitely paid off, but was it enough? You promise yourself the same thing after every test, I will prepare better next time and use my class time wisely. You know you won’t, but it's nice to think that you’ll change. Now only one thing left to do… wait… and compare answers with friends!