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If you’ve just gotten your midterms back, perhaps you’re not too happy with your performance on some of them. Many people at Harvard are in fact disappointed with at least one midterm grade (or two). Sometimes, the midterms just don’t test what you thought you should know. Other times, you just didn’t attend lecture. Then there are those times, when the midterms cause mass damage to an entire class’s morale.
Regardless, it’s useful to sit back, relax and reflect a little, now that the crunch period is over.
Whether you want to pull up your grades or keep them strong, taking a few minutes to figure out what the hell your courses want from you will, maybe, save your arse in the long run.
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Of particular relevance is how to survive midterms. Those nasty things that generally happen 2-3 times a semester, despite their name-sake. Whether you’ve survived? your first set or are anticipating midterms next week, this post is relevant for you.
Midterms generally count from 20-40% of your grades in whole, and while that is a lot, the bulk of your grades are actually coming in after the “midpoint” of the semester. (Finals and final papers are worth a ton, and you still have all those response papers / psets.)
So, I’ve just survived my hellish batch of 3 midterms in 2 days (why I haven’t posted in a while). This post will touch on the strategies you can use to make your studying more efficient.
(A post on surviving post-midterms will be coming up soon). Read more…
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UHS
My apologies for the silence these past two weeks, that’s what being sick for the better part of a month is like.
I always get really really sick for a ridiculously long time each semester. Granted, it usually ends up being the end of the semester when my body is about to crash from the mental stress of finals.
Because of my numerous encounters with the common cold and the flu, I feel like I’m particularly knowledgeable about the ways to deal with these sicknesses.
Inside, you’ll learn more about the quirks and tricks of keeping healthy at school, ways of minimizing contagion and other wondrous things.
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I remember I would get side whacked by this interview question, “So why did you choose Harvard?” By golly, why did I choose Harvard? I’d fumble and talk about something or other involving academics, nothing particularly compelling.
As I’ve gotten older and perhaps slightly wiser, I realized what they were really asking was, “What is your story?” Stories are funny. If you’ve ever read The Things They Carried, you learned that half of a story are the narrative choices. Other times, you need to fudge things in order to keep the story “real” to its meaning.
No, I’m not telling you to lie.
But, when someone wants to open up your skull and swim around and then make a judgment on your person, a good story about how you got where you are and where you’re going is the key to making a lasting impression and forming a connection.
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Sorry everyone, for my more irregular posting. A lot of beginning of the year things have been popping up. I should be back on schedule with Sunday and Wednesday posting next week, most likely starting on Wednesday.
BTW, if you missed the Economics Panel, shame on you. That was my spice for the week.
Now, the piece of advice that Faust should’ve added was: for those students still at Harvard, take a language class and study abroad.
For better (or worse), ibanking is dead in the way we once knew it. Lehman Brothers ain’t coming back three or four times this semester tossing magnetic clips and shiny brochures at eager undergraduates and touting their numerous job opportunities.
The seniors this year will be pouting, missing out on the chance to sell their lives for a bazillion bucks a year. (Perhaps it’s too late for them to change their ways.) But, the juniors, sophomores and freshmen should take this as a sign of what will most likely be a turning point for the better when it comes to selecting a career.
If you have no idea what ibanking is, bless your soul. And for those who do know of it, this is why the death of 50% of the e-recruiting jobs is good for you.
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The great thing about Harvard is that tons of events, panels, speeches, lectures, conferences, dances, performances, plays, concerts etc. etc. go on each week. The pulse of activities on campus is crazy, but it seems like, a lot of people get caught up with their own extra curriculars and classes that they don’t get to enjoy the vivacious intellectual life on campus.
One thing I started doing last spring was to spice up each week with a random, quirky event. I went to the IOP and saw Elizabeth Edwards, learned about for-profit micro finance from the founder of a firm, and so on. Just this past week, I saw Brian Greene (astrophysicist extraordinaire) and plan to see Neal Stephenson (science fiction master mind who foresaw Second Life in 1992) this very weekend.
If you give yourself leeway in your schedule, you’ll be able to enjoy awesome events that Harvard has simply because its Harvard and end up loving your experience as an undergraduate more.
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Harvard’s great because it’s sort of like a bubbling, frothing melting pot of ideas, youth and excitement. If you leave no room in your schedule to allow for what my pottery teacher called “happy accidents,” you will be missing out on a lot of cool opportunities.
Happy accidents are sparks of ideas or insight that can happen at dinner, talking to a friend, in lecture — those moments when you go, a ha! what a great idea! The trick is to make those ideas a reality. If you don’t have time in your schedule, you might be letting go a valuable opportunity.
Keep your schedule leaner because chances are, you’ll come across a “happy accident” that could blossom into an amazing entrepreneurial opportunity.
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