Midterm Madness

Posted March 25, 2013 by Sarah Barton

Last week I had my first ever GSLIS midterm. It was open note, so beforehand I spent a few hours going through my notes and the slides from class to create a four-page cheat sheet of sorts. Compiling everything into one document like that works wonders for reviewing how much I have actually learned, and it was refreshing to have a succinct four-page final product rather than dozens of pages of printed slides that I hadn’t looked at since the class in which they were presented. I felt pretty good going into the exam.

I felt pretty good upon leaving the exam, too. My cheat sheet came through for a few nit-picky details and definitions that I would have not so eloquently remembered on my own, and the time that I spent making it was definitely well spent. All things considered, it was pretty painless.

But enough about the midterm – where is the madness? The madness is not directly related to the exam; rather, it’s a reflection on how completely crazy it is that this semester is already halfway done. It may be because I am currently only taking two courses (one of which is half-online), but still, this semester is absolutely blowing by.

While that is fantastic, it also means that I need to start thinking about what I am going to do this summer. My internship is slated to end in May (although there is a chance it could continue), and I will still have my part-time job, but I am worried that I won’t have enough to do this summer. This will be my last summer as a student (last year I capitalized and I took the summer off from everything), and I’m finding myself eager to spend it doing career-oriented things. The first step will be figuring out exactly what those things are.

Without the midterm exam, I likely would not have realized that the semester is mostly behind me, and I would not have started thinking about my plans for the summer. So thank you, midterm exam, for helping me get my life in order. (Being thankful for an exam…talk about midterm madness!)