Posts Tagged ‘midterms’
These haikus might make you feel better about your time at the library
So, there I was, sitting and pondering how one-sided my relationship with the library truly is. I thought, maybe, just maybe, I could win over the love(s) of my life with a few haikus.
Rather than devoting my time to my midterms, I devoted my time to the meter that would bring me true love.
***
Always there for me
Spending our nights together
Hold me, 209
***
Too weak to hold books
Quite a deceiving façade
Study? Not in Low.
***
A playlist for your midterm “studying”
While in the midst of two papers, a midterm, and a discussion post, there’s nothing better than the perfect playlist to help you push through your stress. There are a few elements which I consider necessary for my midterm soundtrack—something calm but still upbeat, and something that can easily blend into the background of my studying. This playlist fits the bill!
Click here to listen to a Spotify version of the playlist, and read on to find out why we picked these songs:
“Seaside” — The Kooks
The top YouTube comment on this song reads “this song ends far too soon for my liking.” I agree.
“Boy with a Coin” — Iron and Wine
You can’t go wrong with some Iron and Wine. I have a soft spot for acoustic guitar during a study session, and Sam Beam gets it right. More »
Coffee and midterms, best friends for life
Today marks the start of a new month, Caffeine Awareness Month. As I’m sure most of you will agree, this hits entirely too close to home. As the weeks go by, my coffeemaker threatens more and more to leave me. Or maybe that’s just me. If you’re worried about your caffeine addiction, there’s a Caffeine Risk Test for that.
All addictions aside, go ahead and check out these fantastic articles while you drink your first (or fifth) cup of coffee:
Read this: Mehr Ansari’s writes a poignant piece about the loss of her mother and enduring grief.
Know this: On Thursday, Faculty House workers voted to authorize a strike. This decision was fueled by the impending end of workers’ contracts and health insurance on March 31.
Here’s more: It’s here, what you’ve been waiting for… It’s Columbia Spectator’s Baseball Supplement. Included inside the supplement is a season preview, interviews, and a look into past baseball seasons.
Kiera Wood / Senior Staff Photographer
Learning to escape a codependent relationship with grades
Every semester I try to take something new and interesting. You know, to broaden my horizons.
Each semester, my grades in each of these “out of my comfort zone” classes have gotten worse and worse. It’s made me panic about my life, but it’s also made me think.
I was taking an accounting class with Webster. He gave us all the slides for the semester, his lectures were clear, the homeworks were very straightforward, and you could bring a cheat sheet to the tests.
I managed to get a 10/10 on every homework. However, after missing a ton of class for the Jewish holidays, I bombed my first test. No matter, I thought, I could still do well in the class.
If I did well on the next test, which I felt confident I would, then I could still pull through with a reasonable grade. So when the next test rolled around, I studied by brains out. I walked into the test feeling like I could take on the world.
But midway through the test things started going south. My balance sheet and other calculations did not add up. In accounting, if you do one calculation wrong, the entire problem compounds on itself.
More »
A good message from Bigga
Midterms are upon us, which means it’s the time of the semester when Columbia stops feeling like my favorite place in the world, and gradually morphs into that big blurry blob of sleepless nights that has, by now, become so familiar.
The treadmill effect begins to sink in: I swear I’m running hard but the work keeps coming and I’m not getting anywhere. If, in the last few days, you’ve found yourself pondering the meaning of life five times the usual amount, I think it’s only natural.
I also think it’s healthy to think about death every once in a while, to remind ourselves that we are the age we are (in other words, yolo). Today I almost got run over by a bus in my anxious need to economize my travelling time to Butler, so I started thinking about what would happen if I died. I wondered if I’d have any legacy—some essay or special letter I wrote that would float around after I was gone and make people sad and nostalgic. More »
First world problems
The joke goes:
Illustration by Lian Plass
How many Columbia students does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Seventy-six. One to change the light bulb, fifty to lead a protest about the light bulb’s right not to be changed, and twenty-five to lead a counter-protest.
Indeed, we Columbians are often recognized (either in admiration or in derision, depending on whom you consult) as the most politically active, left-leaning student body in the Ivy League.
And there is truth to this recognition. We do have a history of political movements on our campus, the most recent of which left Low Steps decorated with student protestors on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One of the most legendary of the worldwide 1968 protests occurred on our grounds. More »
Because collective whining can be therapeutic
Go ahead, let it out. While things will soon be better (Halloween is right around the corner!), presently coffee-fueled delusions and sleepless nights make one thing clear: Midterms suck.
Salonee Bhaman, Columnist: ”Midterms” become some kind of ominious mantra around campus in October. They don’t have any real formalized beginning and end, and the entire campus seems to descend into a pool of free-floating anxiety. At any given time, someone has a midterm the next day/week/weekend, and everyone collectively has to feel put out and anxious about it long before and after their own exams pass.
Alex Collazo, Columnist:
“Close Encounters of the Academic Kind”
Roses are red
Violets are blue
My name is midterm
And I’m about to fuck you
Rega Jha, Canon Contributor: The only week of the year when it’s okay to eat Froot Loops for dinner, wear sweats in public, and walk around sporting small forests where one’s eyebrows should be. For those of us who do these things on the regular, it’s our time to shine! More »
Midterms: The Eye’s definitive survival guide
The Eye is taking the week off for midterms. But before we take our leave, we thought it important to give everyone some sage advice about how to make it through the next week and half with your sanity intact.
That frantic sense of dread is settling over campus again with the arrival of midterms. Because of Columbia’s baffling interpretation of the word “midterm,” some of have have been in the throes of exam woes for a couple weeks now, while the rest of us are awaiting their approach in terror. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t stress so much—we will all live to see finals. Here are a few tips on ways to survive your midterms without too much trauma:
Things to stockpile:
1. Peppermints from Ferris. If you save up enough of them, they will give you the sugar high you need to get through that all-nighter.
2. Paper towels: For when tissues aren’t enough to staunch the flow of late-night tears.
3. Winter clothes: Because when you finally emerge from your exile in Butler, it will be November, and it will be freezing. Don’t be caught unprepared!
Earlyterms
I want to start this post with a quick exercise. Looking at the timeline of the semester below, think about what you consider to be the middle of the term.
Are we in the middle of the term at the end of October? What about the beginning of November? I think so. The area I marked is about the size of my thumb.
Now my biology professor must have REALLY big thumbs, because I had my first midterm last week. More »