University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

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Studying 29 Marshall Clark

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Cram session: good grades the hard way By Marc Duchin ll took me a pot of coffee and a half a pack of cigarettes to get through my first midterm cram session. I began studying around 7 p.m. and finished up around 5 a.m. — a complete wreck. For the first hour of studying. I was comfortably sitting at my desk, reading, underlining. supping some coffee. But within the next few hours. I slowly changed into an alter ego — a pathetic, panic-stricken, frantic psychopath. 1 tried to study a week before the exam, but it just didn’t work. There was always something more immediate that had to be done. I told myself I worked best under pressure and blocked the test out of my mind. It worked for me until midnight, the night before the exam. That's when my nervous breakdown set in. I was reading along, concentrating on the material, when I made the drastic mistake of stopping to check how much more I needed to study. I counted the page numbers, added up my notes, and I foil increasingly nauseous. My notes seemed to be stacked up to the ceiling, and I felt like I was trying to move a building. 1 reached for a cigarette, took a long drag and tried to continue my concentration where I left off in the text book. However, it was never the same. All of a sudden, my reading speed decreased about 50 percent. My eyes wandered back and forth from my book to my reflection in my coffee mug. Five minutes went by be- fore I realized 1 had been staring at the same sentence. The chair felt like a rock, and I began to pace. After a couple strolls around the room. I felt a little calmer and went back to my desk. Most of my concentration returned, and for the next hour. 1 moved steadily from page to page. Around three in the morning, some bizarre thoughts were coming in. I was doing an equation when suddenly 1 thought about Snuggles, the fabric softener bear. Images of Snuggles drifting down in to pile of laundry cheerfully saying. Hi. it's me. Snuggles! played over and over in my brain. 1 rubbed my eyes, massaged my temples, pulled my hair, but I couldn't get Snuggles out of my head. At this point. I was certain I would fail my exam and began to shout out every piece of foul language I could think of about my professor. When I finished my recital of four letter words. I started thinking about taking a vacation. Once my winter vacation was organized. I folt a little more relaxed and decided to resume studying. When the last chapter was done. I dragged myself to the bathroom to brush my teeth before going to bed. I-ooking in the mirror was a disgusting experience. It reminded me of the remake of The Fly. I slept for a couple hours, got up. drank some more coffoc. took the test, in a very shaky frame of mind, and returned homel sleep. A week passed, and I. normal agai checked for my exam grade posted outsjj the classroom. I scanned down the rows of social secu numbers to find my familiar code. 1 got an I stared at my computer-generated for about a minute trying to get some satisfaction from it. After all. I went thr hell to get that A. I was on top of the cl distribution. I should have felt great. It was a letdown. Looking at my score. I v content and relieved, but I didn't feel gw Was I crazy? I thought back on the exam and could oj remember fragments of my answers. All I hi to show for my hardship was a score. But what the hell, that's all I needed fori class. It made the professor happy. What di care? Perhaps I felt cheated. My father once ti me that college is the last opportunity to| everything you always wanted to knj spoon-fed to you. Maybe I lost the hunger to learn. Mayb was content on only achieving what wase peeled of me. Maybe that's why 1 went a lit] crazy the night before my exam. Marc Duchin is the News Editor for Thef News. 28 Studying

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Drinking, long a pari of campus life, came under greater scrutiny, for legal, social, and health reasons. More than 100 Carnegie-Mellon University students were arrested by authorities after a raid on two CMU fraternities. Yet students continued to use fake IDs to get liquor, and to smuggle it into the dorms. One 20-year-old female student at Pitt said, It’s something to do on the weekends. When you go out on the weekends, you drink, in some cases, because of the frustrations of classes and stress.” (Rich Cholodofsky for the Pitt News.) At right, two students studying at Hillman Library. But in addition to being a place to study, Hillman joined the ”0” as a popular campus meeting spot, especially the ground floor. The ground floor is really social,” said Allan Bell. “The higher up (in the building), the more studying (there is.)” One student said that during finals week the library replaced the bars for socializing because the library was better lit. You can see the people!” (Keri D. Smith for The Pitt News). M.' 30 Library