How to Study

Summarize
State in concise form, omitting examples and
details.
Trace
Follow the course or history of an occurrence,
idea, etc.

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Worry less about the specific words and more about the information.
Organize your answer to a fault and write to be understood, not 
to impress. Better to use shorter sentences, paragraphs, and 
words—and be clear and concise—than let the teacher fall into 
a clausal nightmare from which he may never emerge (and neither
will your A!).
If you don’t have the faintest clue what the question means, ask. 
If you still don’t have any idea of the answer—and I mean zilch—
leave it blank. Better to allocate more time to other parts of the 
test and do a better job on those.
Take time at the end of the test to review not only your essay
answers, but your other answers as well. Make sure all words 
and numbers are readable. Make sure you have matched the right
question to the right answer. Even make sure you didn’t miss a whole
section by turning over a page too quickly or not noticing that a 
page was missing. Make sure you can’t, simply can’t, add anything
more to any of the essay answers.
What If Time Runs Out?
While you should have carefully allocated sufficient time to complete
each essay before you started working on the first, things happen.
You may find yourself with two minutes left and one full essay to 
go. What do you do? As quickly as possible, write down every 
piece of information you think should be included in your answer, and
number each point in the order in which you would have written it.
If you then have time to reorganize your notes into a clearer outline,
do so. Many teachers will give you at least partial credit (some very
near full credit) if your outline contains all the information the answer
was supposed to. It will at least show you knew a lot about the 
subject and were capable of outlining a reasonable response.
Chapter 8
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How to Study for Tests
207

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One of the reasons you may have left yourself with insufficient time
to answer one or more questions is you knew too darned much about
the previous question(s). And you wanted to make sure the teacher
knew you knew, so you wrote…and wrote…and wrote…until you
ran out of time.
Be careful—some teachers throw in a relatively general question 
that, if you wanted to, you could write about until next Wednesday.
In that case, they aren’t testing your knowledge of the whole subject
as much as your ability to edit yourself, to organize, and summarize
the important points.