- After working with hundreds of students

taking technical courses, I can say with confidence

that it's one of the biggest missed opportunities,
and that is the opportunity to look at the first evaluation
in a technical course, usually a midterm exam,
and not using it as a tool to increase your future success
in that same class.
I hear it all the time.
Students are a little frustrated with a technical course,
they've been working really hard,
and they're not feeling fully confident.
They take their first exam and they get it back,
and they haven't done as well as they want to.
And instead of looking carefully at why,
they look at their grade, they get frustrated,
and they toss their exam on the table and move on.
What this does is it really
misses the point of the first exam.
Sure, the first exam contributes to
your overall grade in the course,
and it's an important part of
the evaluative structure of the course.
But even more important than that,
the first exam is a powerful audit
of how you're approaching the course.
Whether or not your study strategies are effective,
and what you might need to do moving forward
to change your approach to achieve your goals.
As you think about the exam, I want you to think about it
in the following ways.
The first exam in a technical course, as in any course,
is a key to how you're going to be evaluated in the future.
Yes, it's true that the professor may have
explained the structure of the exams to you,
but when you get that first exam back,
you now understand exactly what kinds of questions
are being asked and what kinds of material
the professor is going to focus on.
This is extraordinarily useful moving forward.
The first exam is also a guide to help you
modify your own study habits.
It gives you a sense of what you're doing
that's really working, and what you might need to change
to better anticipate what's going to be on the exam.
The first exam is also an expression of value
from your instructor.
It's your instructor making clear to you
what they want you to know
and what they're not so worried about.
It's your instructor communicating what matters
and what matters less.
And so not taking the chance to really look closely at that
to try to understand what's being expressed by the professor
is a real mistake.
Also understand that the first exam is
a powerful audit of your approach to the course.
Not only the strategies you're using,
but also the attitude you have in lecture,
the amount of time you're spending
thinking about the readings, doing the papers,
and in general how you're thinking about the course broadly.
And finally, it's a really good hint about how to proceed.
It gives you a road map that can give you a sense
of where the road blocks are,
where you may have run into them,
and how you can avoid them in the future.
And finally, when you get your midterm exam back,
it's a really important moment think about
where the gaps might be.
What kinds of information showed up on the exam
that really took you by surprise?
What kind of problems were on the exam
that you weren't expecting,
and that you were a little shocked to see?
If you identify those, then you can fill those gaps
and make sure you're more prepared for them in the future.
So when you get back your first evaluation in a class,
I want you to do a couple of things.
First, don't just focus on what you got wrong.
Focus on what you got correct.
Focus on where your studying really paid off.
If you invested a lot of time in learning terms
and terms showed up on the exam,
keep investing that time in learning terms.
And if you really focused on word problems
and you felt very comfortable doing that type of problem,
and those problems showed up on the exam,
chances are your professor's going to continue
asking those kinds of problems,
and you're going to continue to be prepared for them.
Notice what you did that worked, and of course,
notice what you did that didn't work so well.
Think especially about activities you did
and types of studying that you engaged in
that ended up being a little bit of a waste,
and consider taking that wasted time
and reinvesting it in something that's more productive
given what you now know about how the professor
is testing your knowledge in the course.
And finally, note any gaps in your approach.
Take a look at your exam.
Were there questions that you were really surprised by?
Were there types of questions that you were shocked to see,
or that you really were under-prepared for?
If so, notice that, and make a plan for
what you can do to be more prepared in the future.
Because if that kind of question showed up on your midterm,
chances are it'll show up on your final.
And remember, it's really important to understand
that your test score is not
an expression of your intelligence.
It has nothing to do with how smart you are,
and it has less to do than you think with how much
actual time you spent studying.
I have students who tell me all the time, I spent hours,
I spent days preparing for this exam.
And my question is, I'm not so concerned about
how much time you spent, but how did you spend that time?
What kind of study strategies were you using?
What kind of review were you engaged in?
Were you working with other people
who could help test your knowledge
before the test tested you?
Think not about just the raw amount of time you spent,
but what kinds of studying you did
and the quality of that studying.
So sure, your first test score doesn't tell us
anything really about your intelligence,
it doesn't really tell us about how much raw time you spent.
What it does tell us about,
and what it's a powerful audit for,
is the quality of your studying.
If you did poorly on a first exam,
it means you need to change the way you're studying,
and if you did really well,
it means you should continue doing
exactly what you're doing.
Remember, if you want a different result,
you have to change your approach to the course.