It's Finals Week: Should the Professional Side of Me Care?

As you re-read your class notes (you took some, right?) and review those textbook pages one more time (you've read them already, right?) it's easy to feel that the process of studying for and taking finals has nothing to do with what you will experience once you have your hard-earned LTU degree in hand.

Wondering about the connection between finals and the work world, we posed a question to the LTU Alumni Group on LinkedIn about whether preparing for (and taking) final exams was good training for their professional lives. Eric Tookes (BSBA '86) is currently the Director of IS Support Services at Champion Enterprises. Tookes sees "a lot of similarities between preparing for final exams and managing projects in the business world." He elaborates,

[i]n the business world, you have assigned task to deliver in a project. When
the tasks are completed, you discuss the accomplishments during project status
meetings. During these meetings you discuss things that went right and where
improvements can be made (debriefing). When studying for finals, students should
review their previous assignments, quizzes and test to identify areas of further
study and reinforce the correct answers. Throughout this process you are
reviewing the material for the exam(s).

Another piece of advice comes from Robert Goffeney (BSBA '83). Goffeney says it's not just the final exam process at the end of the semester that is good prep for the "real world" -- it's what you do from the very beginning of the semester. He writes, "the way you go about preparing for each class is a dry-run for the real world of work. If you skate through a class just memorizing what will be covered in the next session and then cram for the final, you may pass but you'll come out of the experience with nothing you can apply later."

Think about how many times you've been tempted to put off studying or reading for a class because you know that you won't be called on that day, or because you have a knack for skimming through the book and grabbing an acceptable answer at the last minute. That might earn you a passing grade in some classes, but Goffeney cautions students to think about their school life the same way they will need to think about their work life:

If you apply that same method to life in business, you'll quickly be found out
as a lightweight. Expertise is valued in the working world, and expertise
usually comes from mastering the details of an assignment, project or
discipline. In status meetings, deliverable reviews and the like, you can't
assume the conversation will stay comfortably focused only on what was
explicitly assigned (or "in the book"); and when the meeting wanders off-agenda,
as they often do, only those people who really know their stuff can find their
way back again. Folks who have been just "getting by" will be noted, and find
their opportunities limited in the future. Bottom line: master the details
early, and build your knowledge continually.

Finally, Amory Diccion (BSME '03), 6 Sigma Black Belt and an engineer at Caterpillar, Inc., also finds similarities between his experience in taking finals and his professional career. Diccion points out that, in both your academic and professional career, how you present that you have learned the information can bolster or take away from your credibility. He explains, "[i]f you develop and learn sequentially rather than in one large batch as your deadline approaches, then you will be better positioned to have an airtight case. Cramming for finals is similar to last-minute preparation in the working world...any holes in your case will be easily identified by your peers, and your credibility becomes compromised."

If you want to take to heart the hard-learned advice of those who were here at LTU before you, what should you be doing throughout the semester? Diccion tells us that he spent 2-3 hours studying for every hour of lecture. What is "studying?" It depends on the course, but it might include: doing any assigned work (including participating in online discussion boards) well before the deadline, reviewing your work before turning it in (and maybe even having a peer review it also), and creating an ongoing outline of your notes. Is yours a vocabulary-intensive course? Creating your own flashcards and quizzing a group of fellow students is an excellent idea.

Diccion finds that his studying methods are paying off in his professional life. He writes, "I document my progress on projects as new discoveries during development. When I bring forth my results for reviews to management or leadership, I am not jamming content into a rough presentation, but instead tweaking and polishing my message on my concurrently-developed content. "

Diccion sums up the advice of these three alumni well: "The final point: don't cram."