Articles by Glenn Stok
Focusing on revealing your understanding of the material helps avoid stress with a final exam because even if you get the wrong answers, your teacher will give you credit for having studied throughout the semester.
Getting the correct answer to an exam question may not be as important as showing that you understand the curriculum.
Teachers have varying methods of assessing students’ results with exams. So let’s begin with these two crucial things your teacher is looking for from you.
Later, I’ll walk you through an actual experience I had. That example will show how I implemented these two crucial requirements and passed with an A+ even though I got the wrong answer.
Students tend to think of their mistakes as a sign of failure. As a result, they stress over it instead of handling it rationally.1
If you grasp the subject matter well enough, you can achieve better test scores even if you don’t always get the correct answers.
Keep that in mind when you study for your test. Don’t worry so much about answering complex questions correctly. If you did your homework throughout the semester, you’d know where to focus your attention.
Of course, you should try to answer questions accurately. But making an effort to show you understand the material goes a lot further.
Teachers are usually pleased to see students understand the subject matter even if they don’t get the correct answer to a quiz problem. I learned that in college, and I’ll share an example later.
It’s crucial to know what the teacher wants from you. Sometimes, your teacher might ask you to describe how you arrived at the answer. As long as you can show you understand the problem, correctly solving it might not be so important.
Make sure you know what the teacher requires by paying close attention to the exam instructions. Understanding how to answer exam questions is crucial to show the teacher you are aware of the test requirements. Your teacher might be more interested in seeing that you follow instructions.2
If you find yourself running into trouble, reread the exam question to determine if you overlooked something. That is especially helpful if you are running out of time. It can save you time working on a solution you don’t need to do.
You need to understand your teacher’s purpose for the final exam. You can do that effectively by noticing how they grade other tests throughout the semester. Then you’ll know what’s required.
Every teacher has a different plan. Kevin Gannon, a professor at Grand View University in Iowa, explained that there is no one-size-fits-all for final exams.3
Mr. Gannon went on to say that some teachers merely give final exams because that’s what they do. Others might be more interested in discovering how well they taught the class.
Once you have an idea of your teacher’s attitude toward exams, you’ll have a rational way of passing even the toughest final exams without stressing over them.
The final exam was for a physics class. The quiz had only one problem that needed to be solved. The instructions said to solve the problem and explain the results by describing how I arrived at my conclusion.
That was stressful because I thought with only one problem to solve, I’d either get it right or fail the entire exam.
The teacher gave us an exam workbook with several pages in which to solve the problem and show how we arrived at the answer. We had one hour to work on it.
After solving that single problem, I reviewed my answer to evaluate its accuracy and I had the wrong results!
When I discovered I had the wrong answer, I looked at the clock and realized I still had a little time to try again.
I redid the entire problem using the next couple of pages in the workbook. This time I came up with a different answer. And again, I worked it backward to check if it was correct. Once again, I got it wrong. Now I was really feeling the pressure!
I didn’t have enough time to work through the entire problem again. Besides that, there weren’t enough pages remaining in the exam workbook to fill out another lengthy solution to the physics problem.
I gave some more thought to my predicament. Considering my options, the next best thing to salvage anything from this fiasco was to use the little time remaining to write an explanation to the teacher.
To address the issue correctly, I reread the exam instructions. I suddenly realized that there were actually two things the teacher wanted me to complete. I almost overlooked the importance of it.
I finally knew what was required to pass that test. Taking up that last available page of the workbook, I wrote a note to the teacher to justify my conclusion. I described in detail the process I used to check my answer and how I realized I got it wrong.
I showed my knowledge of the problem-solving methods we learned in class and showed the instructor that I understood how to do it even though I kept getting the wrong results.
I wrote a complete description of what I had done in the first couple of attempts to show that I understood the assignment.
I thought for sure that I would fail the exam. But to my surprise, when the test scores came in, I got an A+!
My teacher was testing our ability to follow instructions, and getting the correct answer was not necessary in that case. It may have been a trick question with no correct answer, or maybe I fouled up terribly.
Either way, I did the right thing by reviewing the instructions. That helped me realize I needed to respond to the second part of the instructions with a review of the outcome.
I had a chat with my teacher after the semester. He explained that by showing I was mindful of the instructions and that I cared enough to check my work, he saw I would be able to handle similar problematic situations in the future.
Remember that your teacher may want to see if you follow directions and know the importance of checking your results.
As it turned out, my teacher was satisfied to see that I was aware of my mistake. It benefited me to make an effort to check my work and struggle with it in the time I had remaining.
You can do well by displaying enough knowledge of the subject to show you know what you’re doing, even though you might have gotten the wrong answer.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a problem with a physics exam or any other type of subject. The crucial thing is to know how to manage your limitations and analyze your available options. And most of all, pay attention to instructions.