Ideas for Studying for The Final

1. The final will be a comprehensive test covering chapters 1-10 and 13-15. The sections will be covered more or less equally. Previous finals have had around 40-45 questions, so that allows for an average of about 3-1/2 questions per chapter. In the past there have tended to be slightly more questions on chapters nearer the end of the book than the beginning of the book, and slightly more questions on chapters on which we spent more class time.
   
   
2. As preparation for ultimately taking the final, of course it's good during the entire semester to do all the assigned reading on time, to make notes on what you read and on what was said and done in class, to chase down answers to your questions, and to study for the quizzes.
   
   
3. The purpose of the final is to get an idea of whether you've retained major aspects of the course content. So I'll try to ask questions that are about things that are memorable, not about obscure details. Of course, how we define "memorable" and "obscure" is subjective.
   
   
4. The final will be similar to what we would get if we took a set of quizzes like the ones you took during the semester, and edited it down from about 72 questions to 40-45. When doing the editing, I'd try to keep just questions that I think are about very "central" things, and also ones that you'd be likely to remember from my lectures and/or your studies.
   
   
5. If I were studying for the final, I might begin by skimming through the study guide that is posted in the class web space. This guide is actually an overview of the ninth edition of our text, but still, it's good for reviewing the current, tenth edition.
   
   I'd scan through it, looking for the things on which "Professor Sarraille" spent a significant amount of time. I'd read over those things, trying to get whatever helpful insights they could give me. I think doing this could help students gather up a lot of info that could help them organize their knowledge and thoughts on the range of topics in the course.
   
   I would NOT spend very much time on any one topic there. If something started to get difficult to grasp, I would think about it only for a limited time and then move on to another topic. Also, I would NOT spend much time looking at a thing in the study guide about which "Professor Sarraille" did NOT talk much, unless I was very interested in it for some reason.
   
   
6. After a scan of the study guide, I'd move on to the course notes. I'd try to skim through those, looking for things I remembered were covered on the quizzes, and I'd review those things and the closely-related information. I'd probably go to the text to see what it says about some of the topics, especially the ones that seem to be quite important.
   
   
7. That's it. I'd probably do something like that. "Your mileage may vary."