Mid-Term Exam #1 Results

The papers I wrote for the first mid-term for HIST-04b can be found here:
Monasticism,
Feudalism,and
Europe in 843.

I was really disappointed in how "rushed" I felt at the end of this exam. I thought I was prepared in advance, but I found myself re-writing and checking references up to the very last moment. I was exhausted! I vowed not to do that again.

So - this time I've been more systematic (I think!) about preparing for the specific questions before hand. Now that I know the teacher sticks pretty much to the area in which she hints we should focus on (see Exam #2 Preview), I've been studying exactly that! My instinct is that I should NOT just learn-to-pass-a-test. However, I DO want to pass the test! And, Dr. Feig's questions are broad enough that if I do learn about the Crusades or the Reforamation or the Renaissance (for the upcoming exam), I will also be learning a whole lot about this entire time period. I've even actually started writing a pretend answer to a pretend question - about the Age of Discovery. It's helped me to kind of put things in perspective. And, it's pointed out where I needed to find out more!

The one thing that's been really hard with the second set of questions is that I have trouble keeping the people apart - who's King Henry the I, II, III, etc., and what country is he/she (talking about the Marys) from? The first month the problem was in keeping the tribes straight - the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, and Franks and... Now, I think I've got it. But these doggone kings and dynasties! Well, I'm just glad I didn't have to LIVE back then - I guess I can stomach reading about them...

Originally posted 2/16/2006 at 12:13 PM, I have since reposted this blog entry to precede the 3 postings I added with the individual essays. The beauty of the blog world is that I can write and re-write, and change times of postings. The intent here is to produce essays in the order in which they SHOULD have been posted online, to show the proper chronological order!