The End of First Year and Exam Season

Hi everyone!

Firstly, I hope everyone is getting on well with revision for exams and sitting them because I know how stressful it is! It’s nearly the end of first year and the start of exams is just around the corner. First year has just flown by and in just under 5 months I’ll be in Venice for the first term of second year!

My head is full of images, titles and dates for my first university exams but whether it’ll all sink in and I’ll get lucky with the images and questions is another story. At least you only have to get 40% and pass this year! I also want people to know that only if you just scrape through this year it doesn’t matter how well you do, first year is like a practice year so you get used to all the do’s and dont’s and you understand how to write essays, do presentations in seminars and do the exams so that you can do well for the rest of your time at Warwick.

Everyone is extremely stressed about which few works will come up out of what seems like the thousands of images that we have seen and studied in lectures and seminars and how on Earth we are expected to memorise not only the images, but also the titles and rough dates too. The amount of lecture and seminar presentations I’ve trawled through in the last few days is enough to make my head explode and it’s quite disheartening knowing that you will try to memorise so much when you need so little but there’s nothing we can do about that! Then you also need to know about all the various events and history behind the works as well as knowledge about the artistic movements they belong to and what they are in response to. To anyone who says this course is easy, I would challenge anyone to study it!

But exam stress aside, coming to Warwick has made me realise that I am an intelligent person, I am stronger and better than I think I am and I have worked practically all my academic life to be in the position I am in now. No matter how many times I have thought about giving up, wondered why I am here and why I’m studying this subject, I know deep down that this is what I want, what I am good at and what I enjoy in life and that is all that matters.

So good luck to everyone in your exams and thanks for reading!

Kristie