Flawless Finals Pt. 3: Humanities Study Tips

Below are some humanities study tips to help you plan and study for your upcoming final exams. This is the third installment of a multi-part series published by the Board of SASS throughout the month of May!

• If you have a final exam that includes writing, make sure to practice timed writing or at least have a strategy going into it.

• It’s important to know how to manage your time in the test. Also, some people are faster writers than others. 

• If you have more trouble with time limits, then it is especially important that you practice timed writing.

• When you’re writing an essay, make sure that you are responding to the prompt and meeting all the requirements. It depends on the course, but some have very detailed and strict requirements.

• Also, try to be concise and stick within the page/word limits. 

• Use proper MLA formatting. 

• For final projects, there are often multiple steps built into the schedule (e.g., topic proposal, rough draft, etc.), but it’s still important to plan ahead. Unlike exams, you can spend an unlimited amount of time on final projects. However, it’s also important to recognize when you’re spending too much time going down rabbit holes or doing stuff that isn’t really mentioned in the instructions.

• Remember that you have access to Stanford Libraries! You can access the searchable catalog here: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/. Teachers will often recommend that you use sources from here, and it’s also super useful for finding sources that they approve of (unlike Wikipedia, for example, although it's useful as a starting point sometimes).