Don’t be ‘that guy’. Share your revision notes.

It’s that time of year again: exam season. In addition to emergence of Stabilo Fineliners, we welcome back the competitive students; the imbeciles that don’t share their revision notes.

For the sake of this article, lets call them Tim.

Tim has been boasting all year about how hard he has been working. He sends you Snapchats of his organised library desk. You know the type of photo I mean: Macbook in the centre, pencil case on the right hand side, a lever arch file on the right. The type of desk you know he hasn’t been working on because they just don’t look like that at the end of a long library stint.

So try-hard

Tim has been texting you about how stressed he is and likes to share with you detailed plans of his coursework, even though he knows he’s done a brilliant job. Tim really infuriates you when he talks about his grades at pre-drinks. But that’s just Tim. It probably has something to do with some pushy-parenting tactics, or an older brother who out-shined him by going to Oxbridge.

Tim maintains a solid 2:1 average of 66 or above. He gets upset when he gets anything lower than that. When you tell him your grade of 62, he looks at you with empathetic eyes and enthusiastically says “awww well done Jennifer, really good job”. It makes you want to punch the smug little smile off his idiotic face.

But now, it’s exam season. You are both are sitting the same exam in May and are both studying the same text. You ask Tim to meet to share your notes. Tim declines.

Tim claims he’s too busy to help, but he is lying because he finished the main bulk of his revision last Wednesday and is now working on practice questions.

In reality, Tim doesn’t want to share notes because he thinks you will do better than him in the exam. Little does he know, your notes could really be of great value to him. The likely-hood of your revision focussing on the same elements of each exam topic is rare. Tim doesn’t think you are as clever as him. He doesn’t realise he may actually may learn something from your notes that may help him in the exam.

Unbeknown to Tim, the university does not place students in a ranking system from highest to lowest. This would allow both you and Tim get the same mark. Tim fears that he will do worse in the job-market if more people have 2:1s. This is a fair point but with 70% of students graduating with a 2:1 each year, your additional 2:1 will not make a difference. Anyway, who says you wouldn’t get a 2:1 without Tim’s notes? Tim needs to understand that you want to go into journalism, while he wants to go into publishing; you are not rivals.  It may actually satisfy Tim for you to do better than top-prat-Tom, who’s team “robbed” Tim’s of victory in that 6-a-side football league last term.

Tim, don’t be a mug. You’re a straight 66 student, you will almost definitely do well in the exam. Friends are more valuable than grades. Share your revision notes.