January revision: who works hardest?

So you’re back from the Christmas holidays, desperately trying to avoid confronting the reality of your impending exams by slowly but surely polishing off the last of the assorted edible gifts Santa kindly gave you. How you ultimately deal with the problem of revision, though, can vary greatly depending on your course. Here I separate the truly hard workers from the procrastinators.

The Doss Subjects

Doss subject students are used to taking stick for their course year round so all the English and Ancient History students stuck with nothing to do but make the occasional half-arsed attempt at starting a book can look forward to business as usual this January. Whether it’s distracting their friends who have actual work to get on with, or gloatingly and loudly practising their krav maga while their flatmates try to ignore them, there’s no shortage of fun activities for your average humanities student to indulge in, to the detriment of virtually everyone else at Uni. Their revision will consist of a cursory look at the Wikipedia page on whatever book or play their exam is on minutes beforehand – and perhaps the worst part of it all is that they’ll probably be fine, too.

Your average ‘halfway’ worker…Philosopher/Historian

Halfway workers

These guys are most often found in the grey area between a doss course and a proper one; yes, you, historians and philosophers. Furious at being lumped in with the effectively revision-free lower end of the Humanities, students on these courses will inevitably hit back by essentially inventing work for themselves to do – just look at all of the books your friends doing History have taken out of the library, compared to how many they’ll ever actually open. You’re not fooling anyone with your self-enforced days spent at the library, guys. Just go and join the Dramatists and revel in your lack of work this month; that mound of papers by your desk isn’t fooling anyone.

A History student attempts to revise

Les Miserables

Despite the above examples, there are some people out there in January who actually have to, y’know, work. Medics, dentists, engineers and would-be scientists in general can kiss goodbye to any legitimate human contact this January, except, that is, for the fearful glances of every other student who sees their zombie-like features and anguished expressions as they desperately try to convince themselves that their Sisyphean revision schedules will eventually turn out to be worth it. Dubious as this is, one can’t help but respect/fear the sheer number of hours these people can put in without having some kind of awkward and loud public breakdown in their creepy separate library. Even English students don’t have the heart to distract these poor souls as they slave away surrounded by their metre-high stacks of notes, tears of desperation streaking their grimy, overworked faces.

In short then, don’t believe anyone who complains to you about how many books they have to read or notes they have to take, unless they’re in the upper echelon of the Sciences – in which case pray for them. And my advice for these poor wretches, who really do have several solid weeks’ worth of work? Don’t believe a historian for a second when they begin their, ‘yeah, I totally get you, I’ve been in the library all day, too!’ spiel – I’m looking at you, Harry Millen.