One of the movie channels broadcast the newish Richard Gere film "The Double" the other night. I don't think that it's a good film, but today I'm not writing film criticism. At one stage, there is an FBI agent who starts rattling off a series of sentences in rapid fire about null hypotheses (he spoke so fast that I couldn't really understand what he was saying), that "Paul is not Cassius" (you'd have to watch the film to understand). My ears pricked up at the word 'hypothesis', because formulating null and alternative hypotheses is part of any research project and at the moment, my brain is almost obsessed with research projects.
The exam for the course 'Introduction to Business Research 1' is being held tomorrow (Wednesday), so obviously I am up to my ears in revision. Relaxing for an hour by watching 'The Double' reminds me that I have skimmed over the chapter about hypotheses, induction and deduction; these subjects don't seem to have appeared in recent exam questions.
I spent yesterday evening's revision session by writing an essay - without preparation - about the research paradigms of positivism and phenomenology. After writing for about half an hour and covering two pages of A4 paper, I checked my answer against the table which lists advantages of disadvantages of the two paradigms. I could see that my essay tended to the anecdotal and was also missing a few points. I then wrote another, shorter, essay which was straight to the point and covered all the points. By writing such essays, I can get the material into my mind, along with the correct English phrasing. This will be similar to the preparation for the Negotiation course, in which I had stock phrases stored in my mind.
I intend tonight to cover the hypotheses material, just to make sure that it's clear. I'll also check the previous exams to which I have access in order to see whether there were questions about this material and which angle was taken. Otherwise, I intend to have a quiet night. I am not one of the people who sleep during the course and then take the coursebook a week before the exam and burn the information into their brain; I prefer to read the coursebook from the very beginning, letting the information sink in slowly and then reinforcing the absorbed information by reading the material again and again.
No last minute revision for me: if the material is not in my brain now, it never will be. What is important in these final hours is getting the mental material into a form in which it can be written effectively.
The exam will be held in the same hotel as the MBA exams were; I have been told that sitting with me (but not taking the same exam) will be students repeating MBA exams. I wonder whether I will see any familiar faces. Pyschologists recommend that students imagine the physical setting of the exam; this exercise is intended to prevent anxiety appearing in the critical minutes before and during the exam. The same exercise is recommended for athletes preparing for a race. Whilst I have no problem in visualising the setting, there are a few exams which I don't remember how they finished. For example, I have a memory of leaving the Economics exam and riding back to the bus station in the evening; after the Marketing exam, I walked along the sea front and then all the way to the bus station (quite a long walk!), but I don't have any memory of the Project Management exam. No, wait a minute: part of that memory of the Economics exam is actually the PM exam! Yes, I was sitting in a public taxi and figuring out alternative methods of crashing a project.
Probably some of the above is a bit more muddled than it need be, but that doesn't bother me. All I need is some more revision this evening, a good night's sleep and some light revision tomorrow morning - and then I'll be fit to take on the world!
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