(This is slightly related, and really interesting; I’d say it’s worth the hour, but for an excellent precis go here.)

I can’t grind revision. I haven’t done that much in the way of “proper” revision, certainly not in the making-up-notes-and-going-over-them-again-and-again sense, not since A-level and not really even then. I have made and remade notes, but I’ve always believed (based on hearsay and a stunningly shallow understanding of neuroscience) that the value of the notes is in the process of creating them, rather than in actually going over them.

Related to this, I only seem to remember things I’m actually interested in (I recently discovered I’m humiliatingly bad at the geography of the British Isles, because while I’ve probably been exposed to plenty of county maps I’ve never really given a damn.) I am quite lucky, I think, in that I still love War Studies and find it fascinating, while a lot of people I know who’ve taken their subject to degree level have come to hate it. I’m far from conscientious about reading lists; I don’t grind through the books because I’m supposed to, I read them because they interest me. I like to think that helps, because I never remember anything I’ve learned “on demand”. Forcing myself to learn, through grinding notes, or picking up a book I don’t care about, just doesn’t seem to work as well; it doesn’t stick.

Detail is a funny bugger. I have a head for detail – especially pretty finicky detail, especially that to do with weapons and mechanisms – but that I can give you a description of the inner workings of every weapon involved in any battle since 1860, is, while interesting, irrelevant, because there’s no way to bring it all out in an exam. Judicious use of detail adds texture, believability, historical verisimilitude, but that’s all. Toby advised us to try to give the impression of an iceberg: enough knowledge to make the tip of the iceberg, used adeptly enough to convince the examiner of a much broader and deeper understanding beneath the surface. There’s never enough time or enough space to show off every last tidbit; drop a few appropriate facts, confidently, and be damn sure they’re true.

I think what matters most in history is understanding the broad sweep of the topic, not so much what as why, having a picture in my head which is detailed enough to be believable but abstract enough to be understood in its entirety, so that a question with unexpected phrasing or which picks on an unexpected part can be dealt with. And I find getting bogged down in the minutiae, especially too close to the exam day, is actively counterproductive to that.

I believe that ultimately – and I’m staking quite a bit on this belief – what works best is demonstrating that I understand that broad picture, backed up by enough fiddly detail to sound authoritative. That understanding is something I can only seem to get by thinking about the subject at length, and having the space and the time to do so, unencumbered by piles of frantic notes.

Disclaimer 1: Different people’s minds work in different ways; many of my friends have very different approaches, which seem to work for them. This particular way has worked for me, for writing a fairly small number of widely spaced essays, and a novel(la). Applying it to a real subject, something that requires genuine factual knowledge rather than eloquent prevarication, or something that actually matters, may result in waste and tragedy. When the GDL kicks off I’m going to be doing a lot more grind and some serious personal re-evaluatin’.
Disclaimer 2: That this entire post is basically a smug, self-serving and generally despicable post-facto justification for my pathological laziness and “brief, blinding panic after sustained, intense procrastination” approach has, yes, crossed my mind.

Nothing spurs adaptability like a genuine lack of planning.

There’s a feeling – and I’m going to steal and terribly mutilate a great line from Dear Esther here – a feeling you get in the morning an hour or two before an essay deadline, where you stare at the work in front of you and realise that there is nothing more that can be done. It’s over. You’re done. The caffeine and adrenaline are still pounding ragged through you, sleep deprivation has the world bending and blurring and barely making sense. And there you sit, lost in a vacuum of fatalistic calm.

I’ve found myself addicted to that feeling this year.

During the first of last year’s exams, the Late Modern history module that for various syllabus- and incompetence-related reasons I’d basically come to despise, I had a panic attack, comprising twenty or thirty of the shittiest minutes of my life. That was partly the total uselessness and foolishness that surrounded the exam (as detailed there), and partly the pressure. I felt the world bearing down on me; I felt the overwhelming fear of failure (foolishly, really, as first year doesn’t count for jack), and I wasn’t equal to it. I curled up into a useless, worthless, sobbing ball and was led away.

I can’t tell if it’s some sort of response to that, some determination for it not to happen again (after the panic attack they prescribed me diazepam and counselling, both of which I tried but found useless and quickly gave up) but I’ve discovered this year that I seem to get high on pressure. And never more than the manufactured pressure of an essay done in not quite enough time. There’s something about having worked very hard and very fast that has me coming out of the history office grinning sunbeams (before going home, crashing completely, and feeling sick for a week.)

I’ve done what I promised not to in first year, and made a habit of all-nighters. And the worst part is, it works. The marks come out best when I’m writing them locked in a vice marked “deadline”. The essays I do properly, with all plans laid and time to spare, are competent but not great; but the best marks I’ve got this year have been balls-to-wall all-night panicfests, written in a night of tea-sloshed adrenaline with barely time to print. Vietnam option essay, two thousand words, written conscientiously in good time (with a last-minute rewrite, which can’t have really helped) on a subject I was fully comfortable with? 67. Critical Analysis, four thousand words on four books I wasn’t sure I understood, started twelve hours before the deadline (having already spent two days straight without sleep working on Rise of Modern War)? 77.

My dissprep essay was not, by my standards or in my estimation, that good. In particular, I was worried about the last third or so, which was written pretty much in blind panic (even more so than the rest, which was done under standard “oshit 20 credits in 12 hours, GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER” conditions) as a planned twenty-minute nap with twelve hundred words to go and plenty of time to finish them off accidentally became a two hour snooze and an absolute blur of panic up to execution hour. When Rob and I were talking over the essay, he asked me what happened to the last third of it; as I launched into some impromptu excuses, he took me completely by surprise in saying that it was so much better than the rest.

Not only do I find a horrible adrenaline joy in pressure, it seems I work at my very best when the world’s squeezing me. And exams bring all that out at once. There’s nothing, no distractions, no way out; only the pressure of how much this exam means to my life, and the fear of failure, and, as each second in turn flies away, the knowledge that it cannot be regained. And my hands fly across the keyboard, and I think: some fools pay for this kind of high.

Yep, I’m the lamest adrenaline junkie who ever lived.