I think that the stress started with my last OT test. This test we only got he study guide for the day before the test. This would be an issue for most people, but not for my amazing class. Let's just say that Google Doc's are the best thing ever invested on the web cloud. The guide was on the web and after we partitioned it out to people, the 2 page study guide turned into a 12 page masterpiece in about 6 hours max. That's impressive if you think about it. Not to mention we still had to study for the test that night! Anyway, I had a loverly group of me, Adam, Cam, Maddie, and Allison who stayed up till about 230am trying to memorize everything that we thought we needed to know. The test the next day we aced, everyone in our group, and actually most of the class (avg of 94% and low of 85%) did great. We were a little sad because a bunch of the things that we memorized were not on the test (like the 10 rules of war and all the places that the ark of the covenant went) but our group wrote it all on there anyway to show him that we put on all that work! He was very impressed and hinted that it might be on the final.
The next two weeks were full of very little free time because we had to finish our Palestinian and Israeli perspective history classes. Both of these classes are great, but some days when we had 4 hours of one class, it got a little old. And they have this nack at putting the classes at such awkward times that you can't really go out into the city for long. So that wasn't happiness either! But anyway, there was tons of reading, and OT didn't help either because it's huge, and we have to go through it super fast. So without going to into too much details, I have been staying really REALLY busy.
Fast forward to about a week ago. This is when we were given the study guides for all of our finals (about anyway). So 3 big finals to worry about, the Palestinian, Israeli, and OT classes. Now, we knew about Ophir's (the Israeli teacher) was of teaching and how tests would go, but we had never taken a test from Adnan, the Palestinian teacher, so we didn't know all that we should expect, only that in lecture he would snap his fingers over once in a while and say "listen,, listen... I know that you are having fun, but if you are going to do well on the final you need to listen to me" or "Yes yes, I know, everything is funny. Please, please no side chats!" OH dear, was he a teacher to get used to. But anyway, even though the two classes were manageable, there was TONS of information on both of them to have to learn. Once again, the amazing collaborative world that Google Docs made came to our rescue, and the study guide for those two classes was done in a few days. We didn't have that much time to study though because of other activities that we had going on (like a passover seder) and so while they were done, we didn't have time to use them.
So studying for both tests began about 3 days before the test. Let's just say that it wasn't enough time, not even close. There were 2 nights of 2am or later, and total i think that I studied about 7 hours on Ophir's test, and about 24 hours for Adnan's, no joke. This was nuts. I was in the Forum with Adam and Cam a lot of the time and a few other people intermittently. You may think that this is a little extreme, but let me tell you just the highlights of the things that I learned:
- The 12 Islamic months and holidays
- the whole history of Islam from 610AD to the present.
- The sciences in Islam
- all of the major declarations, treaties, meetings, and UN agreements (including 181, 242, and 338) that have had a change on Palestine.
- The reason for the schism between Shi'ite and Sunni Islam
- The principles of jurisprudence (and the names of the 4 Sunni schools that go along with)
- The main calif's of Islam
- the timeline for the modern jihad movement with all the major players
- oh, and dates for all of the above mentioned topics as well and texts for the big ones
So yeah, this is a basic outline, but let's just say that I think I could hold my own in a discussion against any poly-sci major on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Judaism test we didn't have to know that much for, but it was still quite a bit and there was a lot of memorizing. So yeah
It was a good day when the tests were taken and done, although it was a very stressful 2 hours for each test. Things just never seem to go the way that you want them to. We celebrated a little that the test was over by four of us (me, Cam, Amanda, and Adam) ordering some domino's, kosher of course. We got the local special with mushrooms, green olives, and corn as toppings. I actually suggest it, it was a little odd to look at, but it actually tasted really good, and i'm not a huge green olive fan either. It's all about the adventure here, all about the journey.
So yes, after all of this work we were still not done. There was still one test that we weren't really not worrying about too much, but then our teacher the last day of class (the day before the final) told us some things that really freaked us out, like the fact that we were responsible for all the slides that we hadn't looked at in class yet, which was a lot. We had gone through that day in class almost half of the OT, maybe like a third, and there were some PPT's that he hadn't even opened yet... so yeah, we were freaking about just a little. There was already tons of material to know, and now we had to do more. Let's just say that it was time to pull out all the stops.
I wish that you could have seen us last night, it was nuts. we were up till about 3am studying, about 2am as a group. We have a few new additions to our normal study people including Jessie and Eden, and then Natalie joined us later. We had a few other in and outs, but that was us for the most part. So yeah, we made sure that we knew the way of the ark and the laws of war again, and then added to that the 9 reasons that Judah was destroyed (the groves...), the cities of refuge, the timeline of the OT, and many other things including tons of people from this section. It was a lot of fun with our projector use and two huge white-boards, and we had tons of fun acting out little hand games and doing roll-plays to memorize the things that we needed to.
As if we weren't tired enough the next morning, Bro. Mancill sent out a email telling us that he had wanted us to make sure that we had read 3 sections in the student manual for the test, and so and hour before the test starts, that is what we were doing, just freaking out trying to cram a few more things in. Anyway... the test was taken, I think that I actually did really well on it, which makes me happy because i studied so much for it! I had to go to Hebrew (I know the whole alphabet now and can read pretty well!) and then took a nap. Had dinner, then spent the night going to W. Jerusalem to party around a little bit, then an dance party back at the JC, and to finish the night, the Hunchback of Notre Dame. What a day.
Anyway, I hope that you all will forgive me for my slacking. I will make sure to get some of my other posts up before I go to Galilee. I won't have internet there and it's going to be an exciting 10 days, so i'll make sure to keep up with my typing so that you can hear all about it when I get back. Love you all!
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