The Last Word

By Aaron Roydhouse | Posted: Tuesday September 13, 2016

Morning fellas. Considering practice exams are a good three days away I decided it might be a relevant topic to speak on.

When it comes to practice exams I think there are three general types of people. The people who study hard or efficiently and do well, the people who want to do well but don’t put in the effort, and lastly, the people who really couldn’t care less.

The first type of person who studies hard and performs well isn’t difficult to explain. In fact, they were probably not born with all the answers, I’m pretty sure they experience the same 24 hour day as the rest of us and they most likely don’t have some secret study tip that instantly results in good grades. I would guess that they probably just follow the Nike mantra when it comes to study and approach preparation for exams with a “just do it” attitude.

The second type of guy often can’t be bothered putting in the effort or is scared. By this I mean they are afflicted by that weird excuse for not studying. This excuse being: that if you don’t study and perform badly or mediocre, then it’s fine because you didn’t try your best. Following this logic, you might feel safe thinking that hypothetically, if you did study, you would do better.

Last but not least, the type of guy who doesn’t really care. Generally, this is pretty self-explanatory for various reasons. Whether it is having future goals to stay at home and not do much or the somewhat rare instance when you’re not interested in externals as they may genuinely mean nothing.

On that note of not really being interested, I can’t say I was particularly interested in economics when I took it in junior school. However, one concept that is pretty important especially in economics is the idea of Opportunity Cost. Opportunity Cost is the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Sure study leave is nice and you may find yourself with plenty of free time. But let’s be honest, the majority of us won’t spend all our time studying, no matter what we tell some people. A quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger alludes to the idea of opportunity cost and is quite relevant to practice exams. He says:

“It is important to have fun in life of course, but when you're out there, partying, horsing around, someone out there at the same time is working hard, someone is getting smarter, and someone is winning; just remember that.”