This blog, written by grad student Rob Hutton, was originally published in SiGN, an online newsletter for grad students in the Dept. of English.
So you’ve decided to do an English PhD. Despite this, you still maintain some sort of claim to sanity. You’ve completed your coursework, and hope to never see the inside of the Dunton Tower seminar room again. But now comes the comprehensive exam, a six-month bender of literary study that culminates in a do-or-die exam. As a first-year student, you’ve heard the comps spoken of as a kind of nightmarish ogre that eats the souls of bright-eyed grad students. Intelligent people turn into dark-eyed lunatics who withdraw from society in order to mutter about obscure authors. How can you possibly survive with your mind in tact?
I recently completed my comps exams, passing with distinction. Other people have called me a “strange phenomenon” for my comparative lack of stress, a comment that I choose to take as a compliment. I think this gives me the ethos to give you, the aspiring PhD candidate, some tips as to how to study for comps without breaking your brain.
Of course, there are the usual caveats: what worked for me may not work for you. Even if you become more productive, you may still wind up a stressed-out wreck. People are different, and for some stressful cramming is in fact the best way to pass an exam. But I don’t think the comps exam has to be a monster: if done right, it can be less intense than your coursework. Not being intimidated by the comps is the first step to success. Here are some more possible steps!
*Work out a reading schedule: Without organization, there’s a natural tendency to leave everything (or at least the most difficult works) to the end. Figure out a regular time for you to devote a few hours each day to reading (with breaks, of course). Alternately, set yourself a number of pages to read each day. Try to time your reading to end a few weeks before the exam – this will give you some time to digest the material, as well as giving you a buffer if life gets in the way.
*Make notes, but not too many notes: Ideally you’ll want to be able to review all your notes in about an hour, so each item should take up a maximum of a page. Do a little plot summary, but for the most part focus on relations to other texts and broader trends that your text is a part of. You’ll want to have a few analytical tidbits that you can drop into any number of answers, as well as a few details that seem really revealing to you. Don’t try to memorize every character name or everything that happens in the plot.
*Don’t change your life: It may seem like the rigors of comps preclude all of the fun activities that you used to do, but if you budget your time well you’ll still be able to watch movies, go out to the bar, or do whatever else gets you through. Isolating yourself and working 24/7 will only contribute to your stress. Maintaining your normal habits helps to make comps a normal part of your life instead of some black cloud that takes over everything.
*Prepare plenty of essays: Your supervisor will probably have you write a practice exam at some point, which is a good way to get a gauge of how you’re doing and where you need to approve. Beyond that, it’s a good idea to write plenty of practice answers. You can get questions from your supervisor, look at past exams in your field, or just create your own question based on trends you see in the reading list. You don’t have to fully write out each essay – an outline will usually suffice. Even if you never use these ideas, generating them is good practice for thinking about your field holistically.
*Enjoy the process as much as you can: At some point some prof will describe your upcoming exam as “exciting” or tell you to “have fun,” and you will think that they are from another planet. But there’s something to this advice. The process of hammering on a keyboard for four hours may not be pleasurable, but remember that you will spend six months reading books from a field that you love enough to devote a decade of your life to studying it. You will be reading some of the best books ever written, as your job – don’t treat this as something you have to drudge your way through. The comps process can sometimes feel like hell, but it can also sometimes feel like paradise. And maybe focusing on that latter feeling is the best way to not be consumed by the stress.
Friday, January 24, 2014 in Grad Student blogs, News
Share: Twitter, Facebook
