5 Tips for Studying for Comps

So it's that time... Time to start studying for comps. Hopefully you saw this coming and used the tips I gave in 4 Tips on How to Pass Comprehensive Exams. If you didn't, don't panic. I didn't do most of them myself, but I still passed! Those tips were given in the hindsight that's 20/20. 

But now it's time to pull out the coffee and the course notes and the flashcards that you may or may not have been working diligently on this whole time. 

The question is like an elephant in the room.

Now what?

5 Tips for Studying for Comps

1. Write things down. When you're having an emotional breakdown because Comps is in 8 weeks, and you know nothing and while 8 weeks sounds like a long time it's NOT! It's like SAND IN AN HOURGLASS!!! (does this ring of personal testimony? Sorry...) When you get stressed, you can look back on the things you wrote down and be happy at the empirical evidence that you do know things! Additionally, notes are way easier to review than reading through the class materials or textbook again. So take notes to study later. 
2. Try to condense things each time you write them. You may need to start off with an extensive explanation of what "evidentials" are. But after you're familiar with that, all you need to review is Aikhenvald 2004 - evidentials. It's way faster to read through that the original notes and when you consider how much you have, being able to zip through it quickly will be nice. 
3. Start with the scholars. For comprehensive exams at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, we had to cite scholars, which meant that we had to memorize A LOT of scholars. We found it was easier to learn the subject in terms of the scholars than it was to get a general idea of the principles and then try to stick scholars in that. So rather than reading through the course notes and working out sense, reference, connotation, denotation, and then trying to learn scholars, we would learn Frege, Mills, and Russell  and in doing so learn the above with a frame work to put it in. 
4. Get your acronyms. Acronyms are especially good for lists. I used them for my scholars. Rather than pulling out my hair trying to remember who talked about perlocutionary force, I had an acronym for each subject. I memorized years by vague patterns and the order of the scholars. And then I put a key word with each of them. I didn't do that until after tip 2 and 3 above. It was good for studying but then when I just knew my brain would shut down at a critical moment during comps, the list was rote. 
5. Talk to your professors on their time. This may be a bit shady, but I believe the responsibility is on their shoulders. Let's say you go to talk to your professor on their time when they have stuff to do and start asking about if-then statements and their subtleties... Worst case scenario, your prof will give you valuable information on the topic that edifies your understand. Best case scenario, they tell you it's not worth being concerned with. Which can be translated to mean: that's not what the comps question is, please don't waste my time. 

After you're done with comps, if you heeded the advice above, you might find yourself with quite a pile of papers you would rather never see again. This is a great time to get together with your comps study group and burn them all in a commemorative bonfire of the occasion! 

You're welcome!

Good luck!