What Studying Looks Like in Seminary

I had my New Testament take-home final today.  Even though it's take-home, we're not allowed to use any books or anything, so it requires just as much studying as any other test.  Here's what my studying looked like...

One and a half hours of essay prep in the library.

Swift apartment cleaning for study group.

Visual aids:

Philo's significance to the New Testament (with slight error...Philo didn't say Melchizedek was a high priest.  Drat.)

The Four Septets of Revelation

Back to individual studying.

Memory device: "Harry Potter Was Extra Brave When Weasley Slipped By Ravenclaw's Potty."

...which is an acronym for the 11 songs I attributed to 11 of the 12 books of the New Testament on our exam, to help remember the main idea of each book for scripture identifications (Revelation didn't require a memory device, because it has dragons and lakes of fire and is just plain crazy).

Here's the soundtrack, if you're interested:

2 Thessalonians: Heigh-Ho! (Snow White)
Colossians: Pretty Girl Rock (Keri Hilson)
Ephesians: We're All In This Together (High School Musical)
1 Timothy: Eye of the Tiger (Rocky)
2 Timothy: Born This Way (Lady Gaga)
Titus: Wouldn't It Be Loverly? (My Fair Lady)
James: We Can Do It (The Producers)
1 Peter: (The) Smiths' "There Is a Light that Never Goes Out"
Jude: Bad Kids (Black Lips)
2 Peter: Right Here Waiting (Richard Marx)
Hebrews: Prince Ali (Aladdin)

Also, reading aloud/listening to recordings of 10/12 of the books (sometimes in German/Swedish/French/Southern accents)

Study Sustenance:
-Stouffers' Cheese Manicotti
-Garlic Bread
-Fruit Cocktail
-De-frozen Halloween Brownies
-Frozen Yogurt from Yogurtland
-Corndog

One panicked phone call to best friend from college.

20 minutes of jumping around the apartment waving hands in the air, spouting off facts about alleged pseudonymity of deutero-pauline works and responses to persecution from a feminist critique (while waving arms around in the air)

Deep Breaths.

Start test, 10:10pm

Finish test, 11:43pm

Eat a bowl of cereal and watch an episode of "Friends" in celebration.

And that, my friends, is how I study.

You may think it's weird.  You may not understand it.  But it helped me nail this test.  I only missed one scripture ID (I googled them all after I submitted the test), and I feel super confident on the Term Identifications and Essay (even though the latter sent me into a panic trying to memorize all that info).

Three classes down, only one final left!!

Happy studying :)