Studying like a journalist

Assuming I don’t enrol in any more post-secondary education in the near future, today was the last study session of my university career. And boy was it a doozy.

An extension on, what I considered to be a more important assignment, our investigative features left me less than a day to study for my Media Ethics and the Law exam, which is tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. So Heather, Clare and I stayed at school studying for more than seven hours straight, from 3 p.m. to about 10:30 p.m.

I read the entire law reader in that time and also read some important court decisions on landmark cases.

Part of me acknowledges laziness on my part due to my absolute boredom with that class, but another part wonders if it’s just the nature of being a journalist and an information consumer.

When we’re writing on deadline, we don’t necessarily have the time to study and re-study background material. We remember the key details pertinent to our story and that’s about it.

I think that’s the way I’ve started to approach learning now, too. Is there anything wrong with that?

Well, this exam is worth 50 per cent of my final grade in this class, so I guess I’ll find out the answer in about three weeks.