David Matthewman

I did not entirely manage to get caught up with my planned revision before my first exam on Friday, but I got reasonably lucky with the questions. Only 6 marks out of 54 were on areas that I felt under prepared on, and when I got home it turned out that my somewhat educated guesses were pretty much spot on for at least four of those marks, so assuming that I got most of the rest right, I'm looking at a pretty solid mark, on one of my two weakest subjects. And once I had removed any further revision for that exam from my schedule, I was almost back on track.

This morning I have my Hebrew exam, and by last night was still feeling underprepared for that as well, but I got an early night (by my standards), and managed to get up at oh-god-this-is-going-to-bed-time-o'clock in the morning and finish it off. I'm feeling pretty confident about this one. It's mostly based on translating and answering questions on the grammar of seen texts, of which there are about 100 verses (Deuteronomy 5.6-12 and 6.4-9, 1 Samuel 9, 1 Samuel 20 and Psalm 13), which is little enough that I've basically memorised them, including all of the more unusual verb forms. There'll also be a little bit of unseen translation, with glosses for more unusual words. There isn't much one can do in terms of revising for that, but I'm hopeful that the work I've been doing on the seen texts, and also other bits of translation I've been doing for my essay and my Psalms class will have given my muscles a reasonable workout. So, for that matter, will the Ugaritic translation that I've been doing for that class, as the languages are pretty similar, and learning the ways that they're different has been cementing my understanding of both of them.

I've then got a couple of days off before my "Introduction to the Anthropology of Religion" exam on Thursday. That's my other weak subject, but the assessment was half by portfolio (a ~2500 word essay on a subject of our choice, plus six ~500 word responses to questions reflecting on six papers or documents), and the exam is essentially a viva of our portfolio, so again the revision required is fairly limited. Friday is Old Testament:Psalms and Wisdom Literature, another oral exam, which should be fairly easy to prepare for.

Then I've got a whole week off to prepare for Ugaritic and New Testament:Johannine Literature the following Monday and Tuesday. Ugaritic will be fairly similar to Hebrew, mostly translation of seen texts, although I think a bit harder because for at least some of it we'll be given the unvocalised texts and have to vocalise them (although we will get it transliterated rather than having to read the cuneiform). Also I think there's more text. It's 466 lines, and although that's a line on a tablet, which is considerably shorter than a verse in the bible, I'm fairly sure it's more words in total, even accounting for the fact that some of it is epic verse, and thus has quite a lot of repetition. There'll also be some unseen text, but we're allowed access to lexica and reference materials for that bit, so I hope that should be reasonably manageable.

As for the New Testament module, I'm not so much revising as vising, having skipped all the lectures except the first one. They're recorded, and we get given a list of 42 questions from which the exam will be chosen, so it's just a case of drafting bullet point responses to the questions as I listen to the lectures, and then memorising them. On the one hand, leaving it entirely to the last minute might seem a bit foolhardy, but on the other, at least everything will be fresh in my memory....