The Hardest Exam I Ever Took at MIT in Physics

The key is not to study to the test, but to the professor.

Professors have three key attributes: they are very intelligent, very arrogant, and very lazy (particularly when it comes to distractions, like teaching). Their coursework and tests are a reflection of what they think you should understand about the course because they are a reflection of what *they* understand about the course. You need to retrieve not just any test to review, but tests that particular professor issued in previous years. He won’t write the same questions as before, but they’ll be variations on a common theme, and because professors are lazy they’ll tweak the problem just enough to make it look different but not so much that they can’t reference last year’s solution set to make grading easy.

Other than that, great video. It was a disturbing reminder of my own horrors of test taking throughout my academic physics career.