the thing about exams is that they really don't care about you and how you choose to live your life. in the end, it's all about how many productive - essential key word, productive - hours you've spent slugging away at it.

you can choose to study by writing out neat, meticulous notes. sounds good. but the time you've spent making sure your notes are nicely written out and colour-coded is time detrimental.
you can take 12 hour blocks sitting in the library trying to force your restless mind to concentrate. and this looks like the mark of a hardworking, intense student. but at the end of the day, when marks come back, you're sitting there wondering why you only got slightly better than average. how did those 95%+ students do it? did they sit there for 14 hours or are they just born infinitely smarter?
exams don't care that you have other subjects you must study for; that you have errands you must attend to. like it or not, the student that spends friday saturday partying, but crunches down for 8 hours sunday is likely to get a better mark than the student who sat ALL of friday saturday and sunday at a coffee shop in front of their books trying half successfully to retain their textbook material.
and maybe you do crunch down during the time you've alloted yourself to study. but let's say you have to spend anhour each way travelling from home to school. versus the student who lives on campus but squanders a good 45 min gossiping with their group study members, who's going to get the better mark? time-wise, they are.

i used to hate this cliche, but i guess the lesson i've come to appreciate is to not just study hard, but study smart.

this also leads me to change my mind about approaching picking electives for next year. if my goal is med school, elective-wise, it would be in my favour to choose electives requiring the least amount of work with the highest mark payoff. choosing all courses i am interested in, but are non required for entrance, that are deemed tough, is great if it will have no adverse effects on my gpa or my required courses' performance. but i need to stop kidding myself. of course it will. i need to stop being a hero and make sure i accomplish what needs to be done before i worry about stuff like boasting rights.

okay, study time. it's a go-go. let's slay them all. see you after the 27th.