Crime and Punishment

So while I was in Michigan this past summer, Ola offered me a job as the Evolution TA. I thought it would be fun and look good on my CV, so I took it. It was at the same time as a Stream Ecology class I was enrolled in, so I had to drop that. Because I had little access to the internet, I had about an hour to drop that class and pick another one. I saw one called Crime and Punishment and thought it would be a pre-law style class. My sister just started law school at Emory, so I thought it would be cool to know a little bit about what she was doing. Turns out, the class is nothing like what I thought it would be. Its more focused on the history of Greek, Roman and Chinese law. But not even in a law-ish way. Its more literally a history class that focuses on the power balance between the governing bodies of these cultures and the people.
Well, because I know literally nothing about any of these cultures' penal systems, I went into the class super far behind everyone else. Its an honors class, so I figured the people in the class would know what is going on and I could simply follow their lead. Well, turns out honors kids are either hypochondriacs or dumb. In science classes, you would be a fool to not keep up with the readings and come to class prepared. Turns out in history and political science classes, as long as you talk alot and ask irrelevant questions while dominating the class discussion, you are doing a good job.
We had a test yesterday, and I expected it to be next to impossible. We had been talking in class for at least three weeks trying to get everyone on the same page about what will be on the test and that the classes high stress level is an over reaction. People were just freaking out about how impossible the test will be. It was horrifying. The class seemed to think that no matter how much we studied, we were all going to fail the test miserably.
Well, when the test came and went, I realized that it was not difficult at all. Every question on the test had been at least mentioned in class discussion. The readings really said everything that you could possibly want to know in great detail. I'm guessing the people who were freaking out (about 3/4 of the class) must have just not been doing the reading at all. Or else they are just naturally stressed people. Plus, it was open book and open notes, so I dont think I even wrote a sentence that I hadn't already at least paraphrased in my notes. It was a joke. The only way I dont get a perfect score on the test is if my spelling and sentence organization wasn't perfect (which is a possibility because of the time crunch). The information was not difficult to use at all.
So the moral to this story is if you are going to take a class that you have no background information in at all with, you should first do two things: 1- make sure the class is what you think it is. This way you doing get stuck in a random class with a much of frustrating, loud, and stressful honors nerds. 2- if these same nerds are freaking out about a test, you can just blow them off and study in the way you normally do. This is because either non-science majors dont know how to study... at all, or they are just so stressed about everything that they can trick you into being way more stressed than you aught to be.