As the year comes to a close, one thing becomes clear in everyone’s mind: finals. What is the best class to study for? Most likely, your answer is going to be history.
Generally, most STEM classes do not require an intense study process. For example, after learning about how to solve a derivative problem with the chain rule, you are not going to magically forget how to do it when finals come around. This usually applies to the sciences as well, as most of the concepts that you learn make intuitive sense; once you learn them, it shouldn’t take that long to remember why things happen again.
Some classes are not as intuitive. Language, History, and English concepts might make less intuitive sense.
English does have the upside that the final is grading you on how well you write, which is a skill that you can cultivate throughout the school year. As a result, it is pretty hard to “study” for English, since you aren’t judged on skills that are specific to the current year, but skills that have been used throughout every year of school.
This leaves history as the best use of your time. Not only are the facts that you learned in previous classes less useful for the final, but the class is almost entirely based on memorization.
That leaves us with two options: a language or a history class. A language class does require some memorization, as you need to remember new grammar forms and words, but it also has elements that have been reinforced at previous levels of the language. Furthermore, the words and grammar forms that you learn throughout the year are reinforced as you integrate them into your work in each class. Thus, language is probably the second most important class to study for.
This leaves history as the best use of your time. Not only are the facts that you learned in previous classes less useful for the final, but the class is almost entirely based on memorization. If you don’t study for history, you are going to fail, as there is no way that you are going to remember what the Glass-Steagall Act did or what the Supreme Court ruling of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark established.
If you only had time to study for one thing, history should be the subject you spend your time on.