Midterm Exam Info

The Midterm Exam will be held in-class on Thursday October 12th from 5:15 - 8:15PM. You will have all of the normal lecture + lab time to work on the exam.

Exam Policies

1. The exam is closed book, except that you are allowed to use three two-sided handwritten “cheat sheets”. No mobius strip cheat sheets or any other such nonsense. Non-compliant cheat sheets will be confiscated during the exam.

2. You are not allowed to use any devices during the exam. That means no use of laptops, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, calculators, walkie-talkies, VR goggles, abacuses, smoke signals, etc. These devices must be powered off and stored in your backpack. Failure to comply with this policy will result in an automatic zero on the exam.

3. You must take the exam with a number two pencil. Pen will bleed through (and is hard to correct if you mess up). Mechanical pencils are not thick enough that they show up properly when your exam is scanned in to GradeScope.

4. You are allowed to go to the bathroom during the exam (of course). I only ask that you leave your backpack, laptop, and phone behind with me when you do.

5. You are allowed to ask me clarifying questions during the exam, but I will not always answer if the question is already answered in the directions (or would give part of the answer away). This is not to be rude, but to be fair to all students. If you ask a truly excessive number of questions (to the point where me walking over and talking to you is disrupting the other students), I will politely ask you to stop.

Conflicts and Accommodations

If you have a conflict with the exam time, you need to let me know ASAP. Technically attendance at every class session (including the midterm) is required: but I will do my best to sort things.

If you require an accommodation during the exam, please reach out to me directly via my Mt. SAC email.

Midterm Material

The midterm will cover Lectures/Labs 0 through 9, inclusive. The only exception is the array material introduced at the very end of Lecture 9.

Otherwise, if a Java concept is on the slides or used in the labs, you should know it.

How to Study

Your best friend when studying is the practice exam:

Practice Exam Blank

Practice Exam Solutions

I wrote this to be very similar in topics/format to the actual exam (although you may of course see things not on the practice exam as well). I suggest working on it quite a bit before peeking at the answers.

Other good resources:

1. The “Quick Checks” used in the lecture slides.

2. Problems from Chapters 1-6 of the textbook (feel free to ask me whether a problem is relevant or not).

3. Googling practice problems from other schools on the topics we’ve learned so far (again, feel free to ask me whether a problem is relevant).

4. The #exam-questions channel on Discord: post here if you have a question on a topic while studying for the exam.