Do the review, not the doom-scroll
Getting a low grade back and shoving it in a folder wastes the most useful feedback you get all term. Set aside 20 minutes with the exam, the answer key, and your notes, and go through it as a diagnosis: not "how did I do" but "why did each wrong answer go wrong, and what does that tell me to change."
Sort every mistake into a type
For each question you lost points on, label it: careless error (knew it, misread or slipped); concept gap (did not understand the idea); application gap (understood the idea but could not use it on this problem); process gap (ran out of time, panicked, skipped the setup); or "I never studied this." The mix tells you what to fix — more practice problems for application gaps, re-learning for concept gaps, a timing strategy for process gaps.
The exam wrapper
A short structured reflection — how you prepared, how you spent your time in the exam, what surprised you, and one specific change for next time. Some courses assign it; if yours does not, do it anyway. Students who do this consistently improve across a term; students who only re-read their notes usually repeat the same errors.
Go over it with someone
Redo the questions you missed without the key, then check. If a concept still will not click, that is a precise office-hours question ("I keep missing the limiting-reactant step — can you watch me do one?"). A tutor or Supplemental Instruction leader can work through the pattern with you.
Fix the study method, not just the content
If most of your losses were application gaps, your studying was probably re-reading and highlighting — passive. Switch to working problems under time pressure and explaining concepts out loud. If they were concept gaps, you were memorizing steps without the "why." The returned exam is data about your method.
If the grade itself looks wrong
A calculation error in the grading, a rubric applied inconsistently, or points not added correctly — take it to the instructor promptly and specifically ("question 4, the key and my answer match but it was marked wrong"). This is different from a grade appeal, which is for process or fairness issues and has a formal path and deadline.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.