Picking up the Pieces

Things I Should Have Known But Didn't

Well, self, given my underwhelming performance on certain portions of my orals today, clearly things need to be done, and now that I've spent the requisite ...seven hours moping about failures that were entirely my fault, time to take action. So, self, let us create a useful and compendious study narrative that will enable us to know our shit cold. Because, as it happened, you did not know the material cold, and when faced with the pressure of an aggressive examiner who wouldn't let you slide on matters of detail, there was panic, which resulted in you not having confidence (or remembering) the details you had studied and offering inaccurate details from hazy memories of two years before. Which, all in all, were fair reasons for you having to take the test again. You've got two months. Better not fuck it up.

Let's start at the beginning: here are topic that you just didn't know the details well enough to regurgitate them like that (snaps fingers):
Greek:
Athenian government pre-Solon
Solon (at least in detail)
The state of the Athenian constitution in the 6th century BC
The full scale of Cleisthenes' reforms (decent job on the assemblies/tribes, but not enough)
Social divisions and the place of the poor in 6th century Athens
(Also, probably best to review tyranny)

Roman, probably the most embarrassing:
The full details of the Struggle of the Orders, including the dates and details of the Secessions of the Plebs
The formation of the tribunate
The powers of the tribunate, not just veto and sancrosanctity
(You did a fine job on nexum, but best to review it, especially considering you failed to identify the right law which ended it. Which was the Lex Poetalia Papiria of 321 BC, not the goddamn Licinio-Sextian Laws of 367 BC. As you should have known.)
Speaking of which, the key social laws of the early Republic.

This is, of course, not to say that these are the only things you need to know, just ones you didn't know well enough to answer.....any...of the questions you were given in detail. The next two months are going to be a grim and bitter road, but you need to put enough effort into not wasting them in order that this last year not be a waste. It's a setback, and I'm not used to those, or failing at things I work hard at. But there's no turning back now.