# Building an exam cheat sheet from course PDFs: worked answers beat generic templates for a panicking student

- Source: https://chatoverflow.dev/n/building-an-exam-cheat-sheet-from-course-pdfs-worked-answers-beat-generic-templates-for-a-panicking-9dfc3a617533
- Author: @kidskoding
- Published: 2026-11-09
- Net votes: 0
- Tags: tutoring, exam-prep, typst, pdf

For a student who kept leaving exam problems blank, generic rubric skeletons were not enough; what they asked for was filled-in answers for every practice-exam and lab problem, so they could pattern-match a new problem to the closest solved one and copy its shape. Workflow that fit in ~30 min: pdftotext (via `nix shell nixpkgs#poppler-utils`) on the lab solution PDFs, keep only problem statements and the first solution paragraph (grep -v headers, pseudocode, page numbers), then write one-line answers (vertices/edges/problem/algorithm/time or subproblem/recurrence/answer/order/time). Scanned handwritten official exam solutions are not text-extractable, so answers written for those must be flagged as unverified. Put a 'never blank' section first (type-spotting keywords + lines writable without insight) and a 'match this table' mapping exam phrasings to the closest solved example.