Yes, my friends, it is that time of the year again. Exam season is fast approaching and some of us have already made a start on revision. This post is, well, intended for those who haven’t.
I decided to compile the best tips and tricks that I have in my arsenal in order for you to progress towards revising fast and productively. Procrastinating on academic duties during the winter holidays is not unfamiliar for any of us: tired after a semester of work and squeezed between preparations for Christmas and family and friends reunions, one can easily forget about studying. And then the New Year comes and boom. Your exams are less than two weeks away.
This year, I have been better with exam revision than during the rest of my degree: I did work quite hard this semester to be familiar with the material before the actual revision commenced, and I started early into my holiday which was spent at home, in Romania. But let’s be honest, last thing you’d like to hear about is how much starting revision early can help you get a good grade. Nope, we want real, applicable solutions and that’s what I am here to deliver today.
The magic about the tips that I am here to give you is that they can be used by any student currently facing examination assessments, regardless of the course. They are flexible, and they have worked for me. I wouldn’t even try to BS you if I wasn’t onto something. So for advice on how to revise well in a limited time gap, keep on reading.
First of all, you’ve got to assess yourself.
How much do you actually know? Chances are, you’re not completely in the dark about the subject you’re supposed to study for. Although you might not be keen on hearing how important early preparation is, if you already attended your classes, took some notes or discussed with your peers, you might have some useful information already in possession. Sit down with yourself and decide whether that’s your case. It’s okay if it isn’t, self-reflection is just the place to start when you plan what you’ll be doing next.
Based on your current knowledge, you will be setting your strategy. Let’s say you’ve got to prepare for an exam with four core chapters, out of which you are familiar with one, and you’ve got two weeks left until the much dreaded day. One way you could go about it is to focus on studying the three chapters you don’t know that well (let’s say for three days each), revise the chapter you already know after that (for two days), reserve two more days for an overall revision of the entire material, and voila. You’ve got two more free days you can use for revision or for anything else you have in mind.
What if you’re completely in the dark, though?
It can happen to the best of us. Maybe you just haven’t had the chance or the motivation to engage with the material when you did go through it in class, but it’s too late now to cry over spilled milk now. You have two weeks left on your hands, and you’ve got to make them count.
Start by having a quick browse through your notes, the notes of a colleague or your textbook; anything would do. After skimming through the material, decide which chapters or topics seem the most tedious or challenging, and which you think you can grasp quite well faster. Based on this hierarchy, prioritise what you find most complicated and move on to what you find easier later. Divide your time accordingly, and try your best to focus on one topic at a time to assimilate better. Whether we like it or not, exams are often a gamble: you might just be lucky enough to have to write about the topics you studied about the most, or not. In this regard, try and gain a basic understanding of all the topics covered in the material before moving on to specifics, especially if you know your exam will consist of essay-based questions. In fact, you can’t write about something you know nothing about.
Make practice questions your new best friend.
In uni and at sixth form level alike, your teachers will probably give you practice tests to familiarise yourself with the structure of your upcoming exam. Practice questions also happen to be a brilliant way to revise as they provide you with a practical use of the information you are trying to memorise; using the information is an efficient mnemonic device. If possible, get your hands on some example questions to test your knowledge and use what you already know, or assimilate what you’re still uncertain about.
This also works for both multiple-choice and essay-based questions!
How do you actually study, anyway?
I could write an entire post in itself about study methods and how to find the style of studying suitable for you, but with two weeks before your exam, we don’t exactly have time for that. But if you don’t know yet which study methods work best for you, what have you done all this time? Certainly not studying, am I right?
Jokes aside, a particular study technique does not work the same for two different people: what might do wonders for one, might not help or might even throw another off. Based on your way of assimilating and making sense of the information that you learn, you should be equipped with a few study methods that work for you. You have probably heard of visual learners, kinaesthetic learners, etc. Yeah, that kind of thing. You should fit in one of those categories, or at least resonate with a certain study technique that goes under one of these labels.
But instead of looking into it, for now, you should use self-reflection to identify what particularly creates results for you. Do you easily retain information while writing it down? Do you like listening back to recordings of your lectures while you study? Do you use flash cards? Do you draw diagrams? Think of all the things that work for you when you study and do exactly that. If nothing comes to mind, try some of these methods yourself and see if anything sticks. You’re not really looking for the perfect study method right now, but for one that can make do until after your exam.
When choosing your desire methods for studying, remember that the point of learning is to reduce the material to the very essential. Work your way from the bottom up, start with a lengthy lecture and get to a few basic sentences of what that session was all about. Try also to engage with the material rather than mechanically memorising it; if you don’t grasp the fundamentals, you won’t be able to reproduce them on the exam paper.
You can also ask for help.
In theory, you should have plenty of support resources available as far as assessment goes. Could it be a teacher or student well-being services from the institution that you attend, you have to remember that you’re not alone in this! And because it’s an exam and it’s incredibly stressful, and the idea that your performance will be marked does not help either, it is completely normal to feel overwhelmed and fearful, and struggle throughout the revision process.
Since at this point, you should have a bit of time before your exam takes place, use that time to get the answers that you need from all relevant sources. It doesn’t necessarily have to be educational staff: if you’re one of those people who enjoys studying with their colleagues, use that in your advantage and ask your peers about the things you’re unsure about. Exchange ideas and be curious: you can’t know what you might be missing on!
Finally, don’t panic!
Although I do plan on touching on this in an upcoming post, I want to say it still now: it is essential that you stay. Calm. At. All. Times. Not just in the examination room, but also throughout the revision process. As I briefly mentioned a paragraph ago, it is very easy to lose yourself when you’re faced with such a challenge. But because it’s so easy, you have to make sure you don’t panic and move your eyes from the prize.
So be patient with yourself, start easy, be relaxed. Yes, panicking will just prevent you from memorising anything and it will make the revision you do unproductive. Make sure you take periodic breaks and you rest enough. Revise smartly and don’t rush: on your exam paper, it will all be about quality and not quantity.
Hopefully by employing these tips, you’ll be doing great in your exams! Because I deal with exams myself this year and I know how harrowing the process can be (even worse than a written assignment!), I’ve decided to bring you a post on exam tips and tricks every week this month. If there’s anything specific you’d like me to cover, please do let me know in the comments section below!
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