incipient-lustre

Hey! I’m just going to list a load of things that I find work for me! Start early! Push yourself to start today instead of tomorrow. Give yourself as much time as you can to study!Motivate yourself! For me, my motivation stemmed from the fact that I have a conditional offer for my dream course of veterinary medicine. I needed to study hard in order to reach the grades I need to get in! Practice questions! Cannot stress how important these are. I have been known to focus the bulk of my revision only on practice/past paper questions. For me, I find these invaluable, especially as I am a kinaesthetic learner. Even if you’re not, they provide you with a basis for what your exam will be like. Future questions may be similar. Summarises! I find that after I have gone through several past papers, they’re often areas which I am weak in. I like to make summaries of my notes on these areas until I feel confident with them! Rewriting notes! For me, reading notes doesn’t yield much benefit. Instead I prefer to rewrite old copies of my notes into more condensed versions which are simple and easy to glance over.Flashcards! I find these great for learning terms or steps in a reaction for example. Looking over them multiple times a day helps me to remember them. Take breaks! I learn and study so much better if I take regular breaks. For me, I find that a 25min with 5min breaks works for me. In that time I do nothing related to studying and clear my head for a bit so I am ready to continue.

Okay, so you’ve got 4 days. I don’t know if you’re in school at this point or not?What I would do:Focus. For me, the fast approaching test would motivate me to get down to grips with the work, but this may not be the case for you. If so, I would recommend looking at masterposts on motivation (I think @areistotle has one).

Manage your time. Obviously if you’re on study leave or something then you have full days to work with, if not that’s still fine. Select the most important parts of the course and focus most on them. Do practice questions and past papers - these are invaluable! If you can do them until they’re so easy and boring then you’re doing great! If you find you have time, make summaries of your notes/textbook/class presentations. Condense everything into a few sheets so it doesn’t take long to look at and review. This really doesn’t have to be the prettiest piece of revision ever, just choose a method which works for you.

Take breaks. Honesty I know I struggle to stop as I keep pressing myself to continue if I have only a short time until an upcoming test. But seriously, regular short breaks can help. Find a period that works for you, eg half an hour with five minute breaks. Don’t think about your studying during the break. Do some burst exercise or read a page of a book or even do some juggling (this really helps you to focus on something else for a short period).

Don’t panic. While a little stress helps to motivate me, too much overwhelms me and I cant work so well. This test is not the be all and end all of everything. Maybe you can resist it if you need to or maybe it won’t even matter at all what your grade is. There’s always other tests you can improve on.

Be positive. If you go into the test feeling like you can ace it, then you actually feel more positive and for me I feel like I can attack the questions much better.