It's the year end festive season and shucks, it's also the exam season. You want to celebrate but you also need to study. What a dilemma - too much time celebrating is going to cost you. Focus on studying and you have to sacrifice that party night. Oh well, it's your choice. How about striking a balance and have the best of both worlds? This would require effective and efficient studying techniques. Try the following revision tips for your coming exam.
Plan your study schedule. Planning always comes first. How much time can you set aside to study? What is the subject to study? Let's say 2 hours in the day (considering that classes are still on) and 3 hours at night? It's quite difficult to find a really quiet place to study in campus, there are always people around you. Maybe it's good to use this time to practice your Accounting or Mathematics since you can't really concentrate on trying to understand the Keynesian model of aggregate demand. You can leave your Macroeconomics until you have had your dinner, tell your room mate to shut up, lock yourself in, and start drawing those 45-degree graphs. Don't study too long at any one time. After every 30 minutes or so, take a break of about 5 minutes. It may also be good to change subjects - 90 minutes for Subject 1 and 90 minutes for Subject 2. Have a bit of variety so that you won't get so stale. During weekends, with no classes, you can schedule studying slots in the morning, afternoon, and night.
Make summary notes and draw learning maps. Use colored papers or pencils to add some spice to your learning. Summary notes are frequently used by many successful students - it's especially useful when you have to memorize lots of facts. I notice that girls are especially skillful in doing these summary notes on pieces of colorful cards which they can take out easily for a quick revision anytime anywhere. Guys are quite hopeless at this!!
Doing past years examination questions is also a great help. After many rounds of examinations, the questions asked would be more or less similar. You would also be able to notice the more popular topics that are asked frequently. If you're lucky, you may find some familiar questions being asked in your exam. Of course, don't forget revising and redoing your tutorial questions. They are a guide as to what the important areas are and these areas may likely be asked in the exam.
Group discussions may be useful. A few good friends can gather together for one or two sessions and ask each other questions to see how much understanding or memorization is achieved. Try to stick to the topic, be disciplined, don't drift off into starting a gossiping session.
Do some physical exercises - it increases oxygen flow to your brain and helps you to study better and more productively. Just do some stretching or dip into the pool for a swim. Refresh yourself. Eat well and sleep well. What's the point of burning the midnight oil? You sleep late and you wake up late - you're back to square one.
And lastly, be positive. It's not the end of the world if you don't score in your exam. There are many people who have done very well in life but had not been exactly brilliant at school. So take the pressure off yourself. Just do your best, give it your best shot. If you fall down, just get up and fight another day. Good luck.
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