10 tips for efficient exam preparation
Approaching exams don’t leave anyone indifferent – even those who are confident and calm by nature suddenly start having this unpleasant feeling of anxiety and loss of control. Anyway, there are some tips and tricks you can follow to ease the burden of the exams – they are listed below.
1. Revise your class notes
Just remember that you write the notes not for the sake of burying them under the piles of books and notebooks – you write them for yourself. The main idea is to get back to them from time to time to make sure that the information gets fixed in your mind.
2. Make visual highlights
This is important because whenever you use a colorful pencil or a marker to highlight some particular part of the text, for example, your brain gets a message that this is something of importance and tends to absorb this information easier.
3. Create a summary after each class
A recap is always a good idea because it’s helpful for quickly grasping the point of the whole lesson. Sometimes due to the abundance of information it’s difficult to distinguish what’s important and what’s not so we get lost between the facts, dates and figures. This is where a clear and concise summary appears to be useful.
4. Draw schemes
Pictures, tables, diagrams and schemes usually convey the same message as text but often they are much more understandable and legible than pure text. It’s easy to come to conclusions just by checking the main parameters there. Whenever it’s possible, draw these visual guides for yourself and the benefits will be obvious.
5. Explain it to a non-existing listener
Pretend to be a teacher yourself and try to deliver the message to some imaginary audience. It’s funny but when you explain the material, you comprehend it better.
6. Ask for help
Remember, you should not be ashamed of asking for help. Discuss everything you are not sure about with your professor, friends, classmates. Most important is the result but not the means which help you to achieve it. Hiring a tutor is another way to save time and boost performance. For more details about the benefits of a private tutor, click here.
7. Apply critical thinking
Work with information. It’s not enough to just read and memorize it. Think, what you can infer from it, conclude and hypothesize. You should aim to learn to use it for your own purposes.
8. Create links to previous material
As soon as you start a new topic, sometimes it may feel as if you’re thrown into the cold water. You immediately forget everything you’ve known before related to the new topic you’re introduced to. Just don’t panic – make associations to what you’ve studied before, create logical links and make the process consistent. If needed, go through your old notes just to refresh your memory.
9. Don’t expect too much
Remember that progress takes time. It’s very unlikely that one studying session will make you more intelligent immediately. However, there is a good saying: “The fall of dropping water wears away the stone”, so stay patient.
10. Minimize distractions
Your active chats, music and Netflix can wait, honestly. You set your priorities in life so if there is a certain period of time when you find yourself out of your comfort zone, – this is OK. You’ll have a chance to reward yourself when you score positive in the exam.
