When Christmas trucks appear on silver screen letting us know that “Holidays are coming”, we hurry outside to play snowballs and buy gifts since the most cheerful and joyous time of the year has officially started and nothing can stop us. Nothing, except… finals. Acid looking students are rather poor show, however, exam tradition hasn’t been canceled yet, so we have to put up with it. Here we are to give some hints and don’t worry we won’t advise you that simple truth about time-management and stuff written in each every article within this topic.
Recently the world witnessed protesting Harvard students who wanted exams to be delayed. Surprisingly it has prevented them from exam preparation. But if you’re not Harvard student having special reasons to postpone finals, undoubtedly, there are a number of questions you ask yourself last day before an exam, and we’ll try to cover them.
What to learn?
What should I start with? Which books? Internet? Lecture notes? – Yup, all of these are definitely useful, but you are short of time. There are a couple of options to work it out, so don’t fall into despair.
- If you have enough number of books referring to the course, do the ‘quick read.’ This technique is appropriate for everybody whether you like reading or not. When you write an essay, you probably notice that as a rule the main idea of a paragraph is concentrated in the first sentence. Thus, apply this rule to your material, read out only the beginnings of paragraphs and memorize theses. Besides, try reading aloud, scientists state that it helps to keep in mind more information.
- Watch video lessons, listen to audio lectures and audio books. It is well known, that visual and aural memory helps to develop cognitive skills and even leaves part of the information in your subconsciousness. You can even surprisingly recollect some details in a stress situation during an exam. By the way, if you still don’t have a video tutorial on a certain subject, contact us, and we’ll shoot it for you and even do your homework.
- If you are to prepare for math finals or exam in physics where it’s necessary to learn formulas, try to memorize them as words. Associate each figure and sign with a letter or a word and make it stuck in your head. While struggling with dates for the history exam, try to link the date to a certain event in your life (a trip, sister’s birthday, etc.) or smb’s phone number. But don’t seek dates of family celebrations if you don’t know them, cause eventually, you’ll be in trouble.
How to learn?
Cramming or revising, what’s better? – Firstly, kiss goodbye to cramming, you don’t have time for that. Revising – yes! Find the right time. Actually, any time is right, and if your friends interrupt and distract you with calls or messages, invite a group of them to help. Just don’t turn it into a party, you won’t be in a party mood if you fail the exam. Sit down in a circle and apply all above-mentioned techniques all together: read paragraphs one by one and discuss them. Arm yourselves with popcorn and watch video lessons as if you are in the cinema writing down necessary things. To intensify process a bit more, you can read different material and then explain it to each other.
After all, you can get down to good old cheating. Start preparing cheat notes, and even if you are not able to get to them at the exam, you can at least recall what they are about. Make sure you write everything down, do not print and bring notes to the exam without even looking through them. The reason for this is the ability of your memory to keep in mind those words which you ‘produce’ by yourself, in other words, write them or pronounce.
Should I actually learn?
What if I simply get lucky! But of course, you will! The secret is in the fact that what we call “study for exams” means learn nothing new, but revise. So if you revise at least something, a bluebird will come to you. Believe in yourself. One more thing: don’t forget a cup of coffee. Or a bottle of coffee. Or a barrel of coffee. And hey, the last one. If you wait for a sign to start studying, here it is!
