Exam strategies

Oh wow. FIRST YEAR OF UNIVERSITY IS OFFICIALLY FINISHED! SLEEP HERE I COME!

Since last Sunday I have been cramming revision like crazy and my eyes are so sore. This has never happened to me before, probably because I've never revised so much for exams (which is a good thing I guess?). I had an exam last Monday and Thursday, then wrote a whole script/essay thing on Friday, and an exam today (Monday).

I'm pretty proud of how much I prepared, so hopefully I can snag some good grades this semester to boost up my GPA.

This post is serving as some much needed closure for the craziness of the previous week. Currently I'm also reflecting on what I could have forced myself to do earlier ahem script assignment ahem.

University classes finished ages ago, so these past two weeks have been full on self-motivated study sessions. And let me tell you it was a real struggle. I'm pretty proud that I pushed past procrastination (most of the time), mainly fuelled by stress and the fear of failing. But once you're in the flow, you're good to go! [wow is that rhyming lame or what]

BTW I'm so proud of these summaries :') so neat for my standards

Anyway, down to the real point of this post - strategies for exam prepping and studying. I'm going to tell you a few of my strategies and techniques that, I'll be honest here, depending on the day either do or don't work so I'll either switch strategies half way through or just procrastinate the day away! Side note: coming back to this post will be useful for me when I forget how to study after these 3 months of holidays :)

*disclaimer* I’m not a star student so dis be at least a list of stuff I do to cram for an exam

Study strategies

Make flowcharts

I found that making flowcharts is super helpful when you have to memorise a ton of definitions. In the process of creating them, you have to go through the content of the semester and jot down all the key terms. I went through all my lecture notes, slides and reading notes to make sure that I didn't leave any term out. By the end of 13 pages, I roughly new most marketing processes and what each term generally denotes, which was a HUUUUUGE improvement from the cloud of confusion I was wafting in during class.

Please enjoy some of the flowcharts I made for my marketing exam, which summarise all the content for each topic. I neither confess nor deny that I copied the super useful textbook summaries for each chapter.

Go through every possible practice exam

THANK GOSH I remembered to go through the practice exam questions before my international relations essay exam. Half of the questions that we could choose to answer during the exam were identical to the practice exam ones, and luckily I outlined essay points for almost each one the day before.

This is the best strategy ever for exam prep, hands down. I swear they copy and paste the same exam questions for each subject every year, so if you really left minimal time for revision, go through the practice exams. LEGIT LIFESAVING ADVICE.

Go through all the questions you got wrong

YUP. You know that practice exam you just went through? They don't have answers to it. But guess what? You can figure out the correct answer by looking through your notes, and then memorising the correct information for it! So when you're faced with a similar question in the actual exam, YOU GOT IT DOWN PAT.

CONGRATULATIONS YOU GET AN A+++

Write out paragraphs

Especially for essay type or even short answer exams. Find some tutorial questions and pretend that they are exam questions. How would you structure your answer? What information do you know and what info do you need to check to complete this question? BOOM. Ready.

Use a timer

This actually really helped my study flow. When you see that the time is slowly ticking towards 'break', it has a motivating effect. The first few minutes of a study session are so hard and boring, but if you just power through the first 7 mins of it, you shift to the right mindset and it's all G.

My timer is set for an hour work, then break for either 15 or 30 minute intervals.

I'm using the "Be Focused" timer from the App Store on my Macbook and I'm loving it so far!

Schedule your day or plan out the hours for study

This is bae. When scheduling my day hour by hour started to fail during the week, I switched it up and wrote myself simple to-do lists with the number of 'study hours' that I had to complete and tick off. It worked super well and I became soooo productive.

It's such a satisfying feeling when you know you've achieved your goal, and you can proudly cross that task off. It's the best feeling ever!

Well-being during exam time

This is so general and has been said countless times by teachers, family, everyone but these tips really do help. These are like my new 'principles of studying' or something like that.

Drink lots of water

Stay hydrated. Always a good idea. Just have a glass of water with you wherever you're studying.

Change around your setting

I don't know why but it gets kind of boring and monotonous sitting in one workspace for a whole day. I really can't do it unless my study or assignment writing is absolutely mission critical. Usually, I sit at my desk for a little bit, then at the dining table, on the lounge room couch, the other couch, then on my bed, then on the floor, and when I'm feeling super adventurous - outside! You get to sit in a new atmosphere and I don't really know how it helps your productivity, it just does! Try it next time!

Sleep

For some reason, I found it super hard to fall asleep the night before I had an exam which made it annoyingly hard to wake up the next morning at 6am for an 8am exam. Sleep is also good for your brain and memorisation because that's when your neurons make new connections that help you retain the information you learnt that day or something along those lines (I'm no scientist). Maybe the reason I can never remember anything is because I don't sleep enough? Who knows...

Take breaks

However tempting it may be, don’t check social media! In my case, I open my phone, check instagram for notifications (none), start scrolling, AND THEN ITS BEEN 30 MINS. And it just won't do! Inevitably your schedule slides out of whack, then you start feeling unmotivated, then you decide to do something unrelated to work and it becomes an endless cycle of doing anything but study.

But it is important to get up, walk around, distract yourself from your work and pretend for a blissful moment that you're not stressed. Refer to your timer when to break and for how long!

Have snacks

I made myself some home-made 'scroggin' from the stuff we had in the pantry. Almonds, pumpkin seeds, craisins, and of course some chocolate which I may have eaten first up. You know, nuts are good for your brain and study and whatnot so get snacking.

For now, I've written myself an epic to-do list for the holidays including many new blog posts, so I better get crackin'.

Thanks for reading, I hope you learnt something!

All the love N

p.s. the photos looked so nice until I had to compress them for uploading, and it reaaaally annoys me that they are so blurry

p.p.s. the most time consuming activity involved in posting a blog article is the hassle you go through after taking the photos. You have to transfer them to your computer, edit them (if you want), compress them, put them in a folder, upload to the website. It takes absolute AGES! There must be a better way of doing it. Oh well, I'm still posting tho :)