by Farhat Hussain

Created on: July 07, 2009

Studying is hard. It's a simple and well-known fact. Follow these guidelines and your worrying days are over! You can sit your exams with ease!

1. Make sure you prepare months before!

Many people often think that they are intelligent enough to sit an exam without careful preparation for it. Rookie mistake! Preparing for an exam is a long process. Primarily because there is so much to learn for each exam. Regardless of how short we think it may be, we do not know the questions that will appear on it. Therefore, a revision timetable should be made and followed at least three months before an exam in order to make sure that you will be able to answer every possible question that will appear.

2. Make your own notes!

We often rely on our teachers to explain and help us to understand every aspect of our exams. Now I know what you're thinking, what's wrong with expecting your teachers to teach you? But the thing is, some teachers will teach you everything but you won't understand it. Others will teach you some but expect you to cover certain areas of work yourself. And the majority will think they are teaching you but you won't actually gain anything from their lessons because they just can't teach because their methods are just beyond you. This leads us to the obligation to make our own notes and teach ourselves. We cannot rely on our teachers as they are not the ones who have the possibility of failing. The burden rests on our shoulders.

3. Experiment!

There are many different ways to revise and whatever way suits you best is based on what type of learner you are. Whether you are a visual, kinaesthetic or auto kinetic learner there are plenty of options for you. It is often best to explore every possibility until you find what you are most comfortable with. You can do spider diagrams, posters and pictures if you are a visual learner. Listen to podcasts about your work if you are auto kinetic and teach it to others in order to consolidate your understanding if you are kinaesthetic. A mixture of them all can prove to be most helpful.

4. Pace yourself!

Make sure you don't cram too much information into one day of work! Doing so can only damage what you have previously learnt as there is simply too much information on your mind and you will struggle to remember it all. Taking regular breaks between each chunk of work that you do is most beneficial as there is only certain amount of time that you can concentrate for. Be sure to schedule regular breaks in your revision timetable!

5. Never underestimate the power of last minute revision!

Last minute revision is simply reviewing everything that you have been teaching yourself in the three months prior to the exam. Most people tend to think that they should either just revise last minute or just revise months before the exam. This could not be more wrong!
Revising months before ensures that you slowly learn the correct information which will become embedded in your long-term memory.
Last minute revision helps jog the memory and keeps a substantial amount of what you read minutes before entering the examination room in your short-term memory. Therefore, you get the best of both worlds!

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