Final Week 6 Study Tips and Tricks Finals week is quickly approaching and it’s crunch time.How you decide to manage ...
Final Week 6 Study Tips and Tricks
Finals week is quickly approaching and it’s crunch time.How
you decide to manage your time and plan your studying over the next couple
weeks will dictate how you perform on exam day.Stay tuned for 6 tips to help you
ace your final exams.What s going on guys!
Let s get straight to it.First and most importantly go into the last couple of weeks with a plan
and get your calendar out and mark the days for each exam.Based on the test days work your way back with how you want to
review the information.For example let’s
say you have a final on Monday December 5th and Thursday December 8th.If the
first test is much harder and requires more studying you may focus solely on that and then only
start studying for test two only after finishing test one.On the other
hand if the first test is easier you may start studying for the second
test well before your first test and then
only study for test 1 for a couple days leading up to it.This obviously depends
on your course load and which finals you have
so figure out what works best for you.Now when I say plan what you re going to study I literally mean write out what chapters or
what topics you plan to review for each day leading up to the exam.Final exams
generally include all of the information since the beginning of the course.I
recommend spending less time reviewing information that was tested on the
midterm and more information from the second half of your course.This is for two
reasons.First you should already be
familiar with information from the first half of the class after all you took a
test on it and therefore you will need less time to review it.Second final exams generally favor information that
hasn’t been already assessed in prior exams. Meaning even though the class is technically supposed
to include information from the whole course
it probably includes a majority of information since after the
midterm.Now when you re making this
plan give yourself some wiggle room.You
will probably fall behind on your schedule
so have a few "catch-up" blocks to account for
this.Also if you are not able to review
all the information that you wanted to on your schedule don t worry it s not the end of the world you can still totally do well on your
exam.Now don t neglect other areas of
your life.True story I had a friend in
college who took pride in the fact that during finals week he would not shower for four or five days
straight at a time.That is disgusting
please do not do this.It s important to remember that you can only study
and absorb so much information in a day. By neglecting other areas of your
life you re not doing yourself any
favors.Remember you have to be
well-rested well-fed healthy and not stinky to maximize return on your
studying and also performance come test day.Because you can only study so many
hours in a day longer hours yields
diminishing returns therefore efficiency is the name of the game.Schedule your
study breaks around meals errands and
exercise.For example wake up have breakfast then study for two hours using
Pomodoro. At your break start laundry
then do another two hours of Pomodoro
then have lunch followed by another two hours of Pomodoro. At this
point you re probably pretty tired of
studying so go to the gym and get a
work out in.I have more information on the Pomodoro Technique in this video
above.Use group study but don t overdo it.Group study is excellent to maintain
motivation and discuss difficult concepts.However it also generally slows you down.Therefore only group study occasionally.Have an agenda
with the group as to what lectures or topics you all want to go over and
this will help keep you guys on track.Taking turns teaching difficult concepts
to one another will also benefit everyone involved especially in classes that
are heavy on concepts and have essay based questions.More on that next.So tailor your study approach based on the
exam.For physics math or chemistry doing loads of practice questions is probably
one of the best ways to prepare for your exam.The exam is gonna have a series of
problems that you need to solve and show your work for.But remember making sure you review and understand the
mistakes you made are also equally important.So
for more conceptual classes like neurophysiology or biology essay questions are more common.Group study
here is actually great to reinforce those difficult concepts.If you can teach a
concept to someone else chances are that
you have a solid grasp of it and you re ready for the exam.For multiple choice
questions memorization is king.I
recommend focusing on flashcards with space repetition.The gold standard for
this is ANKI. It s a free software for your computer and I go over how to use it
in this video above.Be sure to do your scheduled ANKI cards every single
day.Waiting until the last couple of days defeats the purpose of spaced
repetition.I talked briefly about spaced repetition and incorporating Anki into
your study routine in this video above.No all-night! Do not fall into the trap
of thinking that pulling an all-night is the best way to improve your test
score.In very very rare situations is it
ever a good idea to deprive yourself of significant sleep before an exam?It s
more important for you to be sharp than for you to be cramming before your
test.You ll be tired while studying and during test day.Additionally you lose out on the benefits of REM sleep
which actually helps consolidate information you learned.Which brings me to
another point going back to scheduling
your study times and breaks.I recommend you study right before sleeping for
this exact benefit; information learns right before bed has greater rates of
retention use this to your
advantage.Alright guys that is it
for this post.
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