Just a little less than 3 months left. The taste of summer break is in the air. But wait! There’s one more obstacle before reaching summer break, the most important one of them all, the one that will make your grade swim or sink, it is…Finals! But no need to panic, with these studying tips, you’ll feel more confident and prepared to face down the final boss of tests.
Before I can tell you the secrets of studying, I must lay down the ground rules of what not to do.
- Procrastinating. By procrastinating, you give yourself less time to study. Also with procrastination, if you put it off for so long you might have to cram, which in fact is the worst way to study or you might not study at all.
- Overstudying. Studying may be good, but if you over study, your brain might not be able to pick up on all the information that you’re loading on yourself. Especially if you study multiple topics at once.
- Cramming. This is the absolute worst way to study. By cramming you don’t let your brain completely absorb the information. You can think of cramming as trying to stuff a bunch of shirts into a drawer, if you just throw everything into the drawer it won’t fit. Just like cramming, it gives your brain too much information to properly store it. This makes you forget most information you crammed for.
Now you know what not to do, I can start with the secrets of studying.
To start off, you should start studying in advance for the test. Depending on how much content you’ll be tested over, you should stretch that over a reasonable amount of time. Say if you’re being tested over 3 units, you should take 1 week for each unit. By taking a week for each unit, you’re allowing yourself to study in a timely manner which adds less stress to studying. Also, instead of a week for each unit, you could figure out how many many parts there are in each unit and take a day for each part. For example, if you have a unit with 6 parts, take 6 days to study that unit and go over 1 different part of the unit everyday. You can do this with as many units or parts you’re being tested over.
Another thing to help you study is making sure to get enough sleep. Sleeping is actually the best way to retain information. This is because when you fall asleep, your brain can take in all the information you’ve received and store it into your long-term memory. With this too, studying at night is the best time to study because when you study at night, you go to sleep after which as I said before sleeping is the way your brain best retains information. If you can’t study at night, then try to take naps after studying. Even though you won’t be taking a full night’s rest, a quick power nap will do the trick to help you remember.
Timing for your studying is also important. When I say timing I don’t mean how long in advance to study before, but I mean which subjects you should study first. The subject you should study first is the first subject you’ll have a final or test on. By doing this you can decide which subject to study first. For the rest of the subjects, you should study them in order of when you’ll take your test or final. For example, if you have a math final first then a history final, you would study for the math final first and then the history final.
Finally, the last tip for studying, just be confident for the test, final, or quiz. With the studying you’ve done, you should be confident with yourself when you walk into the class. Don’t let the test anxiety get to you. With all the preparation from studying, the information should be absorbed into your brain like a sponge. If you do start stressing, your mind might go blank because you’re more focused on what grade you’ll get rather than focusing on all the hard work you put in. So make sure you take some deep breaths and walk in with the confidence that you’ll get 100%.
Last but not least, best of luck on any upcoming finals, tests, or quizzes you have.
