Everything required for the exam has been covered throughout the year in class but what do you do with this now? The best place to start would be turning to past papers, assessment schedules, and examination reports that contextualise how the concepts will be assessed and to what extent. Look out for marks allocated to a question or the criteria for a higher-marked question. As you go through these resources, a good question to ask yourself is what do you already know? And honestly, what are you struggling with?
Identifying the latter helps indicate what you must prioritise during your study period. The skills and topics you are struggling with or behind may take longer to revise and ensure the foundational concepts required to pass are retained. Prioritising might include considering focusing on two out of three papers for English for example if you’re not feeling as confident in passing or the credits are not necessary to attain. It could also include skipping Level 1 Physics if you will not be taking Level 2 Physics as this makes the most sense. In either scenario, these are important considerations to help manage your time and effort according to your academic situation.
The needed information can be found in your notes from class and textbooks used at school. To further your understanding of the content, other extra bits and pieces you need can be found with a quick Google search or a tutorial on YouTube. In conjunction with exam resources like schedules and reports themselves, it would be worthwhile to compile all this information and rewrite your notes to help click things together. This could look like colour coding certain parts of the topic, practising active recall, to then answering a past exam paper while timing yourself as if you were in an exam. This stimulates the time pressure and helps familiarise yourself with the potential nerves on exam day.
Once the content clicks, you can create a strategy or a ‘cheat’ sheet on how to approach the exam that could highlight keywords to look for in the question and significant concepts that your answer should include to name a few. This ‘cheat’ sheet should be less extensive to your notes and more of a summary that could act as quick reminders to whizz over before the exam.
An all-nighter before your exam the next day is not going to cut it. To work through all the content required to pass or even reach those higher grades, will require dedication towards a certain amount of time each day to one exam and a different subject on another. You would typically want to prioritise which exam is coming up first to the last. Compartmentalising your time and effort will help juggle different concepts for various exams without necessarily neglecting one. This can look like separating subjects into manageable, small chunks or setting yourself a goal to tackle this topic by the end of the day or until you are confident before moving on to the next thing. A careful balance may make a big difference in passing both your English and Math exams, rather than passing with high marks in English and not passing in Math at all.
Where you study will undoubtedly influence how you can stay motivated to study sustainably. Your bedroom or in the library are suitable; they provide a quiet space to think. Being in this same space every day, however, may become unmotivating or prone to procrastination as nothing ‘interesting’ is coming out of it. To help stimulate your brain, it may be worthwhile to be more proactive in deciding where you study to boost energy levels. This could include starting small and studying in a different place in the library or extending this to cafes with WiFi. Either way, choosing your space to study can make a small difference to help towards keeping motivated and making studying fun and less tedious along the way.
As studying for exams induces stress and anxiety, practising self-care does not necessarily have to be stunted as you study. Grades are important but also coming out of exams on the other end not burnout is essential. While everyone’s approach to self-care may differ, some space and time for your mental and physical health should be accounted for either way. It could mean keeping up with everyday care like eating well, getting plenty of sleep, scheduling downtime, as well as spending time with your friends or going to the gym. Regular maintenance could help with your academic performance to focus clearly and think critically, reduce anxiety and stress, and recharge to tackle another productive study day with a positive attitude.
Anticipation the day before your exam could manifest in studying in a hurried panic or the complete opposite, acting insensibly. Things to consider as your exam looms closer could be:
The day will come when you will have to sit through the exam. You will come out on the other side of it soon enough. Concepts and topics may be running through your head but when it comes to exam time, you might also want to give thought to:
Though preparing for and sitting external exams can be arduous, these few things briefly mentioned here could make the most of your time and effort so that it doesn’t have to. Best of luck!