Whether you are preparing for an exam in high school or college, preparing for it can be a stressful endeavor that sometimes will overwhelm students. The key to it all is to make sure that you have a method set up so that you can be at your peak performance level when you sit down to take that test, and that you are setting yourself up for the best chance at success. Preparation doesn’t start and stop the night before the exam, and developing good habits when it comes to studying for your exams will not only help you in the short term, but create something that will help you for the rest of your life.
It’s Never To Early To Start
When you know that an exam is 2 months away, the easiest thing for anyone to do is to start the procrastination cycle. This is where you convince yourself that the test is so far off that you don’t need to worry about it, and that you have plenty of time to study before it actually comes around. Then suddenly the two months have passed, you only have a few days left to study, and your stress level starts to go through the roof as you think to yourself that there just isn’t enough time left to prepare. That is a habit that needs to be broken, and even if you do not go into it with the same voracity that you would if the test was that same week, starting way before “crunch-time” is going to ensure that you not only have the information down pat, but that you will remember it long-term.
Notes and Flashcards
The best study-aid that anyone can have for a test is their own notes taken from classes or from assigned readings. If you are reading or hearing something for the first time, make sure to write it down so that you can refer to it later when you are reviewing. A high percentage of the material that we read gets lost in the transmission from short term memory to long term memory simply because we haven’t spent enough time learning the terminology or substance. For really in-depth subjects like medicine or things like history which has so many different dates and people to deal with, it is almost impossible to retain everything we read or hear the first time around. The notes are where we can look back and refresh our memory in order to insure that it does make it into the long term part of our brains.
When you are reading the text, and you come across a term, a date, an event, or something specific that you are just learning for the first time, or which you feel might be on the test, you should put it down on a flashcard. These flashcards are for your own personal use, so you can decide how best to create them, but by creating flashcards way in advance, you will have study materials already completed when the exam gets closer. The best way to take full advantage of flashcards is to carry them around in your bag or backpack so that you can refer to them when you have some down time. Great times to review these flashcards are when you are at home watching television and the commercials have started, when you are stuck on the bus heading to campus, when you are between classes just standing in the hallways, or when you have free time in one of your other classes. Everyone has a few spare moments through-out their day where they are just waiting or wasting time, and if you can pull out your flashcards and briefly review material, you are going to be a few steps ahead of the curve.
Keeping up with the Readings and Attending Classes
It is usually a given, that the most difficult material covered during a quarter, semester, or year is going to end up on the exam. Usually your teacher or professor will impress upon you what is really important, and what you will be tested over when the time comes. By attending classes and keeping up with all of the assigned readings, you will be setting yourself up to succeed. Skipping class, or expecting to catch up on the last night with the readings is a recipe for disaster, because there might be material that you do not understand. Likewise, some of the material may be very “heavy” and you may need breaks in between reading sessions in order to fully grasp concepts. In order to set yourself up the best way possible, this makes it important to attend your classes and keep up in the text.
While most of us can teach ourselves key concepts and learn through reading, it can be very beneficial to get together with a friend or group of friends in order to go over the study material. Quizzing each other on topics as well as sharing your thoughts on the subject matter will make sure that everyone understands the methodology of the course. Sometimes one student will grasp one section of the course better than another, and having someone to bounce thoughts and ideas off of will benefit everyone involved. This can also be a great time to pull out the flashcards and quiz each other about the important terms and definitions to make sure that everyone involved knows what’s going on in the course.
Figure out What Time of Day you Learn best
Everyone has a different scale with which they learn material, and it is important to figure out when you are most able to come away with memorized information. Some people learn best by studying on the weekends, some work better in the evenings, and others like to do it in the morning before heading off to class. By figuring out what time of day you best retain information, you will save yourself time in the long-run by using that to your advantage. If you learn best at night, then you want to make sure you are studying at night in order to take full advantage of your own learning abilities.
Setting Yourself Up To Succeed The Night Before The Exam
No matter how many times you think it has worked or how many stories you have heard about cramming for tests the night before an exam, the proven fact is that it doesn’t really work. By doing this, you are forcing a lot of information into your short term memory, and you are hoping that you can remember it all the next day. By simply going to sleep, you are going to forget a lot of it, and by the information not making it to your long-term memory, you are even less likely to remember it the following week. When you are taking courses that will directly affect your profession, or course that you take later on in your academic career, you want to make sure that you learn the information rather than just memorizing it. This means that you have to prepare before the last night, and when the night before the test arrives, you need to have the fortitude to follow some easy steps. The first, and most important, is to get a good night sleep so that you are well rested during the exam, and that your brain is working at peak performance. You also want to try and eat healthy not only that night (so you sleep well) but at breakfast on test day as well so that you don’t end up crashing during the exam or slowly wearing down as you are taking it. If you cram, you are more likely to be tired at the test, and far less likely to retain any of the information you have just learned.
