Some humble tips to prepare for exams
2023-10-05
As I mentioned in my last article, I am currently in a rather stressful, but also very satisfying exam phase. You might ask how such a thing can be satisfying and the simple answer is that it is just amazing to see all of your learning strategies work out, give you a strategic advantage over others, make you extremely confident in succeeding and therefore rather calm when it comes to actually tackling these exams, while others always fear failure and get somewhat paralyzed or nervous by it. Of course, everyone is different and such is his ideal learning technique, but in this article I want to share a few personal, but research-proven tips to prepare for exams nonetheless...
My first recommendation might be a rather unusual one - at least among students - , but can make your life so much easier in the first place. I'm talking about keeping as much knowledge as possible active instead of forgetting about it within a month or two and having to relearn everything for your exam later on. This makes absolute sense when you think about it as it even feels intuitively easier to keep doing what you already know - even if it's just for a few minutes a day - than stop doing it for a longer time and have to basically restart practicing it. The best way I have found to achieve this goal is with the help of daily flashcard sessions, preferably via an app such as Anki that reminds you to study, tracks the things you struggle to learn to show them more frequently to you and has a huge community of people providing free-to-use decks so that you don't have to create everything from scratch. If you are interested in learning more about it, I highly recommend you to read my whole article on it.
Another really important aspect is to plan and structure your learning sessions early on. You most likely know these situations where you are surprisingly hyper motivated to learn, but just don't know where to start and end up watching a video or procrastinating in another way instead. An alternative situation might be that you clearly said out to learn today, but didn't prepare a time slot and therefore ultimately forgot about it at the end of the day. Both of these struggles can be mitigated by creating a clear study plan , which not only reserves time in your calendar, but also has clear topics for every sessions, early on. I personally do it a month in advance, which might seem way too early, but here me out. By doing it this way, I have plenty of time and can most importantly favour more but smaller sessions instead of bigger but fewer ones, which not only helps to keep you motivated by not having to practive math for 3 hours a day, but also makes you feel great by providing the confidence of having done something extremely useful almost every day.
In case you dare to have friends, it is also highly advisable to establish study groups , as they also immensely help with motivation due to peer pressure. When you made an appoint with others to study, it is way harder to skip, since you would have to officially cancel it and answer questions why. Furthermore, it is just more fun to spend time with others, even when you don't practice for the same exam, which clearly outweighs the sometimes lower effectiveness of these sessions. However, these efficiency trade-offs don't have to be the case when practicing for the same exam, as you then can teach others about the subject, which is probably the best way of learning for you too. In general, you should always strive for active ways of learning instead of just reading, hearing or watching something about the topic, as this requires far more brain activity and trains the relevant connections to secure and apply neede knowledge. And what is more active than effectively giving an unprepared lecture to others, who ideally don't know anything about the topic.
Even when you practive alone, I would always advice you to favour practice-oriented learning like solving exercises without any helping material over theoretical approaches. Of course, you need a good grip on the topic and understand its principles, but beyond a certain point that is reached rather ealier than later real-world experience is just much more important. With the flashcard approach you even outsource these theoretical pieces to a short everyday activity and can therefore focus your actual stuy sessions on applying this knowledge, solving difficult problems connecting the topic with other areas and finding answers to open questions.
Last but certainly not least, I want you to prioritize sleep over anything else - even learning . This is a very important attitude in general, as sleep is the fuel for our mental well-being, creativity and overall performance, but it becomes even more important in exam phases, since learning continues subconsciously while sleeping and it doesn't help to know everything, but not be able to apply it dues to severe sleep deprivation over the last couple of days. With that said, I hope you have learned a thing or two and can really shine in your next exam. Feel free to let me know about your experiences in the comments down below and have a great day...