It’s that time of year, ladies! Snow is on the ground, classes are over, and finals are rapidly approaching. We know pulling all-nighters and living off of caffeine is bad for us, but somehow it just keeps happening. So in order to avoid the past repeating itself, I came up with some tips and asked seniors as well for their holy grail tips to ace those exams.
1. Organize: Trying to tackle studying for a class all at once may be overwhelming. Try to spread out your work by scheduling chunks of a project or topic to study for different days. I personally like to make a to-do list first, and then schedule how I’m going to get everything done. Don’t forget to schedule a lot of study breaks in between subjects. You’ll be less stressed while studying, and more confident when exam day comes.
2. Focus: Turn off distractions. Find a quiet lounge to study in and put your phone in your backpack.
3. Meditate: The great thing about meditating is that you can do it anywhere. Meditating and yoga are great ways to relieve stress and develop a higher sense of self-awareness. Like McKenzi MacDowell said at the December meeting, “A high self-awareness score is one of the strongest predictors of success.”
4. Make a playlist: Many people study best when music is playing. Make a playlist of your favorite music long enough to last a few hours so you don’t have to keep changing or choosing the songs. If you find that songs with words are too distracting, try classical music. There are tons of playlists on Spotify. Here are a few of my favorites:
Piano In the Background
Study Vibes
Classical New Releases
Monday Motivation
5. Say it out loud: Reading your notes out loud can help you to memorize important information and definitions.
6. Rewrite it: As it is similar to repeating information out loud, rewriting information serves as a memorization strategy as well
7. Highlight: When it comes to cumulative exams, it can be difficult to remember every single piece of information you learned over the semester. Highlighting main ideas and important information can help you review.
8. Study with a friend or group: Studies show that active learning methods are very effective. Asking your friend to quiz you on material can help when you are retrieving information from your memory during a test. Also, other people may have picked up on information you missed, so you can learn more when studying in a group.
9. Make a study guide: Make a study guide with all the information you’ll need to know for your exam and put it all in the same place. Include all the relevant information from the textbook so you don’t have to keep flipping through. It doesn’t matter whether it’s written down and stapled together or all typed in one Word document. You’ll notice you don’t feel so scattered when you start studying.
10. Be confident: When exam day comes, trust your instincts! If you take the time to prepare, you should be confident that you will do your best.
