How to Stay Motivated During Revision Time

DON’T SLOUCH ON THE COUCH:
RISE UP AND REVISE!

Procrastination can be described in many ways:

procrastination/prə(ʊ)ˌkrastɪˈneɪʃ(ə)n/
noun
the action of delaying or postponing something.

It is said to be the Thief of Time. A waste of your life. Absolutely pointless. But it is also actually human.

No-one should feel guilty for wanting to take a break sometimes at an appropriate moment. As the saying goes:
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
It also makes him an exhausted, overstressed, unhappy and unproductive boy!

Managing your breaks is the key to unlocking successful revising time.
Start by working out how long you have until your exam and how confident you are with the subject. Basically, the longer the time and the better you rate your knowledge, the more breaks you can fit into your days.

So if I had an exam in a week that I had done no revision for, I'd need to make sure that my procrastination time was down to a minimum. If the exam was in a couple of months and it was one of my favourite subjects, I'd be able to include lots of time for breaks.

This system varies, however, depending on your best way of learning. A lot of exams are just memory tests so you have to find out which is better: your short term memory (remembering things that you learnt recently) or your long term memory (your memory of things that you learnt a while ago). Most people are a mixture of the two and are slightly better at one or the other. If you realise you are more likely to remember something you revised recently then it might be worth making sure your revision gets more and more organised the closer the exam gets. And if you think you've got a better long term memory, it might help if you really focus on starting your revision as soon as possible rather than cramming loads of information into your head with a couple of days to go. You cannot afford to start your revision late, though, or do the opposite and think your revision is sorted just because you started early.

The most important point is that there is no such thing as a bad memory. Everyone can remember loads of stuff – you just need to know how to train your brain! We all find it much easier to remember stuff that we are interested in compared with stuff that is boring for us. We just have to discover ways to get those dull facts into our heads.

One way of improving your memory is sleeping properly. If you're struggling to sleep six hours per night, your brain will take in much less revision than if you're getting a solid seven or eight hours. When our brains are given enough time to rest and recover from hard (and often boring!) days of revision then they will be able to take in much more tomorrow. Sleep is especially important on the night of the exam but I’ll cover that more in another article which will be published really soon.

It is crucial when tackling your revision you make a revision timetable. Here is an example:

	0900	1100	1300	1400	1600	1800
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

Written by Edmund Cox

Exam Tomorrow?

No Worries!
what to do just before an exam

Picture a familiar scene: it’s the night before one of my biggest, hardest exams. I feel tired, stressed, underprepared and scared. ‘I’m definitely getting the lowest in the class,’ I think, ‘and my parents and teachers are going to kill me. What can I do?!’ I can’t cope anymore and I break down into tears.

But then I realise there is hope…

We all feel like I did sometimes. The trouble is no-one really tells us what to do or how to cope the night before (or even in the morning before!) an important exam. That’s just because there is no one way that works for everyone. Like so much of revising, it’s up to us to find the best approach that will help us. That can be so difficult, though!

We need to begin by making sure that we start our revision as soon as possible. Even if we had the best memory in the world, would we really be able to remember everything we learnt in every single lesson we ever had? Chances are, probably not. Even Einstein revised to do his work! So we should just get on with it.

If you feel like you have been regularly revising the main topics of your subject for a couple of months then you should be well on your way to the success you deserve. An important point about revision, however, is that we always feel we could be doing more. This isn’t usually the case. We have busy lives and the examiners are aware that we aren’t going to know it all – otherwise what’d be the point of the test?

The key is to worry and stress as little as you can. Go to bed the night before the exam believing that you know enough. There’s no point doing last minute tests on yourself. Quite often you won’t be able to remember the basics because the exam’s time, the equipment you need and the exam itself are all you can think about. This is normal and should not cause you to panic. When you’re in that exam hall, everything comes back into your mind because it becomes your main focus. Have a look over the main things you need to know to make sure they’re in your head but only do this if you know it won’t distress you.

Getting enough sleep the week before your exam is important but it is crucial you get loads of sleep before the exam. Scientific studies have shown that we remember much more when we are relaxed and fully rested compared with when we are stressed and tired. So even if you are desperate to squeeze in that final bit of revision, save it for the morning if you have time.

Lastly, remember that we shouldn’t care too much about what other people think. Yes, it’s great when we do well in an exam and all our teachers and family are proud of us and it is always great to know that we got the highest mark in our class or school. But that is not why we learn. We learn to do the best we can and be the best person we can be. If we’ve tried our hardest, we shouldn’t worry about our results and what others might think. We shouldn’t allow fear of others’ points of view take us over. The most important person’s opinion is our own. If we think we’ve done as well as we could, that’s all that matters.

So when it comes to the last minute preparations for an exam, just remember that if we can conquer our worries and fears we will usually see how irrelevant they are. This will help us sleep better, remember more and have the confidence we deserve to have when entering that exam hall.