How ‘NOT’ to do Revision
all rights go to kelbin...the original king of (PROO)crastinating :P
This should begin three months before the day of the exam(s). The first thing to do is construct a revision timetable. Every hour of every day should be subdivided into different study periods allowing you to break down the subject(s) into their component parts. Use a different colour for each subject and use bolder shades for study periods nearer to the exam(s) to demonstrate urgency.
It is at this stage that you discover a slight problem as you realise that it has taken you seven or eight weeks to produce this timetable and not only have you lost all that time, but the timetable itself will now be out of date. Once you get over this shock and finally manage to convince yourself to do some serious revision, you find that you are only one week from the exam. So now you have to do three months revision in a single week. Spend the first two days of the week making another timetable.
Because five days now have to accommodate three months work, you must remove sleep from your life and go for a relentless twenty-four hour sleep-free schedule. Spend the whole first day in bed to make yourself ultra fresh and ready to cram three months revision into four days. Within an hour of starting the next day you are likely to feel exhausted so this is the time to start on caffeine tablets. By lunchtime, the probability is that you will have overdosed on them and need to make a journey to your GP for a sedative to calm you down. The sedative is likely to send you into a deep sleep and you wake up the next morning with only three days left and under one hour of three months' revision completed. Therefore, you will have to do a months revision each day.
This is when you will take up smoking; even if you are a lifelong nonsmoker you will suddenly become a 200 a day addict. You'll find yourself pacing up and down your room smoking three or four at a time, stopping only briefly to read the titles of the books you should be reading from and wondering which to read first.
Realising you are getting nowhere, you will treat yourself to a night down the pub. After three hours of solid alcohol abuse, you return home feeling so bad that you immediately fall asleep. When you wake up, with two days to go, you feel worse than you have ever felt in your life thanks to the lethal combination of anxiety, nicotine, caffeine and overall exhaustion, so you return to sleep until mid-afternoon. After a long scream and a prayer to a god you don't believe in for a miracle that couldn't happen, you write the rest of the afternoon off shopping for the best alarm clock that money can buy. On returning home exhausted from six hours of solid shopping you fall asleep again.
On the final revision morning you wake at 4.30am and after exercising, showering and breakfasting, you sit down and prepare a final revision timetable. This done, you have just twelve hours to do your three months of revision. After successfully managing this feat (despite remembering none of it) you give up and go back to sleep so that you'll be fresh for the exam in the morning.
Although the preceding piece was written 'tongue in cheek', you may have recognised an important concept: namely, that it's extremely easy to defer your revision. It's amazing how a pile of washing or an unclean car can suddenly assume such importance that it requires immediate attention
Revision means 'looking again' and many of us commonly associate exam preparation with revisiting past lecture notes and essays. However, some revision actually involves new learning. For example, using notes to write essay plans may mean that you have to supplement those notes in order to cover all possibilities.
It is essential that revision becomes an active process.
Therefore, revision involves the following:
Finding out what you know and understand (and, therefore, what you don't!)
Building on what you know and understand
Discovering what may have slipped your memory
Considering ways of retaining information
Practicing answers
Preparing to show what you have learned
10 common pitfalls to effective revision
1. leaving revision until the last minute
2. reading through notes over and over again
3. writing notes out over and over again
4. writing out essays and learning them off by heart
5. finding ways of putting off revision
6. starting to panic
7. finding revision boring
8. finding revision isolating
9. over-learning
10. too many responsibilities
Don't feel too alarmed if you recognise your own feelings or actions in any of the above pitfalls. Many students find revision boring precisely because they do employ some of these methods
Avoiding the pitfalls
1. Make a revision plan and stick to it. Start revising early.
2. You need to be more active with your notes. Request past exam papers and look in your notes for material related to the questions.
3. Reduce your notes to half the current amount. After two or three weeks, reduce your condensed notes again into key points on index cards or post-its. The process of reduction will help you assimilate information and the resulting cards will provide you with a handy revision resource.
4. If you plan properly you won't need to put off revising. Start early enough to integrate revision into your lifestyle rather than letting it take over. Ensure the plan has sufficient breaks.
5. You don't need to force yourself; you should encourage yourself with goals, breaks and rewards.
6. Work in shorter spells. Vary the topics and the revision methods on your plan. Spend some time working with friends; for example, write 'mock' answers to time and mark each other's work or quiz each other problem areas.
7. Make use of short periods of time such as bus journeys by always carrying small amounts of work or your index cards with you.
8. It's possible to put yourself under so much pressure that you are in danger of 'burning out' before the exam. Try to keep things in perspective. Keep checking what you have learnt. Reduce your material to memory triggers. Eat and sleep properly
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