If you’re here a night before your exam, then we recommend you to go to bed and sleep well to wake up refreshed the next day. If, however, you’ve got a month to prepare for your exams and you’re looking for effective ways to utilize this time without wasting a second, you’re at the right place.
Don’t Rush
Effective revision becomes impossible when you rush. To make sure that you’re getting sufficient time to revise, start early. When you start early, you don’t only feel relaxed, but also get time to organize your revision plan.
Besides, last-minute cramming is quite stressful and often makes you forget what you had learned earlier. To avoid pulling all-nighters, develop a healthy routine fix the same time for your daily revision.
Always remember that studies need to be organized, just the way you set times for other activities or commitments.
Set SMART Revision Goals
Setting SMART revision goals can make the goal seem more achievable; this way you’ll be better prepared to ace your exams. Here are some tips to set SMART goals:
Specific: Your goals should always be clear and precise. Don’t try to mix things up. Just stick to the point, set a single goal at a time and pursue it without getting distracted.
Measurable: Before you set any goals, plan the ways in which you’ll track your progress. You can do this by creating short tests for yourself. Creating questions from the study material will also help you see the content from a tutor’s perspective and prepare well.
Attainable: Don’t set targets that already sound unattainable. Many people set unrealistic goals and feel disappointed when they fail to achieve those goals. If you don’t want to be demotivated, make sure you set obtainable goals and reward yourself every time you meet your targets. Those rewards don’t always need to be too big. You can reward yourself with your favorite candies, chocolates, 20 minutes of free time, or even a walk to the park with your pet!
Relevant: Don’t go overboard while setting goals, especially if there’s only a limited time left to your exams. Make sure that your goals are relevant and you only plan to revise the topic that is expected to appear in the exams, and not wasting time on practicing science experiments that your instructor only asked you to perform for a better understanding of concepts during the term.
Time Scales: Mark deadlines. There’s no point in setting goals if you’re being lenient with the timing. Remember that you’ve got a very limited time and hence you need to achieve goals within a prerequisite time, otherwise move to the next goal. At first, setting time frames will seem a bit tricky, but once you’ll get the hang of it, your timing will become more realistic.
Food for Thought
A student’s thinking and learning abilities are directly related to the food they eat. Studies indicate that nutrition plays a primary role in developing your mental health.
To stay active when you’re focusing a major part of your time towards intensive revision and studies, you need to follow a balanced diet. Having a balanced diet doesn’t mean that you restrict the foods you’re eating every day.
Instead, you can eat everything you want to, ONLY in the right proportions! Consuming the food in the right quantities is critical to maintaining healthy body weight and keeping your tummy happy!
Fun Tip
Want to incorporate healthy food in your diet? Make an alphabetic list of healthy foods you can think of, hang the list on a wall, or stick it on your refrigerator and try to add them to your regular diet, if possible. Let’s look at some alphabet-driven food ideas! Complete the list and start eating healthy from today!
A
apples, almonds, avocado, arugula
B
bananas,broccoli, blueberries
C
carrots, cauliflower,cherries, celery
Exercise Regularly
Regular exercise is one of the keys to excellent health. Exercise positively impacts a person’s hippocampus (which plays a primary role in memory and learning) and prefrontal cortex (which affects executive functioning). In this way, exercise plays a key role in boosting your ability to focus and retain important information and supports your creative thinking and decision-making abilities.
Preparing for your exams doesn’t have to be dull. You can surely take out some for exercise, gaming, and fun. It will have a positive effect on your physical and mental health and you can indulge in activities like racing, sports, jumping to feel refreshed. If, for instance, you like jump rope races, do that! They are an effective cardio workout and offer leg exercise as well.
Pomodoro your way to an A*
Ever hear about the Pomodoro technique?
Setting realistic revision goals is certainly hard, and achieving them can be even harder; but not anymore! This amazing technique can help you easily power through distractions, focus, and achieve your revision goals in short bursts; while allowing you to take frequent breaks to breathe in the fresh air.
Regardless of your age, you can get started with the Pomodoro method in the following steps;
- Decide what you need to do; set a target.
- Set the Pomodoro (your timer) to 25-30 minutes.
- Study/ Revise carefully until the Pomodoro rings
- Take a break
- After every 4 Pomodoros, you can take a longer break (i.e., 15 to 30 minutes) and do whatever makes you feel ready to start another session.
- Record each session with a tick in your notebook or a sheet of paper.
Always remember that Pomodoro is an indivisible unit of work. That is to say, there should be no distraction in between. If you get distracted, you either need to end the Pomodoro there or postpone the distraction. Try to inform the people you think can distract you, before starting on with the technique and call them back when you’re done.
Hire an Affordable Online Tutoring Service
If you think you need help in preparing for the exams, don’t worry!
Access2Success is a reliable online tutoring company,where we have a team of qualified and experienced tutors who help their students learn complex concepts, solve problems, and revise for tests.
From online elementary courses to middle school tutoring, Access2Success offers the best online tutoring services.
Check out our pricing details today and get in touch with us at 202-897-5826 to learn more.