Tag: exams

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How To Study For An Exam

One of the toughest things about school is of course exams. They are stressful, they are long and they are difficult.

This is how I studied as an undergrad:

I usually stress about it a lot and so I put it off. As I get closer to the date, I procrastinate, clean, go on social media until there is no more time. Then I cram and then I fail.

Here is how I study as a graduate student:

In essence, I study the way I would prepare for a big race or a big competition. At the end of studies, I make a study schedule. I break up the material into even chunks with a day for a practice test and some rest. I set a day for each portion of the class and I find that it is easiest to review material at night before I sleep and then complete practice problems in the morning when the brain is fresh (and also probably the time you will take the exam).

When you complete problems, either have a solution set or ask others what they got. Then go over the wrong ones and try to solve them again.

Two or three days before the test, solve a practice exam. Again go over the problems you got wrong. Try to relax the night before, maybe just go over the material lightly one more time.

Day of the exam, trust your studies.

So the key to studying well is not smarts, but managing your stress and anxiety. The way to manage it is not to think of all the stuff you have to study or how you don’t understand the material but to make a plan.

Of course, this is easier in Graduate school or at schools where you have fewer courses and they are spread out. In my undergrad, we often had a week for all of the finals and usually three or four of them. This means you often have to begin a week before the final material is done. But the key is still to plan out your studies hour by the hour instead of day by day and then work the plan.

 

Resources

Some other resources include some reading, but it’s ok, you’re in college to read and learn, so you won’t mind:

The Anxiety Toolkit: a great book on dealing with all sorts of anxiety by Alice Boyes.

Getting Things Done by David Allan on how to set a plan and work it.

Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg: how to identify a bad habit, break it and create a new one.

You have 40-60 years after college, make it anxiety-free and successful.

 

 

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Finding Focus- The Real Battle Of Being a Student.

focus

The first month of January of 2018 I took on a big goal for me: focus. Focus is elusive for me and most other students. It is something we strive for but for me, with a clear case of un-diagnosed and untreated ADD, it was not easy to deal with. Like other people with ADD I’ve had my share of  half-started projects which were always half-worked on, an obvious effect of lack of clear focus. Finishing something creates a feeling of pride and accomplishment, and lack of it  is always upsetting and depressing. So for the month of January, I decided to develop focus by doing one thing at a time. No social media while working, no task switching. I’m going to do one thing at a time and I’m going to do it well.

First Week

When creating a habit, I find the first week to be the most important and the most trying. It is the week for laying the foundation; if you can lay a good foundation, you will have a very good week two. Step one was to find tools to help me. The first tool was planning. I already plan my weeks in advance but now I really needed to use the block schedule I learned from Deep Work to the best of my ability.

Each block is an hour long. I know that I have a hard time starting and I lose focus midway through. The thing to help with that was the Pomodoro timer. I have one on my laptop and it  helps to start it at beginning of every hour. It is advised to have it for 20 minutes to get started but I set it for 45 minutes. 45 Minutes is great to do good work and at end 5-15 minute break is great to stretch. I can really get into the groove and if I get distracted, I see that I have 20 more minutes and it helps me to push through to the end.

On the block schedule, I really try to put in everything: bus ride home, what I do during that ride, lunches, breaks, rest time. This way I have a realistic week. I also started to keep track of hours on different projects. Planning out the week with most important things to do and how much time I want to spend on school, work, side projects really lets me know where my time is going and how to plan things. I also put at the top of each day the one thing I need to do that day, it can be homework or a specific task, but it is the one thing I can’t forget to do. I even put specific homework problems or sections of code I plan to write for projects. Breaking up work like this for my GRE testing really helped.

Another thing that happens with my ADD brain is that when I’m working on a single task means getting many random ideas. Ideas for new projects and thoughts of things I “should be” doing come up. The mind doesn’t want to focus and usually, I’d go off on the tangent thinking: ” I remembered this! I can’t not do this now or I won’t do it later.” So I get the non-urgent thing done while not focusing on the important thing. This causes me a lot of lost time in the end because I don’t get deep into the task to do it efficiently and on time. The way I solve it is that my weekly schedule planner is near me. On the back side of that sheet is blank and so I write down these ideas and task on it. Then when the break arrives I try to do the tasks. If they are really important, I do them, if not, I don’t. This way I get my main task worked on without interruption and still remember to do the thing I remembered to do while working on the main task.

While working, sometimes silence is terrible. However, music that I used was either foreign music so as not to listen to words or music that has no words.  Listening to podcasts was most often terrible, especially those which have really interesting information. So save those for the block hours when are not busy: lunch, bus ride, etc.

So the first week went pretty well. My Pomodoro timer keeps track of me working so I can see that at the beginning of the week I was doing well and then it dropped off, so I’ll have to work harder or think of new habit forming techniques to keep on task.

If you like these articles, you can learn more and support more by getting your copy of the Seven Year Degree e-book on Amazon or Lean Pub!