By Ksenia Kurenysheva
Year after year, as we approach exam season, many students are struggling, drowning in the never-ending sea of practice papers, consolidation questions and late night cramming sessions. Then we hop online, scroll through countless stories of put-together friends sitting at their desks, revising for upcoming SACs or posting about how many hours they just spent writing notes. We get discouraged, and feel that what we are doing isn’t enough. In fact, it feels like it never is.
As a fellow student trying to do her best in school, I’ve faced this scenario hundreds of times. So, after repeating my offence for the hundredth and first time, I’ve decided to collate the best study techniques together into one place, to look back at it whenever unmotivation hits.
Before you jump to conclusions, no: these will not be the usual ‘Pomodoro timer’ techniques that everyone’s heard about but never actually utilises. These are powerful but easy to implement, the hardest part is just to stick to it. Without further ado, let’s discover studying strategies for your biggest academic comeback yet!
1. Write your goal for the session. This could be as simple as one word, or as complex as a list of bullet points. Jot down everything you want to accomplish in the time you have (or given yourself), as this will help you stay on track and actually achieve what you’ve planned.
2. Forget your ego. It is so easy to fall into the trap of pretending that you actually understand something after reading it once, or give yourself extra marks for being ‘close enough’ to the answer in the marking scheme (I, for one, have definitely done this before!). This strategy is giving you false hope, making you believe that you know the content when…well, you actually don’t. Be harsh when you’re marking your practice tests or reciting flashcards: if you missed anything, put it in the according pile.
3. Organise EVERYTHING. While it might seem intuitive, I’ve met hundreds of students who’ve never used a planner, calendar or diary for their schooling, and this is holding them back from a stress-free schooling career. Organisation tools allow you to track your academic progress, hold you accountable to completing homework and prepare you for upcoming assessments. For the last three years, I’ve used a weekly planner to track my homework tasks, a calendar to write assessments and due dates, and online planning tools to input my grades, which has allowed me to consistently score high results on assignments as well as effectively prepare for exams.
4. Schedule a 10–15 minute revision session at the end of each day. Ever heard of spaced repetition? Ever tried spaced repetition? If you answered yes to both of these questions, then you most likely understand just how hard it is to find time to revise the material you’ve absorbed over the previous few days. To overcome this challenge, block out a specific 10 minute session at the end of each day into your calendar (reference to Step 3!), where you purely dedicate your time to consolidate what you’ve learnt that day. Over time, these small intervals add up and you’ll begin to feel much more confident with what you know and how to apply it in various contexts!
So…that’s all the knowledge that I have to give in terms of effective study techniques, and I hope that you found at least one of these refreshing and different in contrast to all the other ineffective, overused techniques out there. Try implementing one strategy at a time to avoid burnout: focus on one strategy for a couple of weeks before implementing the next. This way, you can rest assured that your academic comeback is about to be one of the greatest you’ve ever seen, and the best it’s ever been.
