exam advice
Around this time of year people always ask me for advice on doing well in exams. Well, here’s my top three tips:
1. work hard beforehand (obviously) but STOP the evening before. Take a break, relax, get some sleep, and eat breakfast before you go. If you cram all night you’ll be too knackered to think straight. But also the brain needs processing time – if you cram until the hour before you take an undigested mass of information. If you take a break you’ll be ready to apply the information to the question.
2. Concentrate on delivering what YOU know, and don’t distract yourself thinking about what you don’t know, or what other people are doing. If someone else knows more than you, it’s irrelevant. If you don’t know something, it’s irrelevant. You can only put down in an exam what you do know, so focus. And, as Michael Polanyi said, you always know far more than you think you do. Don’t panic: focus and search your mind for the knowledge you have.
3. READ THE QUESTIONS FIRST! It’s the oldest exam-fail in the book: people do badly not because they don’t know stuff, but because, in their panic, they misread the questions or the instructions on the top of the paper. First: read the instructions – are you supposed to answer all the questions? or choose three? or one question from each section? Take a deep breath, read the instructions, and then read them again. Carefully. Then scan the whole paper briefly so you know what you are trying to achieve.
By the time I took my finals, I had exam technique nailed. In each three hour exam I took 15 minutes to read the whole paper, consider my options, make my choices and jot down a rough plan of how I would answer each question. The remaining 2 hours 45 minutes I divided up, more or less evenly, between the three/four/six exercises. Watch the clock, and move on when time’s up – you only get so many marks per question. But even then don’t just write everything down as fast as you possibly can – take a little time to think. In essay questions, there isn’t time to write down every single thing you know. A good answer is a structured one not a rushed one – and one that answers the question!
Good luck everyone. Keep Calm and Carry On.
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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and I’d add: never revise or work on Sundays before exams. worship and relax and re-create yourself. you’ll feel better about yourself, and that will help you do better in the exams
and I’d add: while revising take time for fresh air and exercise. Don’t work between exam papers – go for a walk in the park to clear your head. Try not to worry about papers you’ve done – you can’t change what you have/haven’t written or have got wrong so you might as well focus on doing your best on the next one. Oh, and avoid groups of friends who are doing a post-mortem on an exam or ratcheting up the stress level for the next one – it is not helpful.