Read this fast… it’ll be good practice for what you’ll need to do later.
So you’re sitting there worried about tomorrow’s exam thinking you’re definitely gonna fail it as you’ve done nothing. Can you pass it or even get a decent result? If you’ve turned up to class and you’ve paid attention most of the time, you’ll be surprised at how much knowledge you already have stored in there when it comes to the crunch. You can definitely pass! If you’ve done nothing all year then you’re slightly worse off, but it’s still doable. Here’s what you do:
1. Stop panicking
You can do this, we’re ex-students and we’ve done it before you!
2. Organise
photo credit: Bright Meadow
Take 5-10 minutes to pull together all your notes together for the subject. Tidy a clear study space and get down to business.
3. Study smart
photo credit: Raveesh Vyas
If you’ve got as far as reading this you obviously want to have a stab at passing and I’m sure you didn’t just make this decision today! If you’re even thinking about passing, then you must have been listening to your teacher when they passed out tips on what topics commonly come up in this exam and what they think might come up this year. These are the areas you should be concentrating on tonight. If there’s a chapter in your textbook that a full question comes up on every year, then get stuck into that chapter. Get out the past exam papers and do as many questions as you can as quick as you can. Don’t try to study the entire book in one night. To do this would be bluffing yourself, now’s the time to take educated guesses on what’s coming up in tomorrow’s exam. If you’re not finding these tips useful and don’t know where to start, don’t get yourself into a tizzy. The very least you can do is start off with the exam paper from 2 or 3 years ago and work backwards from this. Skip last year as you’re going to have to risk the fact that the same thing probably isn’t going to come up again.
4. Study fast
photo credit: J.J. Verhoef
Point 3 gives you a few pointers on what you should be studying. You need to decide on this pretty quickly (15-20 minutes max) and get down to it asap. We suggest a strategy as follows. If there’s 5 questions to complete on an exam and you need 2 to pass eg. 40% select 5 topics and go for them. If 2 out of 5 come up you will be able to pick up enough marks to set you well on your way. You’ll find that at least some of the other stuff will overlap and you’ll have enough time to pass. If all 5 come up, you might be able to get a great result (it’s possible). So, you’ve selected what your studying, make a list of this. As soon as the list is made you need to allow a certain amount of time for each topic out of the time you’re prepared to study and when time slot is up for each topic, move on! Maybe allow an hour at the very end to quickly through everything you’ve covered once more.
5. Get help!
photo credit: Gibsonclaire
In addition to studying smart and fast. You’ll be surprised how many people are willing to help you if you go looking for it. Your parents, brother or sister, aunt, uncle, friend of the family or even a teacher. This is the night before the exam and I know this all sounds like a lot to take on, but if you have someone with knowledge of the subject helping you it can make all the difference. They’ll keep you calm and can help you move through past exam papers much quicker and may even be able to have a go at predicting what might come up when you’re getting stuck in to something else.
If you think you’re screwed, at least try this! Don’t give up without a fight, I didn’t and I passed when I thought I had no chance using the above techniques!
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