Since I know that exams are coming up for many of you, I decided to write up an article with some studying tips to make your life easier. Here it is:
10 Great Tips for Surviving Exams
Many university students will be facing tough exams in the next month or so. And whereas you can’t go back in time and actually listen to the lectures, there are still some things you can do right now to survive the exam period and still have a life.
1. Sleep
Having a proper sleep schedule is probably one of the most important things you can do to keep your energy and concentration levels high. If you don’t manage to go to sleep at a consistent time, you should at least try to get 8h of sleep every day. If you don’t do this, you will likely feel like a zombie all the time and not get much done throughout the day.
2. Nutrition
You’ve probably heard people say that you should eat chocolate while studying. I’m not sure I agree with that as chocolate will spike your insulin levels and prevent you from having a steady flow of energy. It is however true that eating some carbs will enable you to stay focused longer, so try to have some fruit nearby while studying if possible (or unsweetened lemonade!). Nuts work well for providing you with energy as well so make sure you have a nice supply of those within your reach.
I would also advise you to stick to healthy meals before you study and treat yourself with a chocolate after you’re done for the day. The difference in concentration after eating junk food vs a chicken salad is highly noticeable. Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourself!
3. Hydration
Dehydration is one of the concentration’s biggest enemies. By keeping a bottle of water next to you while studying, you will be able to avoid sleepiness and tiredness which is often a result of dehydration. It’s also a great idea to take a bottle of water with you to the exam itself, especially if it’s a long one.
4. Recovery
During the exam period, you will probably study for quite a few hours a day. In order to prevent burnout, proper breaks are a must. I would suggest taking a 15-minute break every 90-120 minutes and a 30min-1hour break after every 2 “study sessions”. You may also want to try the pomodoro technique (a 5 minute break after 25 minutes of studying, and a longer break after 4 of these short sessions).
I would also recommend you to spend the time when you’re not studying on recovering activities, such as exercising or socializing. Spending the rest of the day in front of a TV or a PC will only drain more of your energy and burnout will be inevitable.
5. First Things First
There are some people who really prefer studying in the evening for various reasons, and if you’re one of them this tip probably won’t help you much. However, if you are one of those people who keep procrastinating the studying from one hour/day to another, till the very last moment, then this will be a game changer for you.
What you can do about it is to start studying right after breakfast, before you go on facebook, e-mails and get lost in browsing the internet. If you just force yourself to get started, you’ll soon be able to get in the flow of studying and it’ll be easy for you to keep going.
So, what’s going to happen if you keep procrastinating? You’re going to feel terrible no matter what you do, because you will always have a thought in the back of your mind that you should be studying. In contrast to that, if you do start studying first thing in the morning, you’re going to feel really good about yourself, stay motivated and will also be able to wrap up the studying in the earlier afternoon, enabling yourself to have a stress-free and joyful remainder of the day.
6. Make a Plan!
One of the first things you should do when you start preparing for exams is to make a plan and get it on paper. Start by writing down the dates of your exams and preferrably visualizing them on a calendar. Then, once you start studying for a specific exam, write down all of the chapters/concepts you need to learn and decide when you are going to work on them.
It’s better to be pessimistic about the amount of studying you can get done in a day than to plan too optimistically, run out of time and get completely stressed out. If you have some bigger chapters, it’s always better to break them down into sub-chapters and distribute them evenly between the studying days. We often procrastinate because we don’t want to tacke the big mountain of study material we need to go through, and once we get it on paper and make a plan for it, procrastination will be way easier to beat.
7. Motivating Environment
I strongly advise against studying at home. If you try to study at home, there will often be many distractions, and as we know any distraction is a good excuse for not having to study. As far as distractions go, you should of course always turn off your phone and block time-wasting internet websites while studying. You can use a website blocker like Stayfocusd (Chrome) or Leechblock (Firefox).
Instead of staying in the comfort of your home, you should try to go study at a library. Libraries are great because they are usually very peaceful, there are few distractions and you can even find some useful study materials within them. Another good thing about libraries is that you are surrounded by people who are studying, so if you start slacking you will soon start feeling very bad about yourself and get back to work.
8. Mind-maps
Trying to memorize everything for exams by just reading a million lines of text is fine if you feel suicidal. Why don’t you try making a couple of mind-maps instead? Mind-maps are great for visualizing the information and connecting it, as well as reviewing it later on if necessary. Rewriting the information yourself and thinking about how you can make connections while making the mind-maps will help you understand the knowledge better and faster.
9. Feynman Technique
The Feynman technique is a great studying technique for the concepts that are harder to understand. The idea behind the technique is to take a concept and write down the explanation for it on a piece of paper. You can imagine that you’re explaining a concept to a 10-year old child and write the explanation down using simple, understandable words. By doing this, you will gain a much better understanding of the concepts yourself, as well as find out exactly which parts of the concepts you don’t understand. Then, you can do additional research on those parts by looking in a textbook, asking a friend or a teacher.
10. Group Learning
Learning in groups is great not only because you are in a motivating environment and can more easily tackle hard concepts, but also because you can learn much faster. You can divide all the concepts that you need to learn between a few people (let’s say there’s 3 of you, then each of you can take a third of the concepts). You can each go through your part of concepts, explore them and understand them, and then explain the subjects to others. This way, you will be able to learn a lot in a short period of time and gain a really deep understanding by discussing the concepts with others.
I hope you liked these tips and that they’ll help you survive the exams more easily. If you liked the post, please share it with your school-mates as well .
-Primoz
after that I probably wil take coaching 
)