The exams are approaching, it is necessary to start revisions! But how to organize? Advice and a guide to revise effectively and be ready for D-Day without too much stress.
“Make good revisions”, “Don’t skip it”, “Prepare well for this question”… All this, the teachers tell you, but concretely, how to go about it?
Some can’t get to work and keep putting off the moment to attack. Others are panicked at the thought of the tons of courses that need to be reviewed and don’t know where to start. Still others throw themselves into marathon revisions without method and see their stress increase day by day.
Prepare your revision materials in advance
Before embarking on the revisions themselves, some time before your lessons stop, start preparing all the materials you will need:
– Get the lessons you might be missing
– Complete what is incomplete , unclear, badly graded: ask friends for their course notes, or use a manual – Gather with each course the corresponding exercises, practicals or tutorials, yearbook subjects.
– Make files or collect mementos, summaries, good quality diagrams that relate to each course and will allow you to understand well and learn quickly.
– Select the Internet site(s) that can allow you to fill in your holes, your gaps (if your paper supports are good, you don’t need them).
– Make a complete file per course with notes, sheets, exercises, and organize your files. This material storage work will help you organize the knowledge in your head and put you at peace. If you are taking exams in June, do this during the Easter holidays or the long weekends in early May. On this date, there is still time, for example, to make files, to go buy the annals that you miss or to go surfing on educational sites.
Make a revision schedule
Classes are now over, you have long days ahead of you to revise
– Count the number of days you have to revise without counting the day before the exam – List all the courses (or subjects) to work on, and this in all subjects
– Fill in a tableby distributing the lessons to review in your days starting with the oldest lessons (studied at the beginning of the year) and ending with the most recent. Also put your dead ends (bad or never learned courses) at the beginning of the revisions. Follow the progress of the program because we often need the concepts learned at the beginning to understand the following ones. To distribute the subjects to be studied each day:
Work during revision days
– Choose a quiet place conducive to work and do all your revisions there so as not to waste time moving your belongings from one place to another. If friends offer joint revisions, make sure they have every intention of working. If you are going to a new place together (country house), make sure you have good comfort conditions (sleep, food, your own office). Work side by side, but do your revisions separately and relax together during meals.
– Be sure to stay focused : when you put yourself at your desk, turn off your laptop so as not to be disturbed. Don’t spend too much time on one subject because you can’t concentrate effectively for more than 40-50 minutes. Every 50 minutes, take a short break of 5 minutes: get some fresh air, get up, go have a glass of water, listen to some music, and get back to work: your concentration will be good again. If you’re daydreaming, change the subject so you don’t waste time.
– The day before, relax! Do not try to review everything in a few hours: it is impossible and it will only serve to worry you. Relax, prepare your things for the next day and go to bed at a reasonable time, neither too early nor too late.