Multiple textbooks, sleepless nights, and hundreds of practice papers. Does this sound familiar? If you are a student, you must be well aware of how stressful End of Term Exams can be. But most of this happens due to a lack of planning and strategy when preparing for the end-of-term exams.
While attending classes and regularly studying may look like obvious solutions, there are better strategies that make exams less stressful. Unsure where to start? Go through the tips below to figure out a strategy that works best for you.
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How to Pass End of Term Exams Without Stress?
While you can’t completely avoid stress as it is how the human brain works, the tips below will help you keep the anxiety at bay and pull off the preparation for exams in advance. Additionally, If you are overloaded with assignments, remember that you can hire an essay writing service to help me write an essay online and utilize the time to prepare for exams better.
Tackle Hard Subjects First
Like every student, you might understand certain subjects better than the others. But reading the same subject repeatedly while neglecting the difficult ones won’t let you ace your exams. Instead, start studying the tough ones first.
Your mind is the most attentive at the beginning of your study session, which helps it grasp difficult concepts better. You can always revisit the easier subjects at the end of your study session. Besides, you can hire a paper writer on paperwritingservice.com to help you with your homework while you prepare for exams.
Find a Study Partner
A study buddy can significantly increase your accountability, even if you prefer studying alone. Many students are skeptical about studying with others, as they fear being distracted. However, research suggests that having a study partner increases your chances of success by 65%.
This doesn’t only include studying together but also creating timetables, giving each other assignments, and keeping track of mutual progress. While it’s great to find a study buddy from your own class, it isn’t necessary. You can find someone among your friends or neighbors or search for a study partner online.
Use Visual Aids
The human brain processes visual and auditory signals differently. As a result, we tend to better remember what we see than what we hear. If most of your lessons only consist of listening to lectures, supplementing them with visual aids will greatly help.
These aids can range from traditional flashcards and mind maps to online video simulations. Accessing online resources has become easier due to the boom in e-learning. You can utilize video learning platforms like Khan Academy, edX, Academic Earth, or even YouTube to access relevant study materials.
Additionally, well-known schools like Harvard and MIT have developed their own resources suitable for school and college students. Universities also have online simulation labs that let you perform experiments for practical learning. We recommend browsing your options beforehand so you don’t waste time looking for resources at the last minute.
Avoid All-Nighters
Pulling off an all-night study session is seen as an achievement in the current student community. But unfortunately, those sleep-deprived study hours do more harm than good, both for your health and your grades. In fact, getting good sleep after your study session is essential for memory retention.
During your exams, create a proper timetable and study regularly during the day. Avoid studying at night and keep late hours for revision. Get adequate sleep, especially the night before exams, to remember better during the test. Even during your study sessions, take regular ten-minute breaks. If you feel sleepy, avoid caffeine and take short power naps instead.
Stimulate Multiple Senses
Stimulating all your senses helps your brain link information to certain cues. For example, you can use multiple colored markers to highlight different information in your notes. Your brain will then associate that data with a particular color, making it easier to recall.
You can also engage olfactory sensors. You can smell peppermints to make your mind alert. Similarly, you can create songs out of your notes (like the popular Periodic Table Song by ASAPScience) or create fun acronyms that help you memorize easily.
Revise Regularly
It doesn’t help if you continuously feed new data to your brain while it forgets old information. According to experts, people forget 50-80% of new information within a day. That’s why it is necessary to revise regularly, especially during your exams.
Go through completed lessons at least once a week and have a monthly revision at the end of the month. You can also revise for 15-20 minutes every day at the end of your study session when you are too exhausted to take in new data.
Utilize Past Resources
While studying your notes and textbooks prepare you well for exams, you can be more confident by going through previous question papers. For major exams, these question banks should be widely available online. Otherwise, even class tests and quiz papers give you enough clues about what to expect in your upcoming assessments.
Wrapping It Up
The thought of exams might be scary, but ultimately, your preparation is reflected in how well you write the paper. The above tips work well for your study sessions before exams. However, not all strategies suit every student. If something doesn’t work for you, feel free to tweak the above tactics to build an effective study plan for yourself.