With finals coming up I wanted to give you a few tips on how to succeeded during finals week and prepare effectively for the last tests of the semester.
1. Get organized
Now I hope you’ve been organized all year, but organized for finals week is a little different. Organize the way that works best for you, but I want to break down what I do. Usually I have a color coded planner (classes color coded with blocks that are taken up by class time and also assignments) written out on the days that things are due (yes, I am a little type – A). For finals week I keep this the same, but I also add a component to this. A week before Thanksgiving I make a To-Do list on the sticky note application on my desktop and create a list of my classes and write everything I have left to do over the semester by class, then by date it is due. This looks extremely intimidating at first, but is a visual reminder to keep the dates things are due in the forefront of my mind.
2. Handwrite everything
At the end of semester, it is really easy to revert to the fastest way to get things done, which feels like it should be typing, but you won’t retain as much information. There are six more reasons why you should handwrite, here.
3. Study in short bursts
Every 45-60 minutes you should take a break for around 10 minutes. Click here for why! This isn’t an excuse to get sucked into a social media pit where you lose an hour of your time mindlessly going through social media – but a time for you to get a little change of scenery. Sometimes I will move from my house … to the library … to the POD to grab a snack … to the coffee shop … and just give myself 10 minutes to walk around before starting the next task I have. This means I try to section my studying into specific tasks I can get accomplished in an hour. I would highly recommend this; it is easier to get yourself to sit down to focus on checking something off of your to-do list every hour then sitting studying for three hours on a huge chunk of an assignment. Split the three-hour assignment into pieces and take a break between them.
3 ½. Find time to exercise: seriously do it, and here is why.
4. Know what kind of learner you are
There are different ways to learn and retain information. You can learn by looking at visuals, from listening, by reading and writing or by using a hands-on approach. Every learning type has a different technique of studying behind it and you are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t know what kind of learner you are. You can learn about what kind of learner you are and how you can best study based on that on this webpage from Oxford learning. It has some videos, more explanation or you can take a look at the infographic below.
