As many of us continue to digest our Thanksgiving feasts, the wretched reality is that finals are quickly creeping around the corner. So while many of you may still be recovering from a food coma, I have taken the liberty of helping the universe by giving final exam tips to all of the future entrepreneurs, doctors, nurses, businessmen, and much more.
1. Start studying... Like now...
Procrastination is the #1 enemy of being successful during finals week. With the Holidays and break coming up right after finals, one must resist the urge to start a new series on Netflix in order to succeed. Self-control is definitely key.
2. Get sleep. Go to bed after studying, if you can.
The human brain needs processing time through sleeping. By staying up all night, the brain doesn't get enough time to process all the material you spent 23 hours learning. Also, a good way to retain information is to study before sleeping. The reason why is because during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, there is no external interference with the information you just learned.
Think of it this way: Let's say money is the material you learned, the bank represents sleep, the debit card represents access to money, and your wallet represents the external environment. Keeping the money in your wallet, you will face multiple interferences that can cause you to spend or lose your money. However, by depositing it in the bank, you won't be able to physically handle or spend your money unless you use a debit card.
The debit card (the brain) allows you to retrieve your money when you need it. To sum it up, if you lose your money, your debit card is useless because you lost your money and can't deposit it in the bank. Now, to translate it over, if you study but don't sleep, there will be a lot of interference that can cause you to lose information but if you study then sleep, the information you learned is retained and can be accessed the day of the exam.
3. Quality over quantity. Divide and conquer. Reading paragraphs can work, chunking works better.
By learning information in chunks and breaking them down into manageable pieces, you make it easier for yourself to learn. After the material is broken down, by paraphrasing the material, you make the material stand out to you thus, increases your ability to store the material in your long-term memory.
4. Stay healthy... Exercise then study... Or better, exercise while studying.
If you are aiming to memorize material, it isn't a bad idea be a sloth and memorize the material on your desk. However, if you want to get some last minute learning, it doesn't it hurt to add some light exercise to the studying. In actuality, there are studies that support studying with light exercise and that it improves memory retrieval for the day after. However, vigorous exercise can hurt learning so keep the exercising to a light intensity.
5. It's exam day... Relax... No negative thoughts... It's all about confidence.
Anxiety, especially during the exam, is another source of retrieval error. As soon as you take a seat before your exam, take deep breaths and motivate yourself into doing well. When it comes to a few hours before the exam, the battle is all internal. Having negative thoughts before the exam can increase the chances of retrieval error occurring. Good vibes only.
That's all folks! Those are my 5 tips for studying for finals! Make the best out of these next 2-3 weeks as these will be the longest yet shortest weeks of the entire semester! Good luck! And...
