Guide to Last-Minute Studying
If you’re reading this, chances are you fall into one of the two categories:
Case #1: You’ve been a hardworking and diligent student. You’ve listened in class, created a myriad of mind maps AND kept detailed notes. Now, it’s all a matter of committing them to memory and doing some practice problems.
Case #2: You’re kicking yourself because you’ve been procrastinating all week. Now, all your work has piled up and you don’t know where to begin. Should you start making notes now, or is it too late? Maybe you’ll just memorise your class notes. What about just reading and highlighting the textbook, surely that’s more effective? You have no clue, but you’re stressed af right now.
In this guide, I’ll talk about how to deal with each case in more detail. My studying habits tend to fluctuate between the two cases frequently, but I’ll admit, I generally leer more towards Case #2 more… Here’s my one week action plan to tackle your studying before your big test!
Disclaimer: These are methods that I have found to work. Obviously, this is not the only right way to approach things. Feel free to disagree. Experiment a little and find whatever works for you. If you do decide to give this a go, adjust it according to your needs.
Let’s start with Case #1.
Days 1-3:
Read your syllabus. Know exactly what your test is on, so you don’t waste time covering other stuff. Make sure you understand what the command terms mean, if any.
For each syllabus statement, write out everything you can remember from your notes that pertain to said syllabus statement. Once you’re done, cross-check them with your notes to see if you’ve forgotten anything.
If you forgot something or got it incorrect, check to see whether it’s an issue of a lack of understanding, careless mistakes or poor memory recall
For the latter two, write down what you missed on a flashcard and review it whenever you have time (just make sure it’s less than 24 hours after you’ve revised). Keep on reviewing until you remember everything.
If it’s poor understanding, try the Feynman Technique. The idea behind this is that if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Just imagine you’re trying to teach a child that concept. When you’re doing this, it’s better to go from beginning to end, which will make it much easier to identify your gaps in knowledge. Then, go consult your textbook, notes, Google, professor, etc. for answers.
Days 4 and 5:
Do practice problems. Make your own or look up practice problems on Google using this trick. If you’re doing public exams, do past paper questions. This is super useful if you want to get used to answering exam-type questions.
Replicate test conditions. Get the timing right and ensure you have the appropriate equipment with you.
Mark your ‘test’. Think about how you can improve. Write this down on a flashcard or whatever you want, just make sure you look at it later. Then, re-do the same problem again (no more than 24 hours later), until you get it all right.
Don’t do this for every single topic. That is, if your exam is testing you on many different topics and you don’t have a lot of time. Practice problems are really time-consuming, and at this point you’ll already know your stuff. Prioritize according to which topics you find the most challenging and which topics frequently come up (i.e. most students screw up)
Day 6:
Look over your old tests. If you scored highly, think about why you did and aim to repeat that in the next test. If you didn’t do as well as you had liked, think about where you went wrong. Decide how you want to improve.
Look over your flashcards/do more practice. Again, this step is subject to how much time you have. This guide is merely a template. Adapt to your liking.
Day 7:
Don’t cram too much
Quickly flip through the flashcards you made during Days 1-2
Go on student forum sites if you do public exams. They’ll usually give you first-hand advice on how to deal with stress, quick reminders, things students frequently get wrong, etc. You could also read the examiner’s report to see where most students messed up on.
Ok, now onto Case #2…
Day 1-2
Read the syllabus. Explained above.
Identify areas that you:
Are completely unsure about
Are unconfident in
Half-know
Are completely confident in
Have a quick read of your notes, starting with the topics you’re completely unsure about. Then, work your way down the list. If you have time, briefly read the topics that you’re confident in just to make sure you’ve got them right.
Have a look through some practice problems. This step mostly applies to those who are sitting public exams. Note down which questions/variations of a question come up the most.
Day 3-6:
Do practice problems on the topics you’re completely unsure about first. Do these with the mark scheme right next to you so you have a brief idea of what they’re looking for and how in-depth they want you to go. Then, try to re-write the MS answers in your own words. Repeat this for that particular topic until you’ve gone through all the questions. Then, combine this with your class notes (if needed).
Make a model answer that will fit different types of questions asking about the same thing (e.g. explain ___, describe ____, discuss _____, evaluate ____, etc.). Even if the question is worth 2 marks, write out the full model answer. It’s better to be superfluous than to miss out something completely at this stage, and during the test, you can decide for yourself which parts need to be cut out. Plus, the act of re-writing it out will help you commit it to memory.
If you forget something, re-write it out 3-5 more times before moving onto the next question. Yeah, it’s tough, but you have to suck it up at this point. Take note of what you’ve forgotten and review it on ‘Day 7′
Repeat these steps for topics that frequently come up. Then, the topics that you’re unconfident in, half-know, and if you have time, do a few questions in which you’re completely confident in.
Day 7:
Finish off everything from Day 6 if you haven’t done so already.
Review answers to the questions you forgot how to answer.
Go through your list of questions that frequently up and recite the answers from memory. Give your hand a break.
As you can see, there isn’t really much you can do if you’re super pressed for time. Definitely do not follow my guide for Case #2 if you’re studying for a final, because there’s just no way that you can cover that many practice problems in one week, whilst still being able to retain all that information. However, for smaller tests, this definitely does the job.
Other tips for both cases:
Get enough sleep. I don’t need to tell you why this is good.
Take breaks. It’s easy to get carried away, especially when you’re doing practice problems. You won’t even notice time flying by! Do yourself a favour and stay sane. Take regular, adequate breaks. You really don’t want to burn yourself out before the big day!
Stay positive! This works wonders, trust me. When I leave myself barely any time to study, instead of thinking, “fuck this shit idk anything I might as well accept that I’m gonna fail now and watch movies all day”, I like to think to myself, “you’ve got this, just suck it up because it’ll all pay off, if anyone can cram all this shit in, it’s you! If you do well it’ll be the ultimate validation of your intellectual prowess, motherfuckers!” Perhaps I get a little carried away, but hey, whatever works, right?
