Top tips for successful exam revision!

Hey guys! Sorry I haven’t posted this week I’ve been feeling super ill recently and I’ve been bogged down with revision. Speaking of, today’s going to be a bit of a different post today to my usual beauty/lifestyle but I’m hoping its going to hopefully be somewhat useful to anyone revising/studying for exams coming up after easter!

1.Start Early – Okay don’t shout at me I don’t mean start your revision 5 months before the exam or anything because lots of things get in the way of that, and everyone knows when they want to start revision really. I mean its good to start your revision early in the day. Get a good amount of sleep and breakfast and start revision before lunch time because other wise you’ll just procrastinate and procrastinate and working later into the evening when you should we chilling and catching up on sleep!

2. Be realistic – I think this is the most important one. Don’t wake up thinking okay I’m going to cover this whole module/topic today! Because, its just not going to happen. Wake up on your first day of revision and don’t set any goals. When you finish studying that day, review how much work you’ve done and set the same goal for the next day. For example, I was hoping to revise a least 5 lecturers a day but realistically I know I can only do around two. If you set yourself to do more than you can you’ll just disappoint yourself, and any negativity or stress is going to take its toll on you.

3. Treat Yo’ self – This is a favourite of mine. When you’re revising you’re putting a lot of stress on your body from being sat down nearly all day in the same position. So make sure you’re getting lots of sleep, take regular breaks where you stretch out and sit or lay down in a different position. Go sit outside and get that vitimin D because it will make you feel so much better, trust me! Finally exercise! exercise will release lots of endorphins that may you feel good, and will also give you a bit of stress free time where you aren’t thinking about exams. It will also stretch out all those achey muscles!

You also need to treat yo self food wise, make any main meal break extra long and enjoy those foods, have regular healthy snacks (or naughty snacks, you do you boo) to keep you awake and ready to smash dat revision.

3. Know when to take a break – Realistically humans can concentrate fully for around 20 minutes because we are simple minded animals. Don’t push yourself to do hours at a time. Take a couple of minutes break every half an hour or so and then a big break for food. Also, if you feeling unwell, take a break for the rest of the day and rest, you’re likely to get more work done overall instead of overworking yourself because it will be counterproductive trust me.

If you struggle with staying off your phone during revision there are lots of useful apps to help with that! I use an app called Focus Timer which records the amount of time you are studying and an alarm goes off after a set time of half an hour or whatever and you can take a break. This app will only work when you place your phone face down which is super good because you can’t see any notifications (if you have your phone on do not disturb) and the time and you end up getting so much work done. It also means you can see how much work you’re doing everyday and I think its also free on the app store!

4. Make it pretty, colourful and take your time – This is a big one for me, if my revision is messy and all black, I don’t want to revise from it (that might just be me). So introduce lots of colour, have a colour for each sort of point e.g red for an important term, blue for a name of researcher, and green for an evaluation point. Colour will stick out to you and you’re likely to remember it! Make it pretty by doing an artsy title font and also do lots of pictures no matter how bad a drawer you are! If I’m doing work on the computer and I want to remember a researcher’s name e.g. Swift (2014) I’ll get a picture of a famous person or object I associate with that name and it helps me remember it. So I would put a picture of taylor swift next to the name because she is queen.  

    
 5. How to memorise – Exams are just glorified memory tests at the end of the day. Of course the first step to successful memorisation is to understand the material, memorise it to the point that you could explain it to someone who has no knowledge of the subject. Also, do exactly this. If you explain it to someone they’ll often ask you questions which makes you think about the subject differently or helps you realise how much you actually know! Also a good memory tip is to make it into a story, this is a classic method adopted by psychologists and people like Derren Brown. Imagine you’re in your house and each room is a separate point you want to remember. So for example I may want to remember a study by Lopez who looked into monkey’s maternal warmth. I would imagine Jennifer Lopez in my living room (or whatever room or place you remember) holding her monkey like its her child. Sounds stupid, but it works, and the more ridiculous the story, the better!

6. Motivate yourself – Okay this is my last point, but one I’ve found extremely helpful for myself. I often struggle to find any motivation to start work, and so I leave it to the last minute as per. However recently I’ve discovered a new community on tumblr who have dedicated their blogs to studying. Yeah I know this may sound crazy, but its amazing. These people post pictures of their work, their huge stationary collections (which makes me jealous af) and help anybody with general tips on studying and also specific tips tailored towards different subjects. It sounds silly but I’ll look at pictures of their amazing work and damn it makes me want to work and stops me procrastinating, which is quite a feat let me tell you. If you want to have a look at this community put any key phrases like studyblr, Study motivation, and Appblr into tumblr and prepare to be amazed.

I hope you enjoyed this post and found it somewhat helpful! If you did feel free to drop me a like and I’ll know to maybe do another post like this in the future!

See you soon,

Hats xo