Exam period (like Winter) is coming!
With exams just around the corner, it’s not too late to start thinking about how you can best prepare yourself to do well!
We all know that with exams, comes stress (at varying levels for everyone too). The solution is simple, yet can feel overwhelming – preparation. There are a multitude of ways to prepare yourself for exams, with the keys of exam success being:
- Getting organised
- Getting active
- Getting creative
But sometimes, it may be hard to visualise or pinpoint what actions you can take to kickstart your road to preparation. So here are some top tips from the UQ Learning Advisers on ways you can get started:
1. Making a revision timetable
Consistent revision through every semester is essential. However, depending on when you’re reading this article, it may be far away or close to exam season. Regardless of how near or far your exams are, having a revision timetable will help you keep track of topics you have covered, areas to focus more attention on and/or are already confident in. It can also help you to lighten the feeling of being overwhelmed, by listing out and visualising in front of you, what topics/areas/content you have to cover.
2. Give yourself time to relax
Marathon study sessions are not always effective. When planning you day-to-day revision schedule, remember to add in breaks with activities that give your eyes a break from your screens or breaking up your time spent sedentary (e.g. sitting down for long periods without standing up/walking around).
You can schedule in time to go out for groceries, to grab a meal with a friend or physical activity like going for a walk or playing your favourite sport. Read here for 6 simple self-care practices you can also do to help cope with study stress.
3. Reassess your study sessions
During your study sessions, it is also important to make your approaches more active. Reading over your notes is never enough, and true understanding of the content you’re studying is more important than recall. Some ways you can try to help ensure you truly understand a piece of content/topic are to re-teach your peers, imagine you’re explaining the content to someone who is hearing about it for the first time, or creating quizlets to test yourself or your peers in the same course.
When testing, you can also use past exam materials of all courses from the UQ Library to guide your study strategies.
Some more general advice from the UQ Learning Advisers are that when you are studying, try to:
- Solve problems,
- Note features that stand out, especially patterns,
- Create concept maps, visual organisers, and diagrams to represent course content,
- Make flash/Anki cards for key ideas/definitions,
- Using analogies or acronyms,
- Clustering – find logical groupings that streamline what you want to learn,
- Transform academic material from one medium to another – for example, reducing it through summaries or synthesis,
- Recruit a study buddy or join a study group (but remember to not become too distracted!),
- See a Learning Adviser or join an exam preparation workshop (see available workshops on Student Hub here),
- Anticipate your exam – by knowing the exam’s focus, value, length, and even its format (i.e. on campus or online), this will help you prepare better in terms of what content might be tested, or how it will be tested.
As a UQ student, you have access to 6 free Learning Adviser appointments every semester! You can see how a Learning Adviser can help you, or to book your appointment here.
Learn more about Learning Advisers at UQ
For more tips and advice around preparing for exams (and for all the different types of exams), visit Exam Tips (my.uq.edu.au).
You’ve got this!
