10 Study Tips For Students During Exams

What you definitely should not do when getting ready for exams is panicking. It doesn’t save you from anything. It doesn’t help; it increases your level of anxiety and blocks cognitive abilities—any primal fair blocks your ability to make rational decisions and remember theoretical information.

To reduce panic, you need to have a clear understanding of how you will deal with the exam preparation. We hope these 10 study tips for students during exams will come in handy.

1. Don’t make unrealistic plans. Right now, you may think that to prepare for the exam period. You will spend time wisely, ignore all the distractions, sleep solid eight hours, and study ten hours per day. It is a very standard list which traps many good students. You will never be able to accomplish such a list, so it is better if you just make a realistic plan. Think about how many hours per day you normally study, add 20-25% at most, and this will be your realistic projection.
2. Plan your days using the Pomodoro technique. Pomodoro technique allows you to work in a specific intermittence with defined periods inside one peak. For example, you want to have three or four peaks in your day. Those peaks should not last more than two-two and a half hours, otherwise, you will get too distracted, your attention will start fading. Using the Pomodoro technique, divide every two-hour peak into four 25 minute periods with 5-10 min. Rest between them.
3. Define your chronotype and use it to plan your studies. Your chronotype defines what part of the day is more productive for you. The most up-to-date theory divides people in Dolphins, Lions, Bears, and Wolves. Look for these definitions online and decide which category you can relate to. After that, create your studying plan in accordance with your chronotype’s characteristics.
4. Make sure you get enough air. Our brain needs oxygen. When it doesn’t receive enough oxygen, it stops working properly. When after studying for several hours, you feel super fatigued and decide to lie down and watch some videos, your brain might just need a walk around the block to continue. Don’t forget to open the windows all the time.
5. Group the exam question according to their common background. This advice is applicable to most of the disciplines. You may have 100 questions to prepare for the exam, but they all will be dancing around the top 20 theories, principles, major events, etc. Define those major theories and principles, note them down, and study them first. This way, you will have something to write about any question.
6. Create a physical progress bar to keep yourself motivated. You can draw it. You can install some apps. You can take two jars and put some candies in one and move them to another jar when finishing some part of your plan. Physical reminders of your progress are very motivational. They remind you to keep going and show you that you can actually accomplish something. If you have less important tasks to deal with, like some last-minute essays, it is better to address SmartWritingService, a professional essay writing service for legitimate and fast help.
7. Read an article about Monkey of Procrastination and the Deadline Monster. Tim Urban and his Monkey will change the way you treat procrastination, work, and study. It is an exceptionally funny series of articles dedicated to how we live our lives oppressed by a not very efficient monkey and how to tame it. You will spend an hour reading everything, but you will save days of procrastination, we promise.
8. Plan your rest in the same way you plan the studying process. If you don’t plan your rest, you will want to rest in a random time, and soon, your resting periods will be much more often and longer than your studying periods. To avoid this, plan some relaxations and distractions the same way you plan preparation for the exams.
9. Use a social media monitor on your phone. Install an app that helps you to monitor and maintain the amount of time spent using social media and similar applications. Those are the worst distractions ever! Use the apps which allow you to block social media apps and games after you’ve exhausted the preliminary set time limit.
10. Make a bet you would hate to lose. It can be anything. Make a bet that you will follow your exam preparation plan at least 80% of the time. Define how you will track it, how you will update your friend about the progress, and choose the penalty that would be truly irritating for you, and a reward that seems worth trying.

There are many more tips to add to this list, and also every student has his/her own practical ways to make the exam preparation period less stressful and more efficient.

The combination of tips you choose will work if you really implement them into your daily life, instead of just reading about them.

Stay away from the most common distractions, have enough air, and try to reduce anxiety with any method you can come up with.