My study Secret

I was one of those college students who followed all the rules and checked all of the boxes. I always went to class, I sat in the front row and participated in class, my notes were thorough and legible, my assignments were all done early and proofread thoroughly. I know, it’s enough to make you sick. I was basically a model student. Until finals week…..

The fall from grace

When finals week rolled around each term, I crumbled under the pressure. I fell apart. I couldn’t study, I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t learn, I couldn’t remember anything from any of my classes. The pressure of having 30% or more of my grade depend upon two hours’ worth of work during an exam was more than I could take. I panicked and did everything I could to avoid the stress of studying for or even thinking about a final exam. I distracted myself, I procrastinated, I created busy work – I did everything I tell all of you not to do. I was miserable and I felt terrible about my failure to live up to my own high standards set through the rest of the term. I knew I could do better, but I was too anxious and overwhelmed to even try. I dreaded finals week every term until I learned the secret study trick that saved my sanity (and my final grade).

The secret

I didn’t learn this trick myself until the last semester of my senior year of college. During that last term of my college career, I had a professor who gave us a quiz every week. The quiz wasn’t just on the content for the previous week though – the questions could be about any topic we had covered at any point in the term. To prepare for these quizzes, I read through my notes for the whole term a few times a week. This sounds onerous, but it really didn’t take long and I aced all of the quizzes. Not surprisingly, by the end of the term, I knew that material like the back of my hand and the final exam was a breeze. I wish I had taken that class and learned how to study for a final exam when I was a freshman!

The time to start preparing for finals week is NOW! Yes, finals week is still at least a month away. That seems like an eternity, but it will be here before you know it.

If you start reviewing all of your class notes daily now, by the end of the term, you will know those notes backward and forwards. Studying for your finals will be no more stressful than studying for a quiz! One final glance through your notes, quizzing yourself on the most important definitions and topics, and you will be ready to go.

The approach can also be used for classes with a final paper or project. The time to start working on those is NOW! Pick a topic, brainstorm ideas, start your research, write an outline – none of these tasks need to wait until finals week. Dedicating half an hour a few days a week to each final will make your life so much easier when finals week arrives.

The vision

Imagine having time to edit and proofread your paper and to double check your references instead of turning in your first draft and hoping for the best. Imagine how good you will feel about yourself when you know that your final paper demonstrates your best effort not just what you were capable of cobbling together at 3AM the morning before it was due. Imagine what it would feel like to walk into a final exam feeling calm, confident and well rested?

When you use this approach, you will feel so much more prepared for exams and will write papers of much higher quality. It will reduce your stress on exam day and during finals week when you need to be working at your best. It’s completely overwhelming to try to re-learn the content from the first week of class (and the second week and the third week) when you haven’t looked at that content for months or to research and write a 20-page paper in two days. Repetition over weeks is a much more effective way to get ideas to stick in your brain than repetition over the wee hours of your all-nighter the night before the exam.

The catch

Of course, this approach requires you to go to class consistently. I would recommend that you do this anyway – I am a college success coach, after all – but it does add an extra challenge to the technique.

This strategy also mean that you need to take good notes and to commit to a short study session at least a few times a week until the end of the term. Preparing those notes so they are useful and complete is one step. Making the commitment to review your notes a few times a week (if not every day) is another step.

Taking action to set aside time you could spend doing something else more fun or more urgent to review those notes repeatedly is the final and most important step. Each is a valuable learning experience which builds on the others to form the foundation of your success at the end of the term.