Are you a student who is struggling to review all the exam topics before your exams? Are you anxious for finals to arrive? Do you feel ready for all the stress and piles of work still to complete before the exams actually arrive?
Managing time and mental health is difficult, especially when students take advanced courses that require a lot more effort and work to achieve good scores and grades.
But these five tips and methods to study may provide even a tiny bit of help in reducing the amount of stress received while in exam season.
Tip #1: Traffic Light System Studying
Image Credit: Eliobed Suarez from Unsplash
As the traffic light system studying is popular on social media platforms and among students, you may have heard of this method before.
To those who have not heard about this method, the traffic light system is a method where you review your notes and/or textbook and highlight the materials with your different levels of understanding.
For example, green would mean that you completely understood the information and that you would be able to complete any problems without receiving help from a peer or teacher. Meanwhile, yellow would signify that you understand certain aspects of the lesson and unit while other parts confuse you a bit and would need some help from someone to continue solving and understanding problems. Finally, the color red would be a sign of needing immediate help with the subject.
Although going back to your notes and highlighting all of these may seem like a waste of time, knowing which topics you understand well and which you don’t, will provide better results in the long run. Reviewing familiar topics is easier and takes less time to do, but examining already familiar material will not help in learning unfamiliar topics.
It is a particularly fast method in being able to determine whether students understand the material. Trying this in your notebook or on an online document can be helpful for students. Especially in a time crunch where you only have a couple of days—or even just a couple of hours—to cram, knowing what knowledge you lack in a subject is crucial.
Tip #2: The Pomodoro Timer
Although sitting at your desk for hours and focusing on a task may seem easy, the actions of actually pulling through this process can be difficult.
The Pomodoro studying method was invented in the 1980s by a university student. Traditionally, there are many timers online that allow you to properly experience this studying method. Each focused study period is divided into sets of twenty-five minutes, followed by a five-minute break. Once the cycle has been repeated three times, you can take a longer break in which around fifteen to twenty minutes are given.
As staying in a highly focused environment and mindset can be difficult, participating in this study technique allows for greater focus and enjoyment in coming back to studying with a refreshed mind.
Since twenty-five minutes is significantly shorter than you may expect, finding a single task to focus on during this time is helpful and allows you to prevent any distractions from taking place and interrupting the single task that must be completed. For example, if you have multiple different subjects of homework and are overwhelmed with which, to begin with, you can know that you can divide your schedule a certain way so that there is enough time to complete all the tasks in your hands.
Tip #3: Maintain a Healthy Sleep Schedule
During exam seasons, students may be pushed to have less sleep. However, having less sleep at night only motivates tons of energy drinks (which are not very healthy), naps (takes time during the day for studying), and less focus during class. As students take exams that are catered by their teachers, it is absolutely essential to be listening and anchoring their attention towards their teacher, as they may speak about something important that appears on the exam.
Anywhere from eight to ten hours of sleep is best for students. But this can be impossible for some and students usually maintain a six to eight-hour sleep schedule. During exam season, they may sleep even less. It is important to remember that taking the time to refresh yourself at night allows for more energy during the day to commit yourself to a good study schedule.
In fact, sleeping more can allow for more focus and work to be finished in the time allotted. Therefore, sacrificing your thoughts of staying up late, and lying down to allow your mind and brain to rest, is healthy for students.
Students who have proper sleep schedules have shown better academic performances, have better concentration skills, and overall have more positive mindsets. After ruining a sleep schedule even once, it is difficult to return to a normal, healthy schedule as well. Keeping to a good rate of sleep from the beginning will therefore be extremely helpful in the long run.
Tip #4: Clean Workspaces
I have friends who have very messy and chaotic workspaces, to the point where some of them would rather work on their beds and on the floor. However, for some, working on the bed may evoke feelings of tiredness and sleepiness. Of course, this may not apply to every student, but this does occur frequently when students don't receive enough sleep the prior night.
Keeping a clean workspace can help cancel out the fact that there may be something distracting you or keeping you from focusing on your task. This may include having food and snacks on your desk, other homework, or devices that you do not need at that moment.
Take the time as you read this article to clean up some unnecessary items on your desk or workspace!
Tip #5: Exercise Regularly
Image Credit: Yulissa Tagle from Unsplash
Taking time out of your study schedule to take a run outside or look up a workout may sound difficult and unnecessary, but building up one’s stamina to study and keep going is very important.
Some may feel too lazy to get up from their seat to take a walk or run outside. This is completely understandable; as a student, I feel that way a lot when I’m mentally tired as well.
However, exercising has many benefits. It allows you to have stress relief while having your time alone and also allows you to take time off working your brain. Building up stamina while exercising can help students in the long run, since having a strong mentality is key in the studying manner of students.
Good Luck!
In conclusion, studying is all up to what method works for you. There are so many studying and exam tips out there. Some tips may work better for certain students while another group of students may prefer to employ different methods. Whether the method is to work on the bed, snack on food while studying, or stay at your desk for hours and hours, it is indeed the results that matter more than the process of getting there.
As the end of the school year comes up, I send my encouragement and best wishes to all the students. Good luck; I hope that the following tips help you out!
