How to study for an exam?

The only thing festive for a university student in December is a Grande Chestnut Praline Latte at Starbucks that accompanies a desk full of unread books and misery. Maybe a little bit harsh and of course not universal, but surely, a relatively familiar story for many university students, past and present.

Exam stress is a problem. A problem that has trickled its way through the fabric of postsecondary education as an accepted and inevitable norm. Stress however, is not the problem – in fact, learning to cope with it is a valuable asset. What students today face in university is not stress, it is a hyper-extended version.

There are those who say “suck it up” and live with the realities of university. But there is no place for extreme levels of stress when we also ask students to be creative, progressive and analytical minds. Pressure to this degree makes learners mechanical and constrained.

It’s not about getting rid of exams – instead, it’s about exploring more honest attempts to lower the levels of stress students face. So before we revolutionize the postsecondary education system, here are a few tips for university students during exam season:

1. What’s worse than being stressed is being around stressed people.

Don’t surround yourself with people that constantly remind you of all the work you haven’t done. This is essentially going to create a false reality for you – feeling as though you are more behind than you actually are. You end up so concerned with how much work you have, that you don’t spend time concentrating on how and where to start studying. It becomes a vicious cycle.

2. Don’t underestimate your efficiency.

Just as it’s important not to overestimate your ability to study a certain amount of content in a given time, it’s equally important to also not underestimate yourself. What you may think takes a week to study, may only really be a day’s worth of efficient work – the key word here is efficient. This is no groundbreaking idea, the key is developing a mental framework to accurately judge your own abilities. To make the task of studying for an exam a bigger deal than it actually is makes the entire process less approachable.

3. Stick to the 80/20.

Be rational, focus 80 per cent of your effort on the top 20 per cent most important concepts, themes, or ideas of your exam content and only 20 per cent of your effort on the 80 per cent least important things. Taking an exam is equally strategic as it is about the merits of your knowledge – play the game.

4. Don’t change your routines too much (even your social plans).

The last thing you want to do is to change your daily routine. If you usually hang out with friends on weekends, don’t let exams turn you into a hermit crab. It’s quite easy to panic – changing your schedule is one way of doing this. As they say, be calm, cool and collected.

Now, of course, there are instances where you have no choice but to completely overhaul your schedule to accommodate the studying you need to do. That’s when postsecondary education fails students. Pulling consecutive all-nighters because of a slacker’s mentality is one thing, but to do so out of the sheer impossibility of ingesting the expected knowledge while also maintaining sleep and social routines is another thing.

5. What’s worse than not studying is pretending to study.

The amount of time you put into studying is irrelevant – sometimes even counterproductive. Pretending to study gives you a false measure of how much you actually know, which is worse than knowing that you don’t know. Don’t study if you know that it’s just one of those days where your mind is wandering off. Some say that this is the “easy way out” of a situation, I’d just say it’s the “smarter way.”

It’s perfectly normal not to be able to study on cue; take the day off if you have to because then, not only will you be aware of how much you don’t know, but you’ll also be refreshed. If you’re going to the library to watch Youtube videos, stop now