Although my excitement around Christmas is totally uncontainable it is essential for me to carry on revising intently. As soon as the Christmas holidays are over it is time for my first set of exams. I have two in January and two more in May. The two in January are on two of the three modules I have studied in the first semester.
I consider that I am hardworking. However through one thing and another I have not been able to consolidate my notes after every single lecture and seminar which meant I left myself a lot to do during the three weeks of Christmas holidays before my exams in January. Now three weeks sounds a lot and when you don’t have too much to do then it is a long time but the exams cover a lot of ground so it is a lot of work to catch up. There is also plenty of other, non-uni, things to do as well, buying and wrapping presents, baking, eating and seeing family is a huge part of my Christmas
Already for next semester I am planning out my time to make sure that I do consolidate the lectures and seminars at the time. Hopefully when the next exams come around, which is May, I won’t have as much to catch up on. I also want to look ahead at the next lecture so that I can do more reading around the subject before the lecture and I might actually have a clue what is going on!
I have been working with someone who has shown me an array of different revision methods which is how I have found the one which works best for me. We began building a mind map and making a set of pairs which would have the word on one and the explanation on the other and I had to match them. The next time we met I took a learning styles test which showed that my brain worked slightly differently than those kind of revision methods although I did still find them very useful. I am better with lists and blocks of writing. We tried a style of revision where you have an index card and split it into three columns and in the first column you write the point you want to remember, the second column is the same point but in fewer words, and the third column is the same point again in 1 or 2 words only. You then get someone to tell you that 1 or 2 words and you try to tell them what is in the first column. If you get stuck then they tell you what is in the second column.
Finally I have settled on writing out notes and making revision cards as the best way that I learn. I am now surrounded by revision cards but it means I can keep going back to them and reading over what I have written to remind myself what I need to know for these exams.
