Wisdom Wednesday: Study Tips
Wisdom Wednesday: Study Tips
Today’s Wisdom Wednesday is all about study and I’ve got great tips to share with you. The best thing to do around exam time is to prioritise your study. Creating a study timetable will enable you to prioritise what courses need what amount of time. It’s really good to allocate specific times for each subject. Particularly those subjects you need more help with.
Top study tips
Prioritise your study
Create a study timetable that will enable you to prioritise what time you need to give to each course
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Wisdom Wednesday, Zoe here from learning boosters.
So today’s Wisdom Wednesday is all about study, and I’ve got a whole heap of tips to actually share with you.
So the best thing to do around that exam time, of course, is to prioritise your study.
So creating a study timetable will enable you to prioritise what courses need to be allowed for, and you know what type of study/ amount of time needs to be given to each course or each subject.
And it’s really good to allocate, some specific time for each subject. Particularly those subjects that you need more work with or more help with than other subjects.
Study timetable tips
Let’s talk about some study timetable tips. So, I’m going to give you four main tips on study timetables, because sometimes people get a bit overwhelmed by them.
The most effective study amount of time is 45 minutes. So this is the time between when you actually start and when you finish. Put a timer on for 45 minutes, take a small break, and then get back to whatever you’re studying. It’s a more effective use of time, and it’s more effective use of your brain space and concentration space.
So 45 minutes slots for each study time, 5-10 minute break in between, get up, have a move around, have a bit of a stretch, have a drink, and maybe a bit of food if you need that.
Study is best done when you’re most mentally alert. Now this can be different for each person I’ve known some of my friends, when they’ve been studying, the best time for them is at night time when they’re more mentally alert, or early in the morning.
So it’s really up to you, when you prioritise your study, and when you make those study times:
whether it’s during the day
or whether it’s at nighttime
It’s just a thing to get used to your body pattern. And, and then think about when am I actually more mentally alert.
For me personally, it was later morning, and after lunch. So I’d usually do a couple of 45 minute sessions in the morning, then I’d have some lunch and do another couple of 45 minute sessions in the afternoon.
So I’d be doing, four to six hours a day studying when I have exams coming up.
I’d suggest that you give more time to those subjects that you don’t like as much and and or that you’re having more trouble with.
This is so that you perform better overall of your subjects. And it might be a subject that you otherwise might not actually fail. So you don’t need as much time spent in the areas that you’re really good at.
You need to spend more time in those areas that you know need a little bit of work and that you need a little bit of more effort to get through.
Try and keep a balance, and I know that can be hard, and really there’s no such thing as balance. So do your best and include time to socialise while you’re studying that really important. And time to exercise. And even if you’re going to work while you’re studying, of course, you need time to do that and more so that you don’t overload yourself with study and burn yourself out.
That’s a really easy thing to do when you’re studying particularly when you’re studying and working, and family and all the rest of it combined together.
Make sure your study timetable is somewhere you can see it so you might have a few copies.
I used to have a copy in my room where I studied because I’d never studied in my bedroom. My bedroom was for sleeping and resting. It wasn’t for studying. So I used to have an area in the house where I used to have a desk, and I used to study there.
So I’d have a timetable there, a timetable on my phone, and I used to have a timetable on the fridge. That way, I could remind myself of what I needed to be doing.
4.56
And it also helps to keep in that routine that you need, and it helps you to set those goals for your overall exam goals that you will have. But also remember that everybody’s different. Different methods work for different people.
So here are the following ones I’m going to talk about now which are only some suggestions. And you can pick and choose out of that, which best suits you.
it’s best to review material right after you’ve actually had a class when it’s still fresh in your memory. Okay, if you try and review it later on, you can look at your notes and go now what was I trying to say because your notes might have made sense when you just come out of class, but you know, a week or two later, they don’t make as much sense.
Don’t try to do all your studying the night before an exam. And believe you me, I have done that once or twice, it’s not really a good space to been in.
Instead, you need to pace out your studying and review those class materials, often, you know, even several times a week, and you need to focus on one topic at a time.
It’s a really good idea to have all your studying materials in front of you. So your lecture notes, your course textbooks, any study guides, and any other relevant material that you may actually need to study that particular subject have an all together in one folder or what; however, you like to keep it for each subject. It needs its own little folder or compartment or whatever you want to use.
Find a comfortable and quiet place to study. That’s a fairly obvious one, really, with good lighting and very little distractions. So try to avoid your own bed because you’re actually going to just want to go to sleep, or you want to just go lie down and chill out. And it’s not the best environment to be actually studying. So find a place in the house where you are not going to be distracted, where there’s really good lighting.
And that you’ve got everything around you that you actually need, make it a regular spot in the house.
And start out by studying the most important information now that can be a difficult one to decide what is the most important information? Well, in regards to that you can actually look at old exam papers, and they should have them if you study in university. And even some matriculation colleges have their old stat old exam, study papers that people can go over and look at, usually find them in the library or ask your lecturer or teacher, where can I find out what’s the most important information that I need for this actual exam.
Learn the general concepts first, so you’re just generalizing the subjects. Don’t worry too much about learning the details until you’ve got the main ideas under your belt.
Take notes, write down a summary of the most important ideas for each subject as you read through your study material.
Take short breaks again frequently. Because your memory will retain information that you’ve studied at the beginning, better than at the end. So make sure that you have frequent and short breaks just to give your mind a bit of a break. And sometimes when you know something’s not processing, and you’re not retaining it, sometimes I even say to my students just look out the window for five seconds, just look at that. And I asked them a question that has nothing to do with the work that they’re doing. And then they come back, and their mind is reset to taking the information that they need.
Space out you’re studying. You’ll learn more by studying a little every day instead of waiting to cram it in at the last moment. I mentioned that before. By studying every day, the materials will stay in your long term memory, which is what you want. So try not to study at the last moment because it can take a little while to get from your short term memory into your long term memory for you to retain it to then enable you to basically regurgitated in the exam.
Make sure that you understand the material well and the concepts that are in the material. Don’t just read through the material and try to memorize it. I used to write it down. Just keywords. I wouldn’t write in sentences I would never study in sentences but I would have keywords with a very short explanation of what that keyword meant. So that helped remind me, and bring the information from the long term memory back into the short term to get it out.
9.54
If you choose to study in a group only study with others who are serious about their taste or their exam, pretty obvious statement. But it, it goes without saying that if you’re studying, or trying to study with a group of people who keep chatting about other things, or that aren’t concentrating on what, what they’re meant to actually be learning, it’s really hard for you to actually be learning for an exam in that sort of environment. If they’re just having fun and mucking around and talking about things that have nothing to do with the subject, makes it really hard. So it makes the job harder for you to actually learn for you for your exams or tests. So just make sure that you’re actually learning with people that have got the same frame of mind that you have.
Test yourself, or have someone else test you on the material to find out exactly what it is that you know and that you don’t know
we tend to keep practicing what I know. And then we’ll have huge gaps in our knowledge that we might need for the exam. Simply because we stay on what we know and we don’t practice what we don’t know. That makes sense.
So you can review the questions at the end of each chapter when you’ve done a chapter in if you’re using a book on the subject. And you can practice the tests. As I said, lots of practice tests that the teachers give out, or other pertinent materials, that if you go to your lecturer or your teacher and say, I really want to know what’s going to be in the exam, can you give me some overall ideas of what’s gone, what what’s going to be, you know, they will usually give you a fair idea on what’s going to be in it.
Again, listen to some relaxing music. I know that a lot of people, you know, there’s people that have different types of likes when it comes to music, but believe it or not, classical or jazz music, or you know, atmospheric music is a lot more helpful when you’re actually learning information to retain for an exam or test. Because the rock, heavy rock music, or the grunge music or whatever the heavier music actually is not as conducive to learning as say classical jazz, or as I said, the atmospheric sort of music
don’t study later than the time you usually go to sleep. So again, if you go to sleep at 9.30, you need to stop by 930, if not well before 9.30, so you can wind down your mind getting it ready for sleep. If you are awake till 11.30/12 o’clock, one o’clock, whatever.
Study in the times that are best for you, best for your study, best for your body clock, and that actually is best for your alert times during the day. Otherwise, you might fall asleep, and you may be tempted to go to sleep during the study time, and that’s really not helping with you being conducive to stand to the study.
And the biggest influence, the biggest help that I ever got, is trying your best. Try your best. That’s all you can do.
But set yourself up so that you can do your best, and that’s what this Wisdom Wednesday is all about.
I hope it’s been helpful.
All the best of luck with your exams and tests that may be coming up for you. Remember my website, and I’m here to assist you if I can help you in some way.
All the best. And I know that everyone out there will do their best.
Okay, bye for now.
