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As finals week loudly creeps up on students, senior Emily White reads through DNA replication in her 9th edition AP Biology textbook as she outlines how new DNA is created from leading and lagging strands. White also finds online chapter outlines to be very helpful.
Having avoided the cold-as-death thought of finals, many students resort to frantic cramming, beginning in the evening and extending through the wee hours of the morning leading up to exam day.
Fear not lost souls, for the following is a list of studying strategies compiled from only the most reliable sources. Though the strategies do not guarantee glorious success, ignoring them will most likely result in utter failure. Best of luck.
Study hard subjects first. Difficult subjects require the most alertness and energy because they’re probably boring. Otherwise, you’ll wake up exam day in a puddle of drool.
Study in a quiet place. Do not listen to music or TV, and avoid your own bed. It is virtually impossible to do two things at once if one of them is studying. Note – selfies that include an open “The American Pageant” textbook in the background do not count as studying.
No procrastination. Do not be tempted by any free time that you have during exam week to do anything other than studying. Procrastination is a big word – one that should not be retweeted.
Use your notes. Make an outline of the material with highlighted texts and notebooks. Then do all your studying from these. Review class materials several times a week. Focus on one topic at a time and use lecture notes, course textbooks, study guides and any other relevant material to study. Also, review previous quizzes, assignments, papers, labs, etc. to pinpoint where you’ve had difficulty in the course.
Concept mapping. Mapping helps you learn how you learn. It helps you see gaps in knowledge and areas of oversimplification, contradiction or misinterpretation. It is great for review under one condition – make it yourself.
Read the text. Set the text aside and recite out loud all that you can remember, and then read the text a second time.
Learn by doing. Practice questions based on old exams, or create and answer your own test questions.
Take breaks. Maybe a Kit-Kat, too. Your memory retains the information that you study at the beginning and the end better than what you study in the middle, so take short and frequent breaks. Two-hour blocks with a 15-minute break work well for many people. Taking a break does not mean skimming over a study guid for 10 minutes and tweeting about how hard studying is for 30. Take breaks between studying, don’t study between breaks.
Don’t study later than the time you usually go to sleep, (bolded words are deliberately misleading). You may fall asleep or be tempted to go to sleep – remain faithful to the normal routine.
Do not cram, or do cram. Cramming reveals desperation, which leads to panic, paranoia and your eventual and inevitable downfall as a student and a human being. You will suffocate as teachers cast a thin veil of shame and disappointment on you. Left with no other choice, however, short term memory is your best and only shot. Just hope it lasts for 12 hours.
As the number of prayers per night surges during finals week in a boom of irregular religious zeal, shifting from one study strategy to another is neither rational nor effective. Choose one strategy and run with it, arms flailing. When 1 p.m. arrives on Thursday, let the free wind drench you with joy for those fleeting hours before teachers post scores to Rportal.