By Elizabeth Bowers
Staff Writer
Your heart is pounding, palms are sweaty, and breathing is irregular. You have a migraine, and your vision is swimming. No, you are not in danger, but your grades are. It’s the week before finals and you have no idea how you’re going to handle studying, along with papers, last minute assignments, and that extra credit project due tomorrow afternoon. You’re nervous, and you have every right to be. You need to calm down, however, and take some steps to kill the anxiety and learn how to study correctly for your finals. First of all, you have to stop fretting. Worrying will only make you forgetful, making it twice as hard to stuff your already-full brain with more information! So calm down – you’ve made it this far. You can make it through finals. When you are studying for finals - regardless of the class, there are some tidbits of knowledge and some techniques that will probably help you remember more, remember better, and ease the stress of studying. It’s best if you start studying early, at least a week in advance. Give yourself plenty of time. Usually it helps if you make a quick list of what you need to do in order to prepare for each class. This gives you some order and control over the situation. After this is done, remove all temptations from sight. If you are a facebook junkie or a Myspace fanatic, or just get caught up surfing the web, get away from the computer. Turn it off, or even go into a different room until you have done your planned amount of studying. If, for some reason, you need the computer for your studying, log out of facebook, Myspace, or any forum to which you may be addicted. You can even disconnect from the Internet. If you’re bad about watching TV instead of getting work done, unplug the TV or simply walk away. Just remove the temptations!
Everyone learns and studies in their own way. So if one of these suggestions isn’t right for you, then maybe another is. Once you are ready to study, here are some tips on how to go about remembering and absorbing so much information.
Try rewriting your notes. It’s a lot of work, but you’re much more likely to remember what you’ve written twice. If you’re not big on writing by hand, type your notes out. It’s a good way to remember and a lot easier to read! Make correlations between what you’re learning and what you already know, and use those connections to help you remember.
You can also draw pictures to help demonstrate what you need to remember. Make study cards that go over every section of your notes. Have a friend quiz you, read your sections of the book again–preferably out loud. It’s actually been proven that you need to read something at least three times to fully comprehend its meaning.
Yes, all of this is a lot of work, but, when you get that final test grade back with a big A and smiley face on top, won’t that be worth all the sweat and tears?
