Study Planning (or The Dreaded Procrastination Monster)

Exams are fast approaching, looming ominously over the free time of all and every student here at MAGS. We all have a simple choice. To study or not to study. It all begins weeks before the dreaded event with a simple thought, "Oh, it can wait.", "it doesn't really matter anyway", "I'll just do this one thing first". Sounds familiar? Then the loathsome monster crawls ever closer and closer, day by day. Its best friend is procrastination, defined by the Oxford dictionary as the action of delaying or postponing something. In this case; study. And then the big day arrives, faster then you expected it and catches you off guard as you stumble through a mess of  the forgotten details and misconceptions that makes up the entirety of your knowledge of the topic. That is to say, that your exam does not go well and you probably failed. As you leave the exam room you ask yourself "Now why didn't I study earlier?"

We all know this feeling and now is the time to stop this from happening. Still a number of weeks from our final end of year exams it is not too late to escape The Dreaded Procrastination Monster. As followed I have compiled a short list of tips and tricks which you (if you are a student) may find useful for your studies. Feel free to follow or ignore any or all of these.

1. The best thing to do is to start. I know this sounds simple but it often isn't. Study is like a truck, hard to start but powerful once it is moving. Often I will waste away hours finding anything but study to do but once I begin to investigate the chosen topic I discover that it was much simpler then I had imagined.
2. Summaries for days. Summaries are key to study, a good mind map or written summary can condense an entire topic onto even an A4 page, as you can imagine this is far easier to remember things from than a hefty textbook. 
3. Practice makes perfect. Often the best thing to do is to grab a practice test off the NZQA website and sit it under test conditions in your own time then mark it. This not only confirms and emphasises your knowledge (or lack thereof) but it "climatises" you to the type of questions you may get in an exam, less nasty surprises means better results.
4. Make a plan of action. Knowing how much time you have and what you need to do is crucial to  good study, these plans can cover a wide range of methods from a simple list of subjects or topics in order to ensure that you don't miss anything out to a full blown timetable on when you will study what on which day.
5. Find how you learn best.  Everyone learns differently, find out if you learn best through pictures or writing things down or talking or listening, and utilise this to your best ability. Learn in a way that suits you, not someone else, after all the results at the end of the year are yours not theirs.
6. Highlight all the things.  Studies have been done that highlighting things help you to remember them, use this to your advantage while you study and also during exams; highlight important points in the questions and go back to them once you have finished your answer to check whether you truly answered the question. This has saved me many marks in many exams, I would recommend you try it. I find a yellow highlighter works best. 

Well that was fun wasn't it? To inspire you for further study here is an inspirational quote about study

“Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow.” ― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor