Exams aren’t so bad!

We were all looking forward to the day after the General Election in the UK when we would finally get the politicians off our TV screens. No such luck! Most unusually, no single party has a majority in parliament – what we refer to as a hung parliament. Some countries get this all the time, but it’s new for us, so we don’t know what to do about it! Poor old Nick Clegg (the leader of the third biggest party) has to decide who to support and so who will be in government. Whatever he does, he is going to make a lot of people unhappy. He is between a rock and a hard place – by which I mean he is in a very difficult position.

Many of my students are getting ready for exams. Many students get themselves into a panic over exams. Look at these comments about exams:

“I just panic: I freeze up. I talk on the phone when I should be revising, and I stare out of the window when I should be writing in the exam.”

“I keep reading my course notes over and over again and at the end of hours of revising I can’t remember a single thing I’m supposed to have learned.”

“I always run out of time, sometimes I even miss out a whole question, and I just think, whoosh, there go 10 easy marks, and I come out and I want to cry.”

(From The Study Skills Handbook, by Stella Cottrell)

Does this sound like you? If it does, you need to re-evaluate (look again) at how you think about exams. Today’s link is to material based on Stella Cottrell’s Study Skills Handbook in which the focus is on revising for exams. One of the most important things about getting ready for exams is getting organised well in advance. This means spending time thinking about your exams, which ones are most important, and drawing up an exam revision timetable. Read through the material and get some useful advice about organising your revision here.