How to cope with a bad exam timetable

Everyone loves a 2 for 1 deal. Everyone except for HSC students, that is.

So you’ve been given the gift of two exams in one day. When you looked at your exam timetable, you might have had a momentary breakdown. You shed a few tears, ate a lot of food and eventually found yourself 6 youtube videos deep listening to some guy telling you how to ‘channel negative thoughts into positive energy’.

Chances are he didn’t really do too much to help you. What did you expect, that you could mindfully meditate yourself a new timetable?

At Atomi, we’re realists. We know that no amount of ‘mindful meditation’ is going to make up for the fact that having a bad trials timetable sucks. But we also know that it’s something everyone can easily deal with. Here’s how:

The lead up

It’s the night before the big day. There’s not much more to be done at this stage. Your fate is sealed: it lies face down on a desk in an exam room. Where does this leave you?

It’s not over until the exam supervisor says ‘pens down’. How you spend these next moments is the make it or break it for surviving your 6 hour double exam marathon.

An Olympic marathon runner doesn’t warm up by doing a sprint just before and neither should you.

Focus your efforts on consolidating your information by summaries or mind maps rather than any full-blown timed practice. There’s no point staying up late trying to teach yourself new stuff if you’re going to be too tired to remember it tomorrow.

Relax before bed and get an early night: you’ll thank me tomorrow.

The first exam

The moment you’ve been waiting for: D-Day is here. Don’t wake up too early and stress yourself out with a last minute cram. If you’re someone who usually skips breakfast, today’s a good day to change that habit. Have something sustaining and see how many weet-bix you can do (maybe stop at 12 or you’ll feel sick in the exam).

Going into the first exam is no different to going into any other exam. You go in, do your best and it’s all over in a few hours.

The hard part is yet to come: backing it up with another one.

The time in between

One down, one to go. But before you jump into exam mode again take some time to calm down from your first exam. Go to the bathroom, rearrange your pencil case, take a walk outside. Whatever you do don’t talk about the first exam, arguing with your mates about what answer they got for question 5 in the multis is only going to stress you out. You can’t change what you’ve already done, don’t let it change what you’re about to do.

After you’ve taken some time out, focus on the next exam as if it was your first one. Calmly read over your notes and walk into the room with a fresh mind.

Don’t think of this as the home stretch: it’s a new race entirely.

The second exam

The afternoon exam is always harder. You’re tired and your wrist hurts. If the tiredness gets to you and you start to lose focus don’t overthink things. The best thing to do is go with your instinct and move on.

The more you start second guessing yourself, the more you start second guessing the whole paper. If there’s a multi choice part to the exam, don’t look at ‘A, B, C, D’ but the actual answers beside them. At this stage, that mightn’t make much sense. But trust me, when your tired brain starts freaking out that there’s one too many C’s and not enough D’s you’ll know exactly what I mean.

If you know that there’s one part of the exam that’s going to be difficult like an essay or a problem solving question, consider doing this first so that you’ve got the most energy to do it. Even if you don’t end up getting tired, there’s an odd satisfaction you tend to get from watching everyone rush to finish writing their 3 line tall and borderline illegible ‘In conclusion’ before pens down when you finished that bad boy 2 hours ago.

So now your second exam is over. You may have had the day from hell but you made it out alive. The best thing about today was that you killed 2 birds with one stone and got a huge chunk of your exams out of the way.

This means you either have more time to prepare for your next one or more time to relax now you’re finished exams - it’s a win win situation.

All in all, for lack of a better analogy, sitting 6 hour B2B exams might feel like listening to a 6 hour B2B DJ set: it’s repetitive, exhausting and certainly not most people’s cup of tea.

But it doesn’t have to be. With our advice and an open mind, double exams are nothing to sweat.