Strategy for success: the night before an exam

Holidays are right around the corner and you’re probably feeling as cheerful as the weather in Sydney this week.

Yep.

See, there’s still the massive cloud of mid-year exams hanging over your head before you can enjoy that sweet, study-filled freedom that is the holidays and to top it off, those exams probably start tomorrow.

Whether you’re feeling Kanye-level confident or trying not to totally panic, here are three tips for tackling the dreaded ‘night before’.

1. Do NOT pull an all-nighter

In the wise words of Ted Mosby’s mum: nothing good ever happens after 2am.

And she was 100% right!

Any study you get done when you should be sleeping isn’t going to be that effective and trust me, won’t be worth the world of pain you’ll be in tomorrow. Because when you’re tired, you make mistakes.

Those mistakes are going to cost you some serious marks and you’ll be kicking yourself.

There’s nothing worse than actually knowing your stuff and not being able to prove it to the marker.

Sleep is going to stop you from:

• Misreading the questions
• Accidentally turning - 9ax into + 9ax as you move down a line of working in maths
• Forgetting the quotes, stats, definitions etc. you spent ages learning
• Totally freaking out
• Forgetting those random pieces of information from your classes that will save your life in an exam

We don’t care if we sound like your mum - this piece of advice is legit!

2. Check yo’ self

The last few weeks have been all about learning what you don’t know but the night before an exam is a different playing field.

Make sure you’re locked and loaded for tomorrow by checking what you do know.

We’re not talking about wasting time by re-studying anything - think of tomorrow as your battle and you just want to check all the equipment is in place:

• Go over the syllabus to make sure you’ve hit every dot point and know all the terms that will be examined. Tomorrow is a pretty bad time to realise you’ve completely missed something.
• Check that the big ideas and concepts in tomorrow’s exam have ‘clicked’ in your brain and you could explain them to a newbie without any notes.
• Make sure those key dates, names, facts and definitions are lodged deep in your long term memory with a few flashcards or even just say them out loud to the closest pet (pot plants work too).

It’s a confidence boost to know you’re at least somewhat prepared and this way, you won’t be walking into that exam room with a massive chunk missing from your study.

And speaking of equipment, now’s not a bad time to check that you have a few working pens (and a calculator) for tomorrow too!

3. Start thinking: application

If you’re looking up the wikihow on ‘How to Cram’ then just remember, at this stage in the game, you’re better off focusing on making the most of what you already know.

No matter how much great study you’ve done or how much you know, it all comes down to what you show your marker on the day.

• If you’re not sure where to start, take a look at one of our videos where you can see what questions you get for each syllabus dot point and the best way to answer them.
• Brush up on your key terms for any long or short responses and remember that some subjects (I’m looking at you History and PDHPE) will have questions where you have to draw from several different dot points.
• Warm yourself up lightly will some small challenges like:
• A maths problem or two
• Writing out a brief essay structure for a potential topic in Studies of Religion
• One short answer PDHPE question

It’s not the time to be doing a million practice papers but if you do want to be productive tonight, turning your mind to applying your study and a few light exercises will really consolidate your knowledge and make sure you’re ready to go tomorrow!

Good luck!

If it’s any comfort, the sooner the exams start, the sooner they finish.

Remember to get a decent sleep tonight, do a mental run-through of what you know and be ready to start applying it - no need for any crazy cramming or intense stress! If all goes to plan then hopefully you can fulfill your dream of being that really annoying person who walks out of an exam and says “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”.