Many of us strive to be the perfect clean girl that Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok has deemed worthy of getting high marks on their exams. That ideal picture of a girl who never procrastinates and is always prepared with gel pens and perfect handwriting is simply that. An ideal, not reality. For most of us, we are doomed to procrastinate and lose our favorite pens as the year comes to an end. This article is the girls who aren’t neat, who aren’t perfect, but still want to get those good grades in the most efficient, last minute and aesthetic way possible.
The first step is to recognize that there is no going back! This is scary, but for this finals season, we will not get stuck in the past. So what we didn’t take notes back in September? We still want that A! Or B. Or C. The point is, we didn’t take notes. Time to start taking in account what we do have. Do you have a textbook? An e-book? Slideshows? If that textbook is just going to sit on your shelf next semester, cut that baby up! Your textbook is a bunch of notes already typed and printed out for your disposal. Cut what you need, glue it onto some paper and boom, those notes that you didn’t have a minute ago are now arranged neatly in a binder. If you have time you can go back and decorate those pages and add your own notes in the margins. Make it pretty, if time allows. Who said lazy girls can’t be aesthetic too?
Not everybody had a textbook at their disposal. So next we have to venture into the terrifying realm of… online notes. With technology readily available, we must take advantage. That e-book that I mentioned earlier? Make it a PDF, take screenshots of important passages, and crop away! Find an app or website that you are comfortable making slideshows in and paste away! Slideshows are the binders of the 21st century. Better to learn how to utilize them sooner than later.
If your class uses slideshows, that is a one-way road to your success. Copy important slides, and add them to your own slideshow. September you didn’t fail your current self, she just knew that you would come up with a brilliant way to succeed. Maybe at the end of the semester… but a win is a win.
If your class didn’t use textbooks, e-books or slideshows, don’t be disappointed. The ideas that I have mentioned aren’t revolutionary, they just focus on turning resources into something that optimizes time and outcome. From what you do have, try to find a way to make it work for you. For you, that may mean annotating old quizzes and throwing them into a binder or it may mean transcribing lectures and copying them into a slideshow.
At the end of the day, whatever works for you is the best studying technique. And if you have a binder at all—whether digital or physical, a fifteen minute build or a five hour build—nobody can say you didn’t try.
Go build that binder, channel your inner Elle Woods (whatever that means for you) and get the grade you want on that exam.