Have you ever woken up on the Monday of midterms week and thought “Ugh. Not again…”?
Well, we’ve all been there. But with a little planning and strategy, you’ll be flying through this year’s midterms with A’s (and actual sleep instead of a coffee bean diet, which I may or may not have tried one year).
Plan ahead.
It sounds simple, but reading ahead in your syllabus is key to a smooth midterms week. Do you have overlapping test days or midterm assignments? Plan to start early so you don’t have to cram for multiple projects the night before.
Organize your notes now.
There’s a huge difference between 30 loose pages of notes and the same amount of papers in chronological or topical order in a folder or drawer. Organizing your notes now will save valuable time in the future, and make studying seem much less overwhelming. If you’re struggling to organize paper notes and handouts, try a scanning app like FineScanner to convert your pages to PDFs and save them in Google Drive.
Find out the format of your midterms.
If you’ve got open book tests, tab your books with sticky notes and label the edges with main concepts. For multiple choice tests, try studying specific definitions and keywords. If you have free-recall tests, find out if spelling counts, and self-test to find out how much you actually know without looking. And for essay questions, make sure you can summarize the course material quickly and in detail to prepare for the timed writing sections.
It might seem far away, but midterms are only a few weeks away! Use your time well now, and you’ll have more time for fun (and sleep) during midterms.
Image Credit: Cover, 1.