Midterms are here, for better or for worse. Keeping a handle on your schoolwork while midterms happen is an essential- midterms aren’t like finals, where you can focus on just the exams. Midterms occur while other projects and presentations are happening (not to mention spring break right smack in the middle). Here are the ways I’ve found to keep midterms from stressing you out of your mind.
Keep two separate calendars- an exam calendar and a regular assignment calendar.
If you’ve got long planner entries that get jumbled, it could become easy to miss something. Keeping your exams separate from your regular work ensures that your exams don’t interfere with your regular work schedule. It doesn’t do you a ton of good to do well on your midterm if you fail the next project. This also keeps things all in one place, which will help your anxiety level knowing that all of your assignments are accounted for.
Don’t wait to find out the date and time.
Assuming that your midterm is in the same time and place as your normal class time can be a recipe for disaster. I didn’t know that sometimes midterms and finals could be at a different time or place than the regular class, and nearly missed a final my first semester of college. When putting the midterm in your calendar, include the location and time of the exam as well. If you’ve never been to the location before, you’ll know to leave some extra time to get there so that you can find the correct room.
Don’t cram.
College students are notorious for cramming right before a test, but it’s in your best interest to avoid doing so. Studying last minute doesn’t help your brain commit the information to long-term memory, which you need in order to take a test. Studying with a tired mind also has the same effect- because your brain is trying harder and harder to make you go to sleep, less energy is going into processing information and saving it for later. It takes self-discipline, but if you study for a few days leading up to the midterm, it will help your confidence and your knowledge of the subject.
Are you going to remember the party or the class you failed?
College classes are not easy nor cheap to retake if you fail. While you can still go out and have fun on your spring break, make sure it doesn’t interfere with your midterms, which are a larger portion of your final grade than many people realize. If you desperately don’t want to miss an event that’s the night before an exam, make sure you do your studying in advance, and that you don’t end up with a hangover that keeps you home. Your professor won’t be inclined to give you a pass because you were out celebrating. Not to mention, if your parents are helping you with college tuition, they most likely won’t be too pleased with you, either.
Keep your notes in one place and use them to study later.
Most professors offer some kind of exam review or clues to what’s on the test, but even if they don’t, if you’ve kept good notes, you won’t need one. Using online review materials from others who are currently in the course as well can help, too. This is where having a class GroupMe or another group chat can help. Most likely, there’s someone in the chat who’s got better notes or study materials than you- and lots of people are willing to share or study together if you’re willing to put in the work. Lots of times, I’ve joined a group of people to study, and pooling our collective notes and information helped me out a lot.
Play review games.
Nobody said studying had to be boring. Using fun and competitive study programs like Kahoot, Family Feud, or Jeopardy can make you commit things to memory easier than if you were just reading them off a flashcard. It also helps you to practice thinking over the material without the information on a page in front of you. If you and another player disagree, it forces everyone to go scouring for the correct answer rather than just shrugging and hoping it won’t be on the exam.
Study in small time portions, not hours at a time.
If you study best by yourself, don’t sit down and plow through a textbook for six hours at a time. Most likely, your mind will wander off and you won’t process a lot of the information, or you’ll only recognize it in the exact phrasing of the textbook. Break the information up, and don’t always put it in the exact same order. Your brain memorizes patterns easily, so if your flashcards are in the same order every time, you’ll tend to remember the order rather than what the cards actually say. Also- use blue pen to write- science says you’re more likely to remember things in blue than any other color!