With Midterms quickly approaching, fear and terror has struck the hearts of many mere, mortal students as they scramble to cram as much material into their heads before it’s too late. Folks are stockpiling coffee and energy drinks as we speak while they prepare for stressful all-nighters and lots and tons of inner pain. Well, fear not young padawans and midterm newbies! We’ve got some great tips that will help you develop a study system that helps to retain information without needing midnight cram sessions. Here are our tips for reaching peak success during midterms.
1. Take Sufficient, Concise, and Well-Organized Notes
Make sure that your notes cover all the important topics as succinctly as possible. Don’t overcrowd the page and write down every spoken word for your in-class notes or every word read in the text. It’s easy to get lost when you have to search a cluttered page and strain to read sloppy handwriting. Keep it nice and clean.
2. Personalize Your Notes
Make a color-coded system for highlighting relevant info in your notes. I like to do yellow for words I need to define, pink to signal to info I struggle to remember, blue for things I’m sure I know, and so on. It’s a great way to scan through your notes quicker and find the info you need to spend more time focusing on. But remember – don’t go too crazy. It’s hard to study when you’ve got a page covered in highlighter.
3. Read the Texts
Read the course material. You’d think I wouldn’t have to say this, but I’ve run into several people over the last few weeks who have horrified me by saying they don’t read the texts for class and simply go by the notes they take during lectures. No ma’am, no ham, no turkey. That may work out for a week or two, but not for midterms when you’ll be tested on your full understanding of the material. So read the texts and stop the foolishness.
Quick Tip: If you’ve read the material before, then feel free to skim it for time saving purposes. Skim the paragraph for keywords and phrases to gather the gist of it. Hopefully your memory will kick in and you won’t have to squander precious time on the paragraph.
4. Schedule Your Studying Time and Give Yourself Ample Time to Do it
Be sure to schedule time for studying. It sounds silly, but people are more willing to do things if they schedule time for it. You’re much less likely to procrastinate if you write a dedicated study time on a calendar or planner. While you’re at it, do not, under any circumstance, put off studying to the last minute. We’ve all done it, and we’ve all lived to regret it. Do yourself a favor and study throughout the weeks leading up to your midterms. Give yourself plenty of time and use it wisely.
5. Tag-Team Your Study Session with Study Buddies
Study in a group! Studying doesn’t have to be an individual sport. Get you some study buddies and go over each other’s notes, quiz each other on the material, and help each other out. Just like it’s harder to cancel a workout if you’d be canceling on a buddy, it’s much harder to cancel a study session if you know you’re going to get roasted by your friends for ditching them, so link up and get some work done.
6. Take a Breather; Get Some Rest
This is one of the most important tips yet is often the most neglected. You may think that all-nighter is helping you remember all the information, but it’s doing more harm than good. If your eyes are tired, your mind is drifting here and there, you can barely stay awake, or you have to read the same sentence over and over, take a break and get some rest. You won’t retain much of the material in a state of exhaustion. You need to rest, get some sleep, and come back to it the next day. This is the key to staying stress-free!
And there you have it. Easy peasy if ever there was a lemon to squeezy. If you follow these few tips and customize them to your liking, you can rest easy in knowing that you’re bound to have an efficient study system that will have you slaying your midterms like a pro. Get some rest and be easy little midterm masters.