Final exams: terror in the classrooms
With a face marked by lack of sleep and the house full of photocopies, the university students face, from here to June, the final and definitive tests: the always exhausting final exams they are close. Some will opt for coffee and lack of sleep to face them. Others, however, will launch fully into the traditional "chuleteo". Where is the discipline and organization then to prepare the exams?
Studying effectively when you are a university student and preparing final exams correctly means knowing how to organize yourself in advance. In the same way, discipline will also be fundamental at this point, especially now that the subjects are infinitely more extensive and complicated than those studied during the baccalaureate.
Basic requirements to pass the final exams
Obviously, having spent about six months of absolute vagueness can be a great burden that not all students can overcome ... precisely because of this, it is important that young people assimilate from the first day that the university is not the school and that organization and discipline are essential.
Use books in a timely manner, take good notes and, most importantly, useful, know how to review on time, self-evaluate often ... will be the keys to get to final exams without excessive stress and nerves.
The time has also passed, in addition, of the group meetings to study and work together. It is true that this type of activity serves to exercise oral expression, solve doubts and start the critical spirit, but the time has come to focus almost exclusively on the processes of synthesis and memorization.
3 pillars to prepare final exams
But if there are three pillars on which to base the preparation of final exams are, without doubt, the following:
1. Development of critical thinking and reading ability. That is to say, during the next three months, boys and girls will have to read and read without stopping. It will depend on them to extract the most important of these readings and assimilate them correctly.
2. Find at all times the best sources of documentation. We must bear in mind that university professors tend to be more lecturers than counselors, so students will have to use their own means to complete the training given in the classrooms.
3. Establish a good study method that is based, mainly, in the organization, in the concentration and the use of time. And is that, especially from now on, the minutes, weeks and days will be essential if you do not want to get to the summer with your backpack full of suspense.
A study method for each one
In any case, it is important to keep in mind that there is no perfect and equally valid method for everyone. And, what is even more important, it is useless to have the best method if you do not really want to study, because even the brightest system usually fails if it is not dressed with a few drops of will power.
From there, the most important thing will be learn to organize the work material, so that it is really easy to find out a piece of information, find an appointment or an exercise in a few minutes.
In addition, as the minutes count, every time that the time of the study arrives, it will be necessary to try to remove from the work table everything that could lead to distraction or be a hindrance. It will also be fundamental always study the most difficult subjects first and leaving for the end those that are less complicated.
A very useful trick that should be taken into account is not study one after another, those subjects that may interfere with each other. That is to say, if we are studying philology and have to tackle the final exams of Latin and Greek, let's try to insert another different subject so that there is no "negative transfer" of knowledge. In this case, we could get to confuse vocabularies, syntax or constructions, without going any further.
In the same way, for a university student it is basic to try to relate each one of the studies that he / she is doing. So, if we are analyzing the art of rebirth do not hesitate to enter, for example, the ideas or philosophical thoughts of that time. This small resource will allow us to earn many points in the exam.
Prepare the final exams, how do I do it?
Ideally when preparing final exams is to study every day a certain number of hours because the routine is a great friend of concentration. The first moments, those in which it is cooler, will be devoted exclusively to study (first those subjects whose examination is closer, of course).
The last hours will focus on the review of what was studied during the previous days. It is also important that, as the study progresses, small synoptic diagrams or charts are made at the same time. This simple resource usually saves a lot of time especially in the last reviews before the exam. In addition, psychologically, it is not the same to have to face a few pages of schemes that a thousand pages of notes blurred from so much stress.
What time do I go to study?
The best hours to study are usually the first hours of the morning. It is in these moments when the ability to memorize is much more effective. Even so, there are many students who prefer to work at night when the silence is more palpable. Obviously, sometimes it is better not to force yourself, because if a boy is unable to concentrate as soon as he jumps out of bed, it is more effective to choose those times when he feels more predisposed to study.
And finally, a recommendation that "almost" no student usually carries out. The night before the exam, nothing to study. Rehearsals are always welcome, but bingeing trying to memorize hundreds of new texts will not only be useless, but could also lead to an unexpected "block". In fact, it is not unusual to find college students who went blank on the day of the exam, not so much because of nerves, but because of pure physical and mental exhaustion.
María Viejo
Advice: Carlos Solís. Lawyer and MBA
