Thanksgiving break is almost here and before you know it, when we get back – IT’S FINALS WEEK, AHHHHH! Everyone is going to be freaking out, especially freshman, but before you start freaking out, take some time to calm down and prepare yourself for the busy weeks ahead. Use these tips to better prepare yourself for finals so you’re not sitting up in the library until 3 in the morning
1. Look back at your notes and organize them
With so many notes taken for so many different classes, they can end up being jumbled together and get lost. Take the time to sort out your notes for each class and separate them. Once you separate them, organize them in the right order so you’re not scrambling to find the one missing page you need the most.
2. Highlight and draw
Colors are very helpful in enhancing our memory performance, it opens up other areas of the brain allowing for greater learning and remembering. So highlighting important parts of your notes is very helpful as it draws attention to that piece of information and allows for easier memorization. Also, drawing pictures that relate to the bullet point in different colors can help stimulate your learning abilities. Warm colors help to stimulate and cool colors help to calm, keep this in mind when highlighting notes.
3. Summarize/rewrite your notes
Once you have all your notes organized, summarize them up and rewrite them – short and sweet is the best way to remember bits of information. So whether you type your notes or hand write them, this should DEFINITELY be a step in your study habits.
4. Make sure to take breaks
Especially if you’re crunching for an exam, you think the more time you waste not studying, the worse you’ll do on the exam. This of course isn’t true, your brain takes up a lot of energy when studying and working and it’s bound to run out – so you need to take small breaks when cramming for an exam. There many different ways you can take breaks from working, like socializing or even just a quick nap.
5. SPREAD IT OUT
As college students, with so much going on, we almost always push everything off until the very last minute – not wanting to deal with it. But this is possibly the worst thing to do. If you decide to studying for all your exams the night before, all the information is gonna be jumbled in your head. Plan out the week before finals and set aside small periods of time to studying for specific classes. The bit by bit studying will build up and by exam day you’ll know everything you need!
