The time has come. Easter is almost with us, and exams are looming ever closer. Desks are being separated 1 metre apart as we speak- not to stress you out of course. Whether it’s for year 7 ‘end of years’ or A-levels, Easter break is when we are faced with the everlasting question: to revise or not to revise? Generally, the answer is the latter, until about a week before exams start when we all enter a productive panic in which we attempt to memorise the entire Physics textbook in one go. I’m not advising you to do this—just being a realist here. Nevertheless, we are all going to have to do, or at least contemplate doing, some revision this break. With this in mind, I have kindly rated different studying methods to help you procrastinate. You’re welcome.
PUTTING POST-IT NOTES OF THINGS YOU NEED TO REMEMBER AROUND YOUR ROOM:
Who do you think you are? An interior designer? Your poor walls! They were made for pretty flowers and stripes, not the timeline of World War Two. This feels less like a revision method and more like some ancient torture system: wake up every morning and BAM! The equation for respiration is right there on your bedside table. You’re encircled, TRAPPED in a textbook. Have fun sleeping at night with your bestie ‘SUVAT equations’ cosy beside you. You will also definitely be cleaning your room in a couple years’ time and mindlessly stumble upon a post-it reading ‘10 MILLION DIED FROM WAR AND FAMINE’ hidden somewhere—so look forward to that.
3/10—It’s just a bit odd frankly, and is it even that effective?
FLASHCARDS:
Let us not kid ourselves. Flash cards are an extravagant art project, not a form of studying. I’m not saying NOBODY uses flashcards efficiently, but most Godolphin students decide it’s time to channel Picasso every time exam season rolls around. They’ve got their scissors at the ready, highlighting and colour-coding cards measured out into perfect rectangles. And then they wonder why they don’t have enough time to study. Using online flashcards like Quizlet or something is a different story—that’s actually really useful, but making physical flashcards just takes so LONG. The exam will already have come and gone and some girls will still be writing ‘ACIDS’ in bubble writing like some not-yet-discovered, prodigy calligraphist. You’re also guaranteed to lose one card along the process and then be left in your French exam wondering why you don’t know how to spell ‘étage’. Because the card fell out in your locker somewhere. Fool.
2/10 (Basically use Quizlet don’t make real flashcards)
ESSAY PLANS:
Essay plans will actually be the death of me. There is nothing more DRAINING than sitting and writing intro after intro knowing that they probably won’t come up in the exam. What’s worse is when you think you’ve finished all the plans you’ll ever need and then find out your friend has been revising “kingship” in Macbeth when you were banking on the question being “guilt” or “ambition”. Now there’s a whole new plethora of essays that need to be planned. I also always have this voice in my head saying “you don’t need to make an essay plan for that topic. There’s no way they’ll ask you about that topic”. So, I’ll leave certain things out because I trust my future predicting skills and then wake up in a frenzy the night before my English GCSE thinking “what if they ask about the supernatural!?” Too specific? Just me? Moving swiftly on. Alas, if you’re a humanities student, essay plans must be done. They’re a necessary evil, but that doesn’t mean I need to give them a good rating.
2/10—because you take all my time.
SAYING IT OUT LOUD:
In truth, one of the most effective ways to revise is by walking around in circles chanting like you’re in some vocab cult. Yes, anyone who witnesses you pacing up and down your room in a haze murmuring ‘j’ai, tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez , ils ont’ will likely keep a distance, but this method works strangely well. Maybe it’s because you accidentally end up casting an ancient remembering spell with all the Latin conjugations you’ve been spewing. Everyone should try this if they do languages. Who cares if you look insane? Everyone gets a bit unhinged during revision time—embrace it.
9/10
INTERMITTENT REVISION:
I have never personally tried this, but some Godolphin students will literally train themselves like dogs to motivate themselves to study. The way this works is you set yourself something you need to achieve and then give yourself a little reward every time you make progress. I know a girl who goes and gets a cookie every half an hour of revision. An alternative option is allowing yourself 10 minutes on your phone for every set of questions you do. Whilst I can appreciate that these mind games work very well in laboratory experiments that try to get monkeys and hamsters to do tricks, I don’t think they would work very well on me. I would just end up with minimal food left in my fridge and even less knowledge left in my brain. It also goes without saying that once you go on your phone there’s no going back. Having to get yourself back into revision mode after you’ve just been in ‘tiktok-scroll-no-think’ mode is a feat and a half and, by the time you’re on a roll again, the next half an hour will be up and it’ll be time to scavenge around for another cookie.
4/10
PRACTICE PAPERS + MARK SCHEMES:
Do. Not. Get. Me. Started. Yes, yes, I know they’re essential, but I just really don’t want to do them. I don’t care how useful they are; I already have to put myself through the hell that is the real exam. Why would I voluntarily do MORE of them? To get a good grade? Not good enough. I refuse to welcome that kind of trauma into my life until it is the very last minute and I absolutely need to. Memorising key words in mark schemes isn’t that bad, but I just cannot bring myself to do timed essays. I always end up pausing the timer for a little ‘break’ mid-test and managing to convince myself that this is entirely justified because I NEED to go check something on my Instagram or make a brief trip to the kitchen before resuming my test.
0/10—Even though it’s probably the most productive form of revision. Hatred trumps efficiency in ‘Unpublished’ rankings.
TESTING YOURSELF WITH FRIENDS:
As if this is going to help you. Fair enough, maybe study sessions start off with good intentions and may well be helpful for the first 2 minutes, but after a while the conversation is doomed to deteriorate into gossiping with the occasional ‘Wait, okay, we actually need to work now’ and then proceeding not to work. Minus a couple sporadic bursts of focus, nothing ever gets achieved in joint revision. You do need to have a couple of these session though to lighten you up and bring some sliver of joy into your life during these very dark revision moments.
5/10
RE-READING:
Alright, I know this is what teachers always tell you NOT to do, but I am telling you that it’s not that bad. If you do not have it in you to do some hardcore revision, what is wrong with procrastinating in a way that’s somewhat related to your subject? Sometimes you have to re-read the textbook because you just do not remember anything, and your notes are practically in a different language they’re so unclear. I would also recommend pretending your textbooks (history especially) are the tea of the past. Stalin said WHAT? Who chopped who’s head off? I’m aware how nerdy I sound…it's effective okay.
7/10
SEEING CORRECTIONS YOUR TEACHERS MADE ON OLD WORK:
Not only is this method good for learning from your mistakes, but old margin notes are also quite entertaining. It is both incredibly humbling and hilarious to see the weird, very wrong things you have written in the past and the question marks or “Huh?”s written beside them by your teachers. Equally, it might give you the confidence boost you need to see some of the ticks and nice comments.
10/10
MIND MAPS:
Mind Maps are okay, I guess.I don’t think I’m doing them right because I do not get the hype. Teachers always say to make mind maps but, like flashcards, I always end up getting more invested in the colours of my lines, or whether I should use a ruler, or if I should try bubbles around the different sections, than in the actual words I’m writing. What is the use of these? People always say not to re-write notes, but aren’t mind maps just notes on bigger pieces of paper? In little circles rather than lines? I am not fooled. A lot of people seem to like making mind maps, yet they just seem a bit irrelevant and not very useful to me—minds should not be mapped.
5/10
If you came here looking for genuine revision advice, I apologise. Instead, I have given you a scathing report of why I don’t like any revision techniques. Nonetheless, I’d like to think this article will have been helpful, in some way, as you know now that at least you are not as pessimistic and bitter about having to revise as I am.
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