How to study for an exam?

If you think there are subjects that are impossible to pass in an exam or nerves betray you in those moments of concentration, here are some tips for when you take an exam.

Texts that are scary

When a person comes across a text they have never read they always have two paths, to get scared or to take it calmly. That feeling on many occasions will depend on whether or not it was explained by a teacher, or a study partner who can help us in our labyrinth of words.

The first thing we must maintain when faced with a text or book is calm, read it slowly and make the effort to understand each sentence so that you can then understand the concept of each paragraph.

Let's get to work

The initial recommendation we can give you is to give all the texts a first read, they will be much easier to understand at first if you attended the classes where they were covered and made sure to take notes, that way if there is any term or idea you do not understand, you can turn to your own notes, and so you will be able to understand what it is about.

After that first read, we suggest you go back to the same texts, but this time with a highlighter in hand and if possible a pen or pencil. Both items will help you to indicate which are the key passages and it will also be very helpful to make some kind of personal comment next to each paragraph. You can also complement this with your notes or with what you remember from the classes.

If you want to go deeper and you are really willing to be a good student and pass the exam with a good grade you can continue with making a summary. In this way the concepts will be engraved in your mind, without you needing to memorize them, with each reading you will better understand what each author is about and at the same time you will be able to relate it to other authors or to examples that may occur to you. Summaries are key because they are part of the third stage of studying, you have already read, you have highlighted and now you move on to writing it.

Concept chart

Many people often go one step further in studying, and prefer to have a summary of a summary, that is what the concept chart could be called. This chart can help us to more easily locate the concepts and main ideas of each author, as well as to make a comparison between different texts that deal with the same topic.

This chart can have its advantages and disadvantages, because for many it can be of great help and for others it can be a fine line toward memorizing words.

One of the advantages students can find is reviewing the exam topics and having them at hand before going in to take the test, in this way they can clearly pinpoint the most important issues to remember when sitting down to write or to take an oral exam in a subject.

The disadvantage, as we anticipated, can come from memorization, which leads to not remembering the ideas in the text that were left out of the concept map. There are certain people who tend to memorize words and therefore may forget what makes up the very idea of the text and be left only with the repetition of their map.

Study groups

For many students, sharing and discussing the texts is essential, it helps to explore certain topics in greater depth, to fix in their minds concepts that have remained somewhat vague, or to raise shared doubts and reach a good conclusion among several students in the same subject.

Daring to take the exam

If you have followed our steps carefully, you should not have difficulties on exam day. You can bring your summaries to feel more confident, or your concept map, if you have prepared it correctly and used it conscientiously.

A good piece of advice we can give you is to try to spend the night before the exam without so much personal pressure. The ideal is to have dinner and go to bed early, then when you wake up you can review the most important points, by that time there should be no doubts left.

If you tend to get very nervous, a good method to calm down, beyond breathing deeply and controlling your breath, is to get some bubble wrap, which usually comes in the box of televisions or fragile products we buy. Popping those bubbles helps you relax and think about something else, there are even those who hand it out in university hallways so that students feel supported in their moment of stress.