| Dear Student We are in the last week of October. Most of you will start writing exams next week or soon thereafter. Try not to give in to stress and tension. Stick to your daily schedule with your regular study hours. At this point you have to study at least six days of the week. Put in a few more hours on Saturday so that you can take Sunday off. It is a huge relief and it feels like a reward. When you’re at your desk, focus and work hard. Use the pomodoro technique to resist slacking. Get some exercise in between. Dance to a piece of mad music, walk round the block, kick a ball. If you drink alcohol, try to give it up until the end of the exams. You need your brain to be as sharp as possible in the next few weeks. |
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| One last tool in our series to help you study more effectively: sense-making. This simply means fitting your study content into some existing knowledge and understanding in the real world; and seeing it as part of a bigger whole, never as a free-standing piece of new knowledge with no connection to anything else. If you’re studying analysis and design in civil engineering, find a bridge somewhere near where you live, sit down (safely) and look at it. How does it stay up? Is it supported from below, or does it hang from cables? How many? How widely spaced? If the concrete mix was wrong and it started crumbling, how would that play out? Connect the theory in your text book with something you see in the world around you. If you’re studying financial management, think of someone you know who bakes cookies to earn some cash. She starts off with say R100. That’s the owner’s equity. She buys ingredients. That’s expenditure. She needs to borrow a large pan to make the first batch. That pan is now a liability – she owes it to someone else, who wants some of the cookies as payment for the loan. That’s interest. How many cookies must she sell, at what price, to have enough profit for another batch? You can immediately see how the theory plays out in real life. Also look at the money plan in the GRAD toolkit and consider your own situation: what are your assets and your liabilities? What does your cash flow look like? In literature, does the main character in a play you’re studying remind you of someone you know? Do you like that person? Why/why not? How does that fit with the character in the play? Also, always zoom out to the big picture. Go back to the table of contents in your text book and see how the sub-section you’re studying fits into the bigger whole. Draw a mind map to clarify that for yourself. Google a summary of the plot of your novel or your play and consider where the scene you’re focusing on, fits in. Why is it important? What difference does it make to the development of the plot, or to your understanding of the character? The more your studies make sense, the more it will stick in your mind. Next week we’ll give you some practical tips for writing the exam. Till then, happy studying! |
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| GRAD – your guide to university success is a partnership project of Ruda Landman, StudyTrust, Van Schaik Publishers and Capitec Bank |
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