How’s it going with your studies? Have you been keeping to your schedule, using the pomodoro technique and making sure that you are learning actively? Good for you! Here’s another great tool to help you use your study time as effectively as possible. It’s called spaced repetition. (Click here for a video on how it works.)
How do you transfer knowledge or understanding from your working (short-term) memory into your long-term memory? The same way you would learn a song: practice. Practice makes permanent. The more you practise, the wider and more embedded the neural pathways become. If you don’t practise, the patterns vanish before they are made permanent.
Most of us cram before a test or exam, often going through the night to complete all the content we need to learn. That’s a really bad idea. It may have got you through a few tests in the course of the year, but you probably don’t remember a thing now that you have to prepare the same material for the exam. Plus, it stresses you out. In future, go for spaced repetition. This is a tried and tested formula to counter the “forgetting curve”.
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Spaced repetition means going back to the same material again and again, but with bigger gaps between the sessions.A good pattern is to revisit it after one day, after five days, after ten days, and then again the night before the exam. You can make it even more effective by testing yourself on the different problems or sections every time. Those you get right are put aside for next time. Those you get wrong have to be revisited tomorrow. Only when you know them well can you extend the period before you get back to them.
So: let’s say you decide to spend an hour (two pomodoro’s) on each of your first three exam subjects on Monday evening. On Tuesday, you go back to the same sections and test yourself. The parts you know can be put aside till next week. The parts you don’t know need more work, and you must return to them again on Wednesday evening, together with new subjects or sections you haven’t covered yet.
Try to fit in at least three rotations of all your work (day 1, day 5 and day 10) in this way before the exam. It will give you enormous peace of mind, and you will be able to sleep soundly before the exam. That will push up your marks in itself. You must sleep. While you are awake, and especially if you’re doing hard mental work, toxins collect in the brain. It is “washed clean” when you sleep. You cannot think clearly when you’re tired.
