Deepak said:
I have a serious problem, exams are approaching fast (next month), whenever I sit to read my books, I get sleepy after reading for few minutes. I can't sit and read for hours and hours like you guys do. I can't resist PS2 and watching TV. I know what I should be doing but somehow can't do.
Any suggestions and ideas? How do you guys study?
I just finish my exam last week. It was so stressfull and i suffered similar problems like yours. The only solution that i could find was that I need motivation and directions.
A strong motivation is really needed to learn and succeed. Think carefully about your original purpose in enrolling at university. This will assist you to strengthen and develop your motivation and to help you to organise yourself in the most beneficial way.
Think about why you want to do this and keep remembering what you are trying to achieve and why this is important to you. It just might help you to buckle down and read your notes or the textbook when tempted to ‘veg.’ out, or watch TV. Mental work is hard and the mind is very clever at throwing up feelings and suggestions to you so that it can avoid working. It might, for example, suggest that doing the housework or building a study is what you need before you start. The brain is clever at devising schemes to avoid university work. A strong motivation can help to keep you studying and succeeding.
Worrying about study and the feeling of pressure are not in themselves bad things. They can motivate you to work harder and concentrate. The trick is to make use of these thoughts in a positive way. Too much worry and pressure can be detrimental, and cause you to mope about or get depressed, rather than study harder or longer. If you are unlucky enough to find this fits you, first try to harness them to work for you. If this does not work, you can talk to the people at Student Services. When you are stressed out, whatever helps you to reduce your stress level is good
Organisation and discipline are both needed. If you should have free time at your disposal you will often face a choice between work and play, choose work whenever you can. Forcing yourself to start is often the hardest part, once you are into the reading and note-taking or whatever, it may seem rewarding and worthwhile.
You can just open your textbook at the place you last marked, or read over your last module notes to get yourself going. Naturally if you have an assignment due shortly, then that is more likely to be a profitable thing to work on. The fear of deadlines can be put to good use.
You need to make lists and draw up a personal timetable to allocate your time in the most productive way. I suggest you make a standard weekly timetable, divided into seven days, and then into hours. Fill this in, with the set time for work or other obligations in one colour and what topic or subject you will study in the blanks, in a different colour. Run it into the evenings and weekends too, as these are prime study time.
At the start, allocate equal time per subject and only adjust this when you need, eg., if you find you are falling behind in one subject you should increase your time allocation to it. This will help to prevent you from spending most of your time on the subject you like the best and ignoring your weaker subjects.
As part of time allocation, have a good look at the assessment weighting system. There was a time when your final results depended entirely upon your examination results. People then studied old examination papers and `spotted' topics, allocating more time to those areas that appeared more often on the exam papers. These days most universities have a system of continuous assessment plus examinations. The weighting of each part of your work should affect your choice of where to place emphasis. If one semester essay is worth half the total marks, it makes sense to put more effort into that essay; some advocate putting about half your effort into the essay in such a case.
As soon as you have finished a task, such as reading a topic, make sure you cross it off and enjoy the feeling of satisfaction. This crossing off and gaining enjoyment practice can help to increase your motivation to work and to both start and finish tasks. Most managers and many academics do this as a basic way of surviving the day.
It is your own responsibility to organise yourself and your life, what you study, when you study it, and how you study. You should be flexible in this and be prepared to redo your timetable or schedule in the light of experience. Do not just drop scheduling yourself completely, but alter the schedule itself if it proves unsatisfactory.
Good luck for your exam mate.
