Libby: With the exam season coming up it's hard to know if you put enough effort in to secure the grades you want and you're probably wondering how much revision is the right amount for this.
I know that we see people on social media talking about how they've not stopped revising since 5:00 a.m, which probably makes you feel a bit behind and that may work for some people but my advice will be to find what's best for your own schedule as some people may only be able to do their revision in short bursts, while others might like to take a large chunk out of the day to tackle their work. I wouldn't say that I personally have a routine when it comes to revising just because my schedule usually gets quite full with uni, rugby and having a part-time job so I like to start by writing down my plans each week and the main few objectives that I need to get done. I actually found out that students do an average of 15 to 20 hours of revision each working week which sounds like a really daunting amount of time when it comes to planning night schedule but if you're like me: you're a great planner but a terrible doer, choosing what to start on can be harder than revision itself.
Choosing the topics that you feel most confident in is only going to waste your time with the subjects that you struggle with most so even though you may not like them as much choosing your least confident topic to begin with will really benefit you as chances are if you're already confident in it you'll most likely know it off by heart and won't need as much revision time.
Getting out of your room or house to do revision can also be great to get work done as I personally have the mentality that if I'm in University then the work I'm producing must be the best it can, so this really works into tricking your brain to getting into that work mode. Talking to your friends about how much revision they do or how they structure their timetables might benefit you when you're figuring out your own schedule as you can all help each other by sharing out tips. My friends and I used to have competitions on Flora which is a revision app that rewards your hard work with a growth of plans you just pop in your desired amount of revision time a break and a topic and off you go it stops me from using my phone when I don't need to and if you break the session it literally kills your plant which isn't cool for your morale.
Many people forget that sitting down and actively revising your work is so much different than learning content when you're learning new information the chances of you being able to remember it after 20 minutes compared to 3 days is extremely different so so being able to retrieve information is where you need to focus most there's actually a thing called the typical forgetting curve that shows how much of something you remember immediately after learning it and how that declines each day if you do not review it regularly improving your long-term memory is also a little life hack to stop you from panicking and having to relearn all your module information a week before your assessments are due because let's be honest that's usually the way it goes but little and often we'll usually do the trick when revising as it'll allow you to store a lot of information in your stressed out brain plus spacing out these revision sessions actually decreases your chances of muddling things up when you cram it all in one go. Just remember to not overdo it when you revise and definitely do not leave it last minute! Thanks for watching.
