One of the most intense moments in terms of nerves that we experience each year in university residences in Salamanca relates to exams. Nerves and lack of sleep are usually constant among our residents. Therefore, today we want to take the opportunity to give you a few tips that we believe can be very useful for facing the exam period.
It is important to prepare for exams in advance.
The first tip is not a trick; it is something that as a student you are aware of but that is easy to forget. It is very difficult to prepare for exams at the last minute. The ideal is to prepare them in advance. Arriving at the exam dates with the material prepared, that is, by the time of the exam, you should have read all the topics. It is also important that you highlight the key ideas and that you have resolved all doubts. If you also have an outline or summary of the topic in your own words, you will have nearly completed the journey.
Exams are just the culmination of the study process, the final test, and the key to the process is to achieve correct time management. You must bear in mind that our capacity for concentration as humans is limited, so cramming in the last few days usually does not yield very good results. On occasion, from our Paúles Residence, we have mentioned that it is important to know your biorhythms, to know when you can perform best. Based on this, you should organize your study sessions in blocks of two hours, after which you will enjoy a period of rest.
Another important issue is that wherever you study, try to have as few distractions as possible. For this, try to have all the material you might need prepared in advance. One of the biggest distractions we usually have is the mobile phone, try to turn it off when you are studying or at least put it on silent or airplane mode.
Being in good physical shape will help you get through the exam period better
Another thing that is often overlooked is physical fitness. It is important to be in good physical shape by the time exams come around, as the ancients said: “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” For this, you must take care of your diet, which should be balanced and contain all the nutrients your body needs. At Paules Student Residence, we offer our residents the option to benefit from our full board or half board, which includes healthy and tasty menus. Getting enough sleep and exercising regularly are other key points.
Being physically well-prepared will help us control one of the main enemies that usually strike at this time: anxiety. You must keep in mind that a certain level of anxiety is necessary as a stimulus that drives you to study. But if this is excessive, it can block you and that would be a serious problem.
Finally, we can talk about memory, perhaps the determining factor that can lead us to pass or fail. It consists of three phases, the first is encoding, to retain information we have to encode it. The best way is to make sense of what we study. It happens to all of us, it’s easier to study what we understand. The second phase is storage, which is achieved through repetition, and is one of the most important reasons why we recommend starting to study early. You should review what you have studied over time to be able to memorize it. The third phase would be Retrieval and is done through the network of associations that helped us in the encoding process.
From Paules Residence, we hope our tips will be useful to you. Good luck on your exams and aim for the top!