Thursday, March 21, 2013

How To Ace Your Next Exam: Perfect Practice Makes Perfect


The best way to achieve mastery is to practice, but you need to practice within the right context and environment.
Spending 1 to 2 hours on a problem the week before an exam that only allows you 20 to 30 minutes to solve it won’t help your exam related stress – in fact it will most probably INCREASE IT!
I know it’s hard to do, but you need to START your preparation much sooner than you think. What I suggest is that within a week of starting a course, you determine the exam content. I’m totally serious.
With the full content of the final exam (you can ask for copies of previous exams – usually available at the library or online), you will know what you know and what you need to learn.
One thing is for sure – you’ll be a lot less stressed if you do this than if you don’t.
Exam stress is mostly due to uncertainty – the “not knowing” what’s going to be on the exam rather than the difficulty associated with the questions.
Once you’ve figured that out, you can easily deal with it.
Otherwise you’ll continue to be best friends with DREAD and that’s no fun is it?

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