Pages

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Tip 2: 2nd-3rd/4th Day Before Exam

This is the method of studying I've been using since 2nd year. So far it had been showing to give good prognosis to my exam result. Just sharing the method, check it out!



2nd-4th days before exam is what I would like to call the climax zone. I forgot to mention in my previous post, 1 day before exam should be the anti-climax zone, where the environment to study in must be free of any seriousness or stress. A good place would be our own room, where we feel safe and we can have all the privacy we can have.

A climax zone does differ a little bit from the anti-climax zone. 2-3 days usually wouldn’t be enough to study new topics. This is the part where we recall our knowledge. Therefore we will also use the “study scan technique” but this time it is called the “serious study scan” technique.

Planning

  • Plan how much we want to read for that day, make sure there all of the topics is scanned in the 2-4 days time frame.
  • Divide that day into three compartments; morning, afternoon to noon, and night
  • Take3-5 hours of each compartment for study, the rest is for resting.
  • Plan to double scan if possible. Sometimes we are able to scan quite fast, so prepare 1-2 days to scan the same topic 2nd time
  • The more time we scan the better it will stay in our memory
  • Fasting is a good way to manage time during “study scan” because less time for food, less time for sleep (because sleeping during fasting is a waste of abundance of pahala), less distraction (usually we avoid wasting time doing useless things during our fast), less talking with friends (wasting precious saliva) and more prayers (prayers of fasting people is granted). The strength to keep on studying and to absorb knowledge will be given by Allah, insyaAllah, make sure our niat is good
  • Try to do qiam as much as possible
  • Al-Mathurat and Al-Mulk as the opening and closing of the day


Serious Scanning technique

  • Find a “serious” environment, such as the library, ibnu sina, surau and etc, try to avoid our room where the juicy bed will keep on saying “come to me…”
  • Prepare drinks if we are not fasting, yassin water is very good, plain or mineral water (avoid r.o water, I will explain why other time), avoid sugary drinks (unless its coco A+ then it’s ok…promote lak)
  • Sit in the most comfortable posture, get a good lightning, and prepare adequate stationary. Go buy if it’s not adequate, this is important.
  • Start with fatihah as usual and get into a calm but serious mood
  • Scan through the notes, but get deeper this time. Try to get the important points, if there are techniques used to remember the points, use it now, and make sure it is embedded in the mind.
  • Jot down important notes to get into more serious attitude
  • Have text book around to clarify missing or inadequate information
  • Go as detail but as fast as we can
  • Don’t cramp for too long, take 5 minutes break every 15-20 minutes. Do whatever to ease the mind.
  • If we manage to finish our goal for that day, reward ourselves. Usually I will treat myself to a nice dinner… if you prefer to go even more serious start reading tomorrow’s topic to make sure no time is wasted
  • If we fail to reach our goal, DO NOT forces to cramp it and sacrifice our sleep! Try to go faster the next day
  • If we still fail to cover all, that’s okay, do not take the “1 day before exam” time to cover this. You can take, but not too much, maybe just in the morning, the rest of the day is for last minute “study scan”
  • We can sleep late in the climax zone but not too late to effect the next day. The maximum could be 1.00 am.



The Science Behind

Usually, during the exam, most of the information that pops out from our memory so easily is the information gain during this 2nd-3rd/4th day before exam. This is why we need to be serious and make sure to go as detail as possible. But since the day is not very close to the exam, we don't get too many pressure.

Visualisation

The visualization technique should be used as early as we started posting. It should be repeated every day, every time we remember to visualize it.



No comments: