Today is LilZ’s first day of exams. EXAMS. Do you know the dark and dreary flashbacks the word EXAMS brings me? DARK AND DREARY.
I spent seven years in college, I studied for a lot of exams. Then, the four years in high school prior to that? ELEVEN YEARS OF EXAMS. Just watching him studying last night I broke out in cold sweats and felt the urge to make a pot of coffee and smoke a pack of cigarettes. How does he do it without caffeine or nicotine?
(Please don’t tell him I asked that question.)
LilZ and I have discussed what he is learning to be his best study methods. They seem to be completely opposite from mine. He reads a lot out loud, he says. Slowly and deliberately, like a script. He seems to respond to the audio and the vocal triggers in his memory. Me? I was a writer. I had to write and re-write things to allow them to solidify a spot in my brain. I would re-write my notes before tests…sometimes several times. MrZ, on the other hand, was one of those bastards who had photographic memory. He re-read everything once and it was solid. And while my memory was often short-term, his always stuck. Which is why when I scored higher than he did on any exams, I felt like a rockstar.
What about you? How did you study for exams?
Random Picture Of a Seriously Cute Couple For Your Enjoyment
For my GCSE’s (exams you sit at 16yo) I did loads of reading – on anything that was relevant. I did show up for one exam and the teacher hadn’t covered anything that came up in the paper – somehow I blagged my way through it. History wasn’t as easy though! I messed it up royally lol
A Levels – these were tougher because I did art subjects so there wasn’t a wrong answer as long as you could justify it enough. I found it hard – I think I should have stuck with maths or sciences – it’s either right or wrong then
I’m loving your pictures from the trip.
The best part of being an adult is the fact there are no more exams. I’m like you – I have a good short-term memory but I can’t tell you even 10% of all the stuff I “learned” in college.
I connect audio with motion when I am doing my best. Take the book onto a trail and walk slowly while reading it to myself, there always has to be some motion fidget but walking is what really does best for me.
I’m so old I can’t even remember (although I still have that horrible nightmare about running thru hallways trying to find my exam room, knowing that I’d never gone to any classes…).
My 16-year old makes flash cards to study (at least for history).
By taking lots and lots of notes, often making flash cards. I don’t know if it was the visual cues, or the process of writing things down that helped. I still make lists and even when I don’t have my list with me, just the fact that I wrote something down helps me remember it.
I am almost at the end of my doctorate degree which means I have been studying for exams for almost 20 years. I always studied by taking notes and I thought I was a visual learner but in the learning styles tests they’ve given us at school, I always resulted as an auditory learner.
I guess best way is to study however it feels right. Not that I am planning to continue after 20 years of education life:)
Good Luck for LilZ at his exams.
In college I would pack everything up and head to IHOP and drink pot after pot of their coffee and smoke until my throat burned. and then there were the pancakes….i think i gained my freshmen fifteen all in that one week.
Maybe he will be a hero and handle it better than we did?
I’ve got my last final for this semester today! Yay! I usually combine yours and MrZ’s methods. LilZ’s I’ve never tried, but since I like to study in public places (somehow I find LESS distractions at Starbucks than at home!) that might get me a few funny looks
I study best in a combination of your method and LilZ’s. I *have* to go through my class notes and make a new set of study notes — the important themes from each day’s class notes. Then, I have to read those aloud over and over again. If I’m somewhere (like a library) where I can’t do that, I put my hand over my mouth and VERY SOFTLY whisper it. My lips HAVE to move. Then at some point, I have to, without looking at the paper, tell myself a story/explain/give a little speech what my notes said.
My niece is busy studying for her finals this week, too. She’s the same age as LilZ (and they seem very similar from your posts). My advice to her on facebook this week? “Eh… just fill in the blank for C and let it go.” I absolutely love screwing with my SIL and thankfully my niece played right along
The best way for me to study is read and take notes. Then re-read over my notes. Notes are the key for me
a little of all of the above…..read out loud, write write write, and then there was the math stuff that came easy (total math nerd here!!!)
In college, I had to take dictation – not just jot down notes. I had to write down everything a teacher said. THANK GOODNESS for the mini tape recorders back then!!!
I was that person. The person who glanced at the notes and chapters half an hour before the exam and then got a 97%. As long as I had been in class, I could recall almost everything I needed to. And I BS’d really well.
Granted, I retained nothing. So when I graduated college and started teaching, I stood in front of a class of 5th graders and was all “OMG I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING”.
My poor husband studied for three days straight for a ten question quiz, and then only managed a B on a good day. We were married our last year of college and because of our opposite learning methods I earned many, many nasty looks and pure hatred.
*sigh* I was so good at school. Probably the last time I was easily successful at anything.
Notecards/flashcards. The re-writing, then being able to pull out the ones I knew to make the amount of material more reasonable, and focus on what I didn’t know was helpful.
Even now if I need to remember anything I need to write it down. A note on my iPhone can help but actually using pen and paper is so much better.
If I write a shopping list I don’t even need to bring it with me to remember what’s on it.
I’m lucky–like MrZ. My husband, though, has returned to college after almost 20 years, and he has found–like you–that writing and rewriting his notes does the trick.
I was another of the lucky ones. If there had been a major in test taking, I would have chosen it. I think the only test I studied for was the AP US History test. The bad news is that test taking doesn’t really translate well to adult life.
That picture makes me happy.
I was a terrible note-taker, so a lot of my exams involved highlighting copies of other people’s notes. I guess that put me somewhere in between you and MrZ – I didn’t re-write, but I couldn’t just read without the highlighter or I wouldn’t really pay attention.
Unless we’re talking math, in which case I actually had to do practice problems.
Ahhhh! It may be the nerdy teacher in me, but I love anything to do with figuring out learning styles of my students. LilZ is an Auditory learner, which means he learns best listening rather than “seeing” or “doing”. If he has lectures, he should try to record them if his teachers allow it. If he has to read a chapter, he should play music or have background noise in order to retain it better. Reading out loud works well, too, as he knows. I, too, am 77% Auditory, so I know what it’s like to be LilZ.
You are a kinesthetic and probably partially visual learner. You have to “do” something (such as writing) to learn best. You probably liked hands on projects the best when you were in school and unfortunately, exams usually don’t mesh well with kinesthetic learners (they do much better with presentations or labs).
Sounds like MrZ is a visual learner if he has a photographic memory. They have to see something to learn it (either through pictures or readings).
If you want to get in even deeper, we could talk about the Multiple Intelligences theory. That breaks the learning styles into even more parts (7 categories). I’m a Musical/Logical person.
Here is a good site with more about learning styles and multiple intelligences with great tips on how to best study for your style:
http://www.ldpride.net/learningstyles.MI.htm
I haven’t written an exam in a couple years. I am in university, but I have to write essays rather than exams. I don’t know which I prefer more.
For exams, I just read it over once. Often, it was the first time I read the information. I am a huge procrastinator, so I generally don’t read the readings until exam time. In the classes I have now, I often don’t read the readings at all. Terrible. I’m going to make some huge changes to my routine next semester…
Heather, thank you!! I have always been described as a “visual” learner because I write compulsively during lectures — then usually don’t look at the notes again. haha. But it sounds like i’m actually kinesthetic. thanks for the site, i bookmarked it.
ps zoot, i am so glad u two got to run away. v. romantic