Well, it is oficially official! I am sticking to my blog plan! 1 post every Tuesday and Sunday, and I know what I'll be writing right up until the end of August! Undoubtedly some of those will change, but I've got general thoughts and I know I'll keep up with the blog.
From now on I think that posts are going to look like this one and my previous one, rather than the ones before that. The blog feels more personal and its way more fun! I'm going to have to get myself a proper camera sorted though, using the one in the computer is tedious and doesn't give the images I really want. It'll have to be a cheap one though as there are so many birthdays coming up! Any ideas or recommendations, that's not spelt right, drop me a comment below!
So, today I will be talking to you about something that a lot of people will be thinking about right now: Revision. The large majority of people hate and dread this, I'm proud to say I'm not one of them. Revision can be really fun and really rewarding if you put your mid to it! Yes, it can be tedious, yes it can be boring at times. However, if you want to achieve those As, those A*s, whatever grade it is you are working towards, it something you've got to do. Sorry. :-S
So, the first thing I'll talk about is having a good space to work. In a nutshell, this is the first hurdle when it comes to studying or revising. I just can't work if the space isn't right because I just don't want to be there.
The space you have or want has got to be big enough for you. If you can't get a desk in your room or office, do you have a kitchen table? No? Then could you think about getting a Laptop Desk that you could put on your knees so that you have a surface to rest on? There are so many options, its just about finding the place that works best for you.
When you have found a desk or table that suits your needs in terms of space, you then have to think about how much noise you can handle when you are working. Do you need silence, background noise, music? If you need complete silence, your bedroom, an office or even the back of the Library would be great places to work. If you can't stand background noise but don't mind music, earphones/headphones are your perfect solution!
If you have the choice between working in your bedroom or a home office, go with the home office every time. The environment is much better for working in.
When I am revising, I always like to set myself deadlines and time frames. These can be seen as very daunting and stressful, but they really aren't if you make them yourself. Homework deadlines can really be a pain, though, as you haven't set them yourself. Thus, you could set your own deadlines for completion (BEFORE THE DUE DATE) so that you can feel better about them, knowing that you can make them fit into the way you work.
A great tool to use when thinking about dealines is a planner. This could be one supplied by your school, an academic diary, a yearly diary, anything! It would help you to be able to see your deadlines and keep in control of them, I know it does me!
Stupid Blogger isn't letting me add captions AGAIN, but here are two pictures of my school planner (two different weeks). I have another academic planner (Pearsons) which is much neater than this messy thing.
For me, planners can be really expensive. So, for the next academic year, I am going to make my own from and A5 Ringbinder and Dividers. Here:
I'll do another post telling you how I get on with that.
I have done a previous post on this but I am going to briefly talk about motivation. A few questions that I ask myself when I feel demotivated are:
Why am I doing this?
What am I working for?
How will I feel if I don't get the results I want?
Where will I be in 5/10 years if I do/don't get the results I want?
What can I do that is enjoyable if I do XYZ in my next break?
After asking myself these questions, I generally feel much more motivated to keep on going and study or revise.
I have done a previous entry on Motivational Posters so take a look at that if you feel that you are constantly demotivated and need somwthing to always be there to motivate you.
Something that links very closely to Motivation is having the will-power to not give up. The way I tackle this is to give myself a physical thing to work for. An example of this might be:
'If I can do 2 A4 Sheets worth of this work by XYZ, I will have XYZ (normally food :-D) in my break.' OR
'When I have done 5 more questions on this topic that would be worth at least 3 marks, I will take a break and XYZ.' XYZ here could be something like walking my dog, getting a bubble bath, reading a book, something that I really enjoy doing.
Right, this is going to sound EXTREMELY weird but the type of paper you use could really affect the way you work. It does me. I use my trusty ARC to organise myself, plan things and do layouts of how something is going to be done, it really affects the way I work. The fact that the ARC uses 100gsm paper makes me WANT to use it, so I do. You've see it before, but I love it so much (and of course you do too!) that I am going to show you it again :-)
Yup. Stare at it. Mmmm.... OK this just got weird.
COLOUR! This is something that I always have to use when I am revising. It makes the work look more appealing and I am SO much more likely to look at it again. Take a look at the picture below:
The work on the left has been done at school in plain black ink. Better than blue ink. The work on the right are some notes that I have done at home. Now, I can't speak for you but personally, I prefer the ones in colour. For a first, they are more understandable to me, secondly, they are easier to look at. I could pick out information from the right piece much easier that I could from the work in the left piece.
Keeping your work in one place is something that I find is really important as well. A Ringbinder is a piece of equipment that you could buy for as little as 50p at Tesco or ASDA. Isn't spending some money better that having notes all over the place and losing them? Having notes together also means that you have all of the information in one place and so you have to spend less time trying to find them, you can actually just get on and do the revision. The Ringbinder pictured below is my Biology one, about £2 from WHSmith normally but they were on offer, 3 for £3.
I have briefly covered Timetabling in my previous post, but in nowhere near as much depth as I would have liked. There are literally hundreds of ways in which you could organise the way you work. I'll tell you about some of the ways I llike to do it here.
The way I do it right now is to divide the day up into 5 minute slots. These slots are listed vertically in 2 or 3 colums, dependant on how much time I have in the day. I then write in what I am going to do in that time slot. If the activity lasts for 5 minutes (very probably), I draw an arrow down to the time that I am going to finish or stop work on it for the time being. If this changes throughout the day, I write the new activities and arrows next to the original in red.
Another way of doing it is similar to the way I have just described. You would create one of these Timetables for each thing you need to do that day and then put links to that Timetable int the 'Master Timetable'. Well, not links exactly, just references. This is the way that I will be doing my Timetabling as of next Saturday... ish.
You could of course, just do approximate Timetabling. Just know for yourself that you want to spend X hours on any particular subject that day. The important thing is to find the way that works best for you, a way that you can stick to.
I was going to cover Revision Methods here but this has gone on for far longer than I had intended. I'll do a post about Methods on Tuesday and then the one I had planned for Tuesday on Sunday.
Thank you so much for reading this, I hope you enjoyed it! If you have any ideas or comments, let me know below! There must be someone reading this! :-D
Ami x
