Good day fellow readers!

With the nearing of exams, most of you must be worried and tensed about what might happen, but fear not because possible solutions are now in front of your eyes!

Listed further a few important points that you must keep in mind during preparation. If requested, the next post will be about paper presentation.

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1. Identify your strong times-

You must test and find out at what time of the day are you the most active to carry out essential tasks and study sessions with full focus. Are you a morning person? or are you a night owl? Which one suits you best for effective study? Find out and pursue the focus of your study hours in that time frame!

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2. Keep Calm-

A stressed mind is weak in thought and process, so studying with stress and worry won’t get you anywhere. It’s ironic to see that we stress because we want to get better marks but the result is actually counter-productive.

How not to stress? There are many things you can do to not stress, further below are a few important tasks that can potentially curb your stress levels.

i) Mindset-

You can only effectively stop stressing once you change your mindset and viewpoint about exams and studying. Don’t say “oh no there’s very little time left”, but say “What all can I complete now in the remaining time effectively”. And also obviously don’t keep procrastinating your study sessions, because later you’ll think- “Why hadn’t I started earlier?”. 

ii) Hobbies and avoiding triggers-

Hobbies can really help calm you down. Since of course, no one studies the whole day without breaks in the middle. Use those breaks for doing more of things that calm you down (Draw, doodle, cycle, pray, read a book, write (like I am on this post right now) etc). Going on Instagram and educating yourself on the drama of others lives’ won’t help at this point of time. Besides that, the posts kids put up these days are such strong triggers of overthinking and depression so it’s best to keep away from any such source.

iii) Physical Activity-

The body requires physical activity in order to stay fit and have a balanced proportion of ‘feel-good’ hormones (serotonin, dopamine) to keep the body calm. With a research report indicating that the average hours of exercise has fallen from 4 hours a day average of previous generations to about 14minutes a day of the present generation, it is not surprising why the stress levels also show such disparities- only 10% of the population in the age group above 60 face stress and depression, whereas 25% of the age group of teenagers to young adults face it.

iv) Curbing thoughts / Meditating- 

You need a considerable amount of energy for studying and carrying out other essential tasks at this point of time. Wasting that energy in the bitter sorrows of the past or the colourful expectations of the future is really going to pull you back.

Focus your energy on other things. Do so by meditating every day or any other means that you find can help you in avoiding useless thoughts and overthinking and bring the right focus to your life!

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3. Prioritizing Topics-

Don’t start with small, insignificant and complicated topics first, finish most of the stuff that you find comparatively easier to grab the most marks. Focus on only the important, repeated and recommended questions if you’ve procrastinated too much already. Know your priorities and set your goals straight!

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4. The Sun!-

Make sure you get enough sunlight. What does this have to do with anything here? Well, your body needs to synchronize its sleep, hormone regulation etc. timings and for that, it needs to know of the light outside. The sun is not only recommended for Vitamin D but even to attain such synchronization. With the lack of this synchronization, your hormones and day would be devastated by imbalances. Research suggests about 10 minutes of bright sunlight every day is enough.

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5. Adequate Sleep-

Sleep is important for neurogenesis (making of new neurons) and keeping the body’s systems energized. With losing and lack of sleep, you are losing on those neurons which you really need for thought and learning process. With such lack of neurons, the brains hippocampus (the part related to memory and emotions) becomes small, leading to emotional instability and difficulty in remembering things or related abnormalities.

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6. Food diets and glucose intake-

Healthy meals are also important, not too much that you start feeling sleepy but you get the point! Make sure you get enough glucose and carbs as they help in neurogenesis and help in maintaing the lobes in your brain ascociated to determination, self-control and intelligence. Would you want to miss out on food and compromise yet again on a few vital skills that you really need? No! You shouldn’t!

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7. Keep yourself motivated and subject-specific strategies-

There are many ways you can do this, put up sticky notes at your table, if there’s something you keep doing unconsciously (opening the tv, using your phone), put a sticky note on the tv remote or your phone with a “cost” specified (eg. 2 hours of study first!) before you can use them etc.

Also if you have the time, make sure to check out my other post from November last year which deals with tips to study and might motivate you to do so along with a lot of other mentions!

Click here for motivation and study tips!

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That’s about it, all the best to everyone for their upcoming exams!