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PFAU 20 edited 01 Sleep Study Balance by Lisa Pfau & Patricia Huang

It’s the day before your exam. You sit down to review those final 10 chapters. By lunch time, you’ve only managed to get through two. You start reviewing Chapter 5 while eating your dinner. It’s 9:00 p.m. and you’re only halfway through Chapter 7. Midnight creeps up and you still have two more chapters to go. Your exam is at 9:00am. Do you still up late and keep studying or go to bed and get at least 7 hours of sleep? Studies show that a good night’s sleep has a positive impact on your memory and recall compared to cramming in those last two chapters before your exam late at night.

Great, you say, but what if I go to bed early and miss important concepts that are then on the exam! Yeah, that’s a problem too. The key is to create a balance between study and sleep. Here are a three tips to help you out:

Start studying 1-2 weeks in advance: Of course, the most obvious and repeated advice is to start things early so that you aren’t stuck at the last minute. “Easier said than done”, said one procrastinator to another. As a rule of thumb, I would not study any new material the night before the exam, but leave that night for review only. That way if I don’t get through all of my review notes, I am confident that I have the materials somewhere locked in my brain. “Easier said than done,” said the other procrastinator to the first one. Right, so how to put this into action?

First, mark a reminder in your calendar at the beginner of the semester that notifies you three weeks before each exam to sit down and make a study plan. This will force you start thinking about the exam earlier than usual.

Second, during that week, sit down and review all the units that you need to cover before the exam. Figure out how many days you have to study. So, if you are starting two weeks in advance, realistically you 9 days to study (14 days – 1 day for review + 2 weekends where you’ll probably goof off = 9 days).

Third, figure out how many chapters you need to cover each day in order to finish up in 8-9 days. Make sure to account for the other exams you also need to prepare for.

Fourth, write these goals down in your calendar or a notebook, and make sure to start studying on the first day no matter what. Even if you don’t get far, at least you started and are beginning to building up momentum and get your brain set on studying.

Fifth, keep track of your progress, so that you know if you need to put in an extra day or late night. It is easier to catch up over a couple days than it is over a couple hours. Then, if the night before your exam you are focused on review, you can stick to a reasonable bedtime even if you don’t finish everything, knowing that you covered it all at least once.

Only study what you need to know: So often as students we get carried away with wanting to cover absolutely EVERYTHING. That’s not realistic. You need to study smart. There are a few things that can do to help you to identify what to study and what to leave out.

First, attend the review session at the end of term. The TA or Professor will often provide you with a study guide or at least drop some hints. Don’t hesitate to ask what will be covered in the exam a class or two before the end of term, if they don’t explicitly lay in out for you. You’re doing yourself and your classmates a huge favor.

Second, attend lectures and tutorials regularly. The Professor is usually only going to test what he/she covered in class, not the whole textbook. Reading the whole textbook may provide you with useful supplementary information, but it likely will not be necessary for doing well on the exam. Instead, focus on understanding the key concepts, definitions, and examples that the TA and Professor bring forth in tutorials and class. You can also check for bold text or sections in the textbook. These are usually important key terms/concepts. The end of chapter review pages also help you to identify key concepts/terms. Knowing what you’re heading into, can help you to get what you need done before the exam and sleep easier the night before.

Ask for help sooner, rather than later: If you don’t understand something, don’t wait until the day before the exam to ask for help. Ask a friend, your TA, or Professor, if there is a concept in class that you really don’t understand after going to the lecture and reading the appropriate chapter in the textbook. The Professor’s office hours are there for a reasons, so please use them. Moreover, showing that you are engaged and attempting to understand the materials helps you to build a positive relationship with the Professor and TA. This relationship will be important in the future should you require reference letters or want to discuss a grade appeal. Trying to understand a difficult concept while under exam preparation pressure is an almost impossible task, so give yourself a leg up by asking questions early.

Being realistic about your study plan means that you definitely will be able to head to bed early before your exam, and possibly feel more rested during the whole exam period so that your brain is fresh and ready to go on exam day.

**All blog content is original created by Lisa Pfau and Patricia Huang. Please respect our intellectual property rights and do not copy any of this content without our prior permission. However, please do feel free to share widely.

PFAU 4 comic book final LARGE 01 Beat Exam Anxiety by Lisa Pfau & Patricia Huang

When I was in high school, and the early part of my Undergraduate studies, I suffered from terrible exam anxiety. Before my first Grade 12 Provincial Exam in Alberta, Canada, I remember throwing up my Cheerios in the bathroom sink. My anxiety stemmed from having tanked my Social Studies Provincial Exam in Grade 11, which I had opted to take a year early to give me a leg up on my other Grade 12 exams. FAIL! My poor grade was a huge disappointment since I had consistently had the highest grade in the school in Social Studies since Grade 9 until that point. I was also competing to become Valedictorian, and since Social Studies was not only my favorite subject, but also a required course and Provincial Exam scores accounted for 50% of our final grades in all required courses that one bad exam significantly impacted my overall GPA. So, by the time Provincial Exams rolled around in Grade 12, I was sick to my stomach.

As a result, I decided to rewrite my Grade 12 Social Studies exam in the hopes of overcoming my fear of writing essays on exams. Yes, the person who currently teaches others how to write academic essays used to find the process painfully difficult. In the end, Terry Smart (yes, that’s his real name!) beat me out for Valedictorian because my rewrite score was not eligible. Fortunately, these experiences taught me a few tricks that helped me to overcome my exam anxiety during my Undergraduate studies.

Create a Study Schedule: I was a terrible procrastinator until about Grade 12. Any assignment or exam, I would put a lot of effort into, but probably just a few days before it was due. I learned by retaking my Social Studies exam that I needed to start studying weeks, sometimes months in advance, in order to really digest all of the material. Studying in advance also helped with time management by encouraging me to breakdown all of the exam material into sections, assign a date and time for each section, and ensure I left a few days grace period to review everything. I generally recommend that for any mid-term or final exams students allot themselves a minimum of two weeks to prepare, if not more.

Find a Study Buddy: When I was in Undergrad, I made a few close friends in my major, Political Science. If we missed a class, we’d take notes for each other to ensure no one missed an important concept, assignment, or deadline. We’d also study for exams together, which meant comparing notes, discussing concepts, prepping potential essay questions, and even summarizing readings. Working together helped us to understand the material from the perspective of both student and teacher. It also made exam prep a lot less overwhelming because we were in it together.

Visualize Positive Outcomes: A TD Bank survey of 500 small business owners in 2016 uncovered that entrepreneurs who visualize success are more confident than those who do not; and, those who create a visual reminder (ie. Vision board) are twice as confident as those who do not. In fact, 82% of business owners who used a vision board from the beginning reported having accomplished more than half of the goals outlined on the board. Now, building a business is the ultimate test, so why not apply these same principles to your academic goals and studying? You can start by switching your storyline of blank faces, sweaty palms, and D- into a big fat A smiling up at your from your exam paper. How will that grade make you feel? What will you behave like and feel like while writing an exam with such a positive result? Put an intention out there and have that positive possible outcome motivate your studies. Just like the Little Engine that Could, keep telling yourself – “I think I can! I think I can! I think I can!” – and you’ll ace that exam in no time.

Think of it as a Game Show: I used to love trivia as a kid. One of my favorite shows was Jeopardy. Thus, instead of thinking of an exam as a pass or fail experience, I would think of my grade as a score in a game show. Each question I got correct, I was amassing points towards the ultimate prize of an A+. This way, even if I didn’t get 100% on the test, I still didn’t completely lose out. I still went home with some sort of consolation prize: B+. Thinking of exams in this way helped to take the pressure off of being better than my classmates or impressing the Professor; and instead, I created a competition with myself, where each correct answer and new tidbit of information was a step towards success. Somehow this made studying fun!

Take a few Deep Breaths & Calm your Mind: Even after doing all of these things, come exam day, as soon as the Professor put the exam paper in my hand, my mind would go completely blank. It turns out that this black out is a natural response to stress designed to help our primitive selves to escape a dangerous situation by putting all of our resources into our physical fight or flights responses so that we can run away from a tiger or something. At the same time, this fight or flight response reduces stimulation of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that allows us to have abstract thoughts. It is usually abstract thoughts that we need to answer those pesky exam questions. I was not aware of the connection between stress and the prefrontal cortex at the time, but I did notice that if I focused my attention away from the exam to my breathing for a few minutes, my mind would clear and all of the answers to the questions would slowly resurface. Therefore, I developed a practice of spending the first 5 minutes of an exam taking deep breaths and clearing my mind of worries, and then, I would flip to the longer essay questions and jot down some random thoughts related to the questions before focusing on the more intense and specific multiple choice and short answer questions. Essentially, I was meditating for 5 minutes at the start of every exam, a practice that has now been largely linked to the strengthening of the prefrontal cortex and calming of the amygdala.

So, before you FREAK OUT about your next exam, try some of these simple suggestions. Writing exams is stressful. There is no avoiding that, unfortunately. However, with the right strategies, attitude, and supports, you can definitely make exams a lot less painful than they have been in the past, and maybe even a little fun!

**All content in this post is the intellectual property of Lisa Pfau & Patricia Huang. Please do not replicate any of this content without prior consent. You may share this post and other similar posts widely while making sure to give the authors credit, however.