Tips of cramming in exams

1. Mozart Effect 2. Make a detailed revision timetable on a large piece of paper (A3 at least) 3. mnemonics - Make Names Easily Memorable by Organising Nominated Initial Characters. ex: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas as a way of remembering the nine planets in order of distance from the sun (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto). 4. eat Bananas 5. Make the stairs work for you 6. Don't procrastinate --> the more you procrastinate, the more you will have to do later. 7. Turn topics into poem or songs 8. Have someone quiz you 9. No Distractions 10. Focus 100% 11. Set aside time to take small, quick breaks in between studying. 12. Determine the information in your study notes and arrange them from most important to least important. 13. set aside the information and notes that you already know and focus more on what you don't know. 14. Use flash cards, the Internet, drawings and other methods to further help you with your "cram session." 15. Get enoygh sleep! A sleep cycle is approximately 90 minutes 16. reading over the material out loud 17. Remember to breath. If you need a moment to regain your nerves, take a deep breath into the pit of your stomach. Hold this breath for about five seconds before exhaling through the mouth, squeezing all the air out. Repeat this exercise a few times or until a calm feeling is achieved. Extras: Chunking Chunking is a concept that first emerged in the 1950s when a Harvard psychologist named George Miller published his study on short term memory. It was called "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two." Miller suggested that humans can successfully retain 5 to 9 items in short term memory banks. To illustrate this, you can try memorizing this grocery list:

Eggs Flour Milk Bacon Baking powder Butter Syrup Cereal Blueberries There are nine items in this list, so many people will have difficulty remembering all of them. However, when we find a way to chunk those items into categories, we can find it much easier to remember them. Think of these items as three different breakfast lists: Eggs and bacon for day one. Pancakes for day two, requiring flour, baking powder, and milk. We'll also need syrup and butter! Cereal for day three: cereal, milk, blueberries (it doesn't hurt anything to repeat milk). Try it now! Chances are, you can remember every item. Why? Our brains are "tricked" into thinking we're only remembering three things instead of nine. Use Chunking to Cram for a Test When you think of all the information you have to study when you're cramming, you can easily become overwhelmed. However, you can use the concept of chunking to reduce the information you're "cramming" into your short-term memory. How does this work? Basically, you will reduce the information into categories. Once you can boil down all the information to five to nine big categories, you should be okay for a test. It takes some time, but it really works! 1. Gather all your class notes and texts in one place. 2. Identify important terms. Go back through your text and class notes and identify all the important words or phrases. There may be dozens of important terms. 3. Write a short definition for each term. 4. Identify five to nine important concepts. Using note cards (make your own if necessary), write down the chapter headings, lecture themes, or chapter titles. These are the main ideas or concepts you'll need to understand. Use a separate note card for each concept. 5. Write a short paragraph to define or discuss each of your major concepts, including several of your terms for each paragraph (good practice for the short essay question). 6. Go back and forth, reading and testing yourself on the individual terms and the long definitions until you are pretty comfortable. 7. Test yourself with with fresh, blank note cards. Re-write the main ideas and try reproducing your definitions without looking at your previous cards. Each time you include one of the terms, highlight it or underline it. This is a visual that will reinforce information. 8. Repeat step 7 until you can incorporate all your terms into one of your concept paragraphs.

Conclusion: Most importantly remember this: it isn't the end of the world! Best chances are that if you've listened in class and paid some attention to your homework over the semester, you will do fine on the final. If not, one bombed exam won't result in your own personal apocalypse. Never fear as a promising future still awaits you at Macdonald's or in local politics. Good luck.