Revision and Study Skills How to excel in exams

The view is introducing a new topic in four weekly installments as of this week. Yoseph is focusing intently on the dynamics of revision and study skills- a task that has dogged us throughout our formative years and may still pose serious challenge.

Why do we have exams? After all, exams just test one's endurance in the exam room and in no possible way can they test one's intelligence. Sad but true, and we all have to go through them at many points in our lives. Years of your hard work is judged by how well you do in an exam on a certain day.
What if your calculator malfunctions at the exam? Or you break a finger a night before the exam day? Or what if you always panic when you enter the exam room? Simple answer: bad grades. Meaning: lower chances of getting admission to universities, low self-esteem, and many other consequences. What if you are lucky? Division One or Two, your family is proud of you, admission to university guaranteed and you might even secure a government loan.
Is it really luck? Is it just 'good hard work' that earns you the grades you want? Think about this: many times when your parents and teachers tell you to work hard, what exactly do they mean? Bury yourself in your books all day, go to tuitions, work late at night and you wake up before everyone again to bury yourself in your books! Your parents would be very impressed if you work this hard, because it is thought, the longer you work, the higher your grades. Is this really true? I have friends who worked eight straight hours every day but didn't pass half their subjects. The 'hard work' hasn't paid off. Has this ever happened to you?
People say it's bad luck, some might say you are just not smart enough. I don't believe in that. It all depends on your revision, whether your revision is of QUALITY or QUANTITY. Many hours spent with your books does not necessarily mean higher grades; sometimes it feels like you are hitting a brick wall with your head and you are getting nowhere! It's quality that matters, not quantity.
How can I achieve quality revision?
Revising for exams is not the easiest job in the world. It requires full concentration, all your attention. If you make your aim to UNDERSTAND the books and notes you are reading rather than just to REMEMBER them, it would be easier for you to get better grades in exams. Whatever you read must make sense to you, or else you will spend ages memorizing pages of Chinese. It's just like the multiplication table; you can memorize a whole table in two days, or you can spend two hours to understand the concept of multiplication and you will be able to multiply bigger numbers that the table does not have. It is shorter, easier, and you are more likely to remember multiplication longer once you understand it.
What do I do to understand what I am being taught in school?
First, listen clearly in class, pay attention to the teacher's explanations, ask questions, and write YOUR OWN notes. There is a big difference between going to class everyday to COPY notes from the board and writing the notes in YOUR OWN WORDS that weeks later YOU can understand. If you just copy out everything from the board, you will most likely go home and try to memorize it. When you look back at those notes months later, you will be wondering what the teacher was talking about, and will read it over and over and over again to make a meaning out of it. You might give up and just memorize everything; this way you would possibly find it hard to relate it to the exam questions which could be written in a different way. If you try to understand it in class however, you can write it in your own words. You will find this easier to understand weeks before your exams. This will encourage you to ask questions in class so that whatever you write in your notebook is something you understand. Some of you are shy or too afraid to ask in class, and when the results come out, you would be shy to show your grades to others because they are not good. Understanding a topic when it is fresh in your mind helps, you would save a lot of energy and time, and possibly the topic will be interesting for you.
Is understanding what is being taught in class enough?
It is just the beginning, the biggest and a very important step towards achieving grades that you want. After you understand whatever has been taught in class, you go home and ORGANIZE YOUR NOTES. If you don't have organized notes, you would struggle weeks before your exam when trying to find which is which and what goes where. It has happened to me and it took me weeks to organize my notes when in fact I should have been revising. Leaving that job until the end is very tempting and it's a trap you should try to avoid. Because months later, you would be asking yourself the meaning of what you have written. Just spend 15 to 30 minutes daily putting your notes in a way that you would understand them two years later. Condense them with more notes from other books, or discussing with your friends. Besides, what is taught in class is never enough, so research more on the topic and add it to your notes. Depending on the subjects, do exercise questions so that you understand it better, and add a few sample questions to your notes (I would advise you to put some of the questions you found hard). If you do this, your life would be easier later on when revising, and it gives you more time to do exercises.