Question: How did you prepare for your exams?

Jack barton answered on 17 Jun 2017:

I’ve always found that turning the revision material into a more visual format useful for me. When I had essay-based subjects (e.g. psychology) to revise for I would turn topics into mind maps with as much colour and as many pictures as my non-creative mind could muster. I would then, much to the annoyance of my parents, stick these over the wall and try to visualise their location in my room. When it came to my exams I could try to bring my room to mind and picture the location where I stuck a particular mind map or essay plan. It was not a perfect approach but I find it gave me something else to boost my memory – particularly for psychology which involved learning a lot of research studies.

Another approach I found useful was to try to think of all the questions / essays which an exam could throw at me. It may sound daunting but there is only a limited amount of ways an exam can test you on the material. This is why over the years you will see questions repeated from past papers, or worded slightly differently. Once I had created this list of questions (mainly essay titles) I would create plans for them and test myself on them afterwards. I found this approach more useful than just writing out the content again, and by getting myself to write the essays it tested how much I really knew about the topics.

Finally, teaching someone else your exam content (without notes) is a great way to revise. I used this more in university but if you can teach the topic to a friend or family member, and with them understanding what you’re saying, you will feel more confident in your own revision.

P.s. great choice of favourite scientist, Alan Turing is fantastic!