Can You Plan For Exams?

So I'm sure you know (because I don't shut up about it) that I wrote Planning Before Writing. It was a fun little book to write, which kind of surprised me, and helped me to de-stress during my teaching placement in January. People still wonder how I wrote a book during that time. All I'll say is, if I didn't I might not have finished with a smile on my face.

Anyway, writing a book about planning and seeing people buying it (again, surprises me) has gotten me thinking: can the techniques I discuss in the book be used to prepare for exams?

I have three days of lectures left. Three. Then it's study time. It would be really helpful if I could figure this out in a stress-free environment, but I'm not sure that sort of thing really exists when you're a final year student with ten exams in less than a month. (Yay!)

However, it's pretty easy for me to consider how I might study. I've been preparing essays and seminar work all semester using the same techniques in the book, and I knew them all before I actually started writing, thanks to the eight years' practice and learning I've had in the craft of writing. (That makes me feel old... let's pretend I didn't just say that.)

The sort of things that make writing a book and preparing for an exam different, though, are quite complicated. For a start, I don't get to decide what's on the exam, or what shape the questions will take. That pretty much means there's one less creative way to tackle exams that would exist for a book, which makes it so much more difficult to prepare for. Even Non-Fiction books are creative works, and require that the writer have some understanding of how to write something creatively and differently to distinguish it from every other book in the market.

In the case of someone who writes their own books, there's one less creative exercise for exams: someone else decides what you should write about.

Ultimately, that's what exams are in my college: exercises in writing in a short period of time. It's also necessary to remember an obscene amount of information, and to think about topics ourselves in an engaging way.

Our game of Spot the Difference can clearly illustrate that for books you don't have to memorise everything to write them. When I'm writing essays, and even when I'm writing stories based on or inspired by Irish myths, I keep a tab open with info online about the topic, and some notes beside me. That option doesn't exist for exams.

So what needs to be done for exams that's different, then? Since we can't control the topics or the questions, and we can't bring in notes to help formulate our thoughts, what are we supposed to do?

One way we might be helped is if the lecturer gives us some tips. These have, historically speaking, been guidelines for study, directing us to explore particular topics in the course individually for questions, so we're not attempting to memorise everything about ten modules. That's an unrealistic expectation of anybody, and it's the biggest problem I have with the Leaving Cert. But let's not moan about that dragon right now; it has been slain.

So, if we receive some tips (and we have, from some lecturers, though they wouldn't call them tips - that implies they're giving us the questions), we're left with two things to worry about: the question, and the memorising.

Now, the question is actually easier dealt with last. The way I see it, if I can find a way to actually remember things (historically speaking, I struggle with this in exams due to pressure, exhaustion, and a general inability to sit in an exam hall and remember the things I need to know before it's time for pens to go down) to write down, dealing with the question is easy.

I don't believe in using someone else's study notes, so that's that out the window. But what about the planning techniques? Can they be used to study more effectively? I know Mind Maps have often been used for study. I don't know yet if they'll work for me in that way, but I'll see.

Normally, I get some flash cards. I write down everything I need to know about a topic onto an A4 piece of paper, and then transfer it neatly onto a flash card - preferably on one side only - underlining key words. With five different planning methods in my book, can any of them improve upon this method? My grades have been good, on average, the past three years, mind you. Not all top marks, but good. (I'm not going to get in to that at the moment, partially because it's private, partially because I can't remember my grades.)

So, five methods. I'll see how they fare, in the early stages. If I can't remember what I study on a given morning by the time that evening comes around, I haven't done a good job. I'm desperate to make these exams easier on myself, anyway. That's the point of Planning Before Writing, to make planning easier so writing can be more enjoyable. Now, exams are never meant to be easy or enjoyable, but they can be less stressful. That's all I'm asking for. And better grades. That would be nice, too, since I plan on being a bum for a while (while actually doing things that people won't know I'm doing).

There you have it. Final year. Final exams. And I'm choosing now to experiment. I'll know after a couple of days if the planning techniques can be used to help me remember material for exams. Remembering it is the important part, because then I just need to apply it to the question. That's the creative part of the exam, thinking on your feet (or in your seat...) about how to imaginatively and intelligently engage with the question, supply the information that's being asked for, and provide enough original thought to drag your grade up.

This is not going to be fun, is it?

It's Official

The exam time tables in college have gone up. You know what that means, folks? It's officially Study Season! Making a study timetable counts as study, right? Like how gathering notes and buying stationary counts as study?

Seriously, though, I've made myself a study timetable. It's not too tasking. I'm actually planning on using the study weeks we get in college. I've broken it down so I'm studying subjects in order (because of a massive 4-day gap at the end before my final exam...which is Poetry(!)...so I don't need to study that one first in case of exhaustion.) However, I'm not going to study an entire subject in one sitting, or before I move on to the next subject. I'm going to study questions.

Up until the day before an exam, I'll be studying new material. However, the night before (and morning of) an exam, I'll be breaking information down in revision. Admittedly it's all revision of what we were supposed to have been taught in class, but for a lot of the material it's so complex you need to re-do a lot of the work, just to make sure you know it properly. But anyway, I'll be sure to have covered all of the material at least a day before the revision day.

It's tempting to say that because I have Wednesdays off exams, I can go to the comic book shop to get new comics... I'll see... I think what will probably happen is, if I'm going to the college on that day to study, I'll head to the comic book shop for it's opening, then head to college, because that won't cause me to lose a day of study if I were to just go into the city center and head back home. (Does it seem like I'm trying to justify it to myself? I think it sounds like I'm trying to justify it to myself.)

Anyway, ten exams overall, which isn't too bad. It's less than previous years. Still more than the Leaving Certificate, for some bizarre reason, but that's just how things work when you don't have exams at the end of each semester. Overall, though, I think it's been ridiculous. Yes, we have a lot of modules, but when you have teaching placement and at least ten exams per year, as well as essays and other such work that gets handed in weekly, it does seem like they want students to be under stress.

(So yeah... comic books.)

The simple fact of the matter is that over three weeks, I'll have ten exams, six week-days off for study, and three weekends (a total of 22 days, really...let's just say three weeks so it's less daunting.) They will be some of the most stressful weeks of our lives, for the sake of nineteen hours of writing, due to the fact that we're not only required to memorize a ton of material (a lot of it from before Christmas) but also to engage with it meaningfully and intelligently and respond to a specific type of question that will limit what we can say, but cannot prepare for directly (aside from just learning everything.) By the end of the exams, I don't imagine I'll remember much about my first exam (Bioethics... whoop whoop!) which kind of escapes the point of testing whether or not I know it.

This isn't a critique of my college. This is a critique against exams in general. The aim to test how much a student knows based on one sitting, one written exam, is ridiculous, and yet it's still the most widely used form of assessment in educational systems around the world.

Exam season is here, ladies and gentlemen, and with it will come an obscene amount of caffeine, hair-pulling, sleepless nights and (probably) swearing. College is less fun sometimes...