Revision and exams: law, eat, sleep, repeat
Revision and exams: law, eat, sleep, repeat
9.1 INTRODUCTION
Be honest with us, are you reading this chapter because the revision period has already started? We hope this isn’t the case for you and that you are approaching it in advance of this. Either way, please use the advice in this chapter to make the most of this crucial period in the academic year.
Whether you’re an ‘attend everything’ kind of student (gold star ☺) or ‘miss a tutorial every now and again’ kind of student, it will have been reassuring to have had some structure in your life. For the entirety of the year you have known when you have lectures and tutorials, what reading and preparation is required for these and been aware of when the deadlines are for each piece of coursework. You can plan your work around these signposts.
Suddenly all this stops and you find yourself in a time of uncertainty, which can be very daunting. You know when your exams are, but you have a good five or six weeks of nothingness prior to this, which you are supposed to spend recapping on the entire year and making it stick in your brain. Sound easy?
Sienna: I’m so relieved this year’s over.
Brodie: Me too. Freedom finally! I’m going to start going to the gym again, settle in for weeks of box-set bingeing and have some legendary nights out.
Sienna: What about the revision? Aren’t you stressed about that? How are you going to get started? I just don’t know what to do and if it’s even possible to learn everything in time.
Brodie: Hey don’t worry. You’re not learning the whole course remember, you can pick a few topic areas for each subject and just learn the answers for a few practice essays. Simples. Just plan in a couple of hours’ revision a day for the time we have. You need to balance out revision with fun; otherwise you’ll just implode.
Do you think there’s any truth in what Brodie says? We’ll come back to this shortly, first let’s think about the purpose of the revision period.
ACTIVITY
Make a note of what you think your revision period should be used for and then compare it to what we think it should be used for. You might be surprised.
Your revision period is not a time to start learning topics from scratch, it is to deepen your understanding of topics already learnt; clear up any confusion faced during the year; draw links between different parts of the module; identify (and subsequently fill) any gaps; and to reinforce that knowledge via different means (not just reading your lecture notes through 117 times).
Let’s look at the basic pieces of information you need to establish before getting started.
9.2 WHEN ARE YOUR EXAMS?
Your exam period can stretch over a few weeks, so it is really important when planning your revision strategy (yes you will have one of these … !) to clarify which exam is happening on which date. You might be lucky and have all of these nicely spaced out, but there is always the possibility, thanks to university timetabling pressures, that you’ll have them on consecutive days, perhaps even on the same day. This isn’t a disaster, but it can feel like one. Many are thrown by two exams on the same day, wondering what they should focus on the day before.
9.3 WHAT FORMAT WILL THEY TAKE?
Be as prepared as you can be – attend any revision session run by your lecturer and read the module handbook. This will mean there are no nasty surprises when you turn that paper over. Many students get flummoxed on the day and end up answering two questions from the same section (a rubric violation), when they should have answered one from each. Or only tackling part A and not part B, for example. See Table 9.1 below for a checklist of the practical aspects of exams.
| You need to establish | |
| 1 | How many questions will be staring up at you, and how many of those will you have to complete |
| 2 | How long you will have to finish the paper |
| 3 | Whether different components will feature in the paper: essay-style questions? Problem questions? Multiple-choice section? |
| 4 | Whether you are permitted to take any extra materials in with you – this may be a specific textbook or a statute book |
9.4 PLANNING FOR REVISION
A task to complete early on is to put together a revision calendar. This is essential, but be very careful not to fall into the quicksand of procrastination – this is your first test of commitment (see Chapter 2 for advice on study skills). It is astonishing the number of students who suddenly discover an artistic streak they lost somewhere in primary school: revision calendars will feature many different coloured pens, stickers, and sparkles. Such dedication will of course take time, and so the first day of your revision period is lost.
9.4.1 Revision calendar top tips
1 Be realistic – no one can study every waking hour. You will have regular commitments that can’t be changed – part-time work or sports/music clubs you need to attend practice for. These need to be acknowledged and worked into your calendar. Similarly, as Brodie wisely points out, you need to incorporate some time for you to unwind and forget about law altogether. Far better to plan for some rest periods than not meet your targets and then feel like you’ve failed.
2 Split your days – look to package up the time available. Don’t slog all day without a break or the quality of your revision will suffer. You may wish to stick with one module all day, or focus on one module in the morning and a different one in the afternoon. Think about what works best for you. Sometimes you may want to start with something you know reasonably well to build up your confidence to give you the drive to get your revision well and truly under way.
3 Build in some flexibility – as you get closer to exam days, things have a habit of going a bit pear-shaped. Plan in a couple of free afternoons that week to cater for the unexpected.
4 Overestimate how long each module will take – revision always takes a lot longer than you think.
5 Make it personal to you – if you’re hopeless in the morning and it takes a 10 a.m. lie in and a few strong coffees to get your brain moving then just adapt your calendar accordingly. But be warned, you are likely to have an exam starting at 9 a.m. so if you are not a morning person, be aware that you may well have to deal with early starts. After all, you will need to start work at 9 a.m. when you start that all-important job that you are hoping to secure!
9.4.2 Revision strategies … or what do you actually do when revising?
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that effective revision is basically reading your notes from the year, and writing them out again … and again … and again.
Neither is it learning lots of essays off-by-heart.
The aim of revision is to understand a topic well enough that you can adapt that knowledge to any question. This flexibility can only be realised when you have used a variety of different methods to process that information. We know that everyone favours different learning styles, so some people learn better by visual methods, others learn easier when they hear it. There are of course those who are very text dependent. Think back to your lectures and tutorials – the format of these is often deliberately mixed so that your lecturers can engage everyone, regardless of their learning preference. You might participate in a debate as part of the class, the PowerPoint slides may be very image dependent, rather than lots of text or you may learn from listening to each other’s presentations on a topic.
You need to keep your revision as interesting as possible if you stand any hope of making something stick. Mix and match different strategies to ensure you keep boredom at bay and guarantee that knowledge is agile – meaning it can be reused confidently, regardless of what question comes your way on Exam Day.
Here are some ideas:
• Flash cards