The heart pumping fear of turning the paper, writing your name, scrambling to think of the date, and putting the pencil to the paper. The fear that sticks to you as you move from question to question. The rising terror as the clock counts down. The juxtaposition of relief and dread when you turn the page in. Taking a test is one of the most universal yet unique experiences you can experience. My description of taking a test might describe your experience perfectly or it might be completely different. I don’t think I have ever come away from a test thinking that I did my absolute best, and I have tried many different ways of studying and preparing. Some have worked and some have not.
One thing that I always do, no matter what, is make sure that I have a list of the topics that are going to be on the test.If you don’t know what is going to be on the test, how are you going to prepare? I know that sometimes people will tell you to just read the entire section of your textbook or look over your notes, but just studying aimlessly doesn’t really help. I find it more useful to make a list of the topics and go over one or two problems for each topic to figure out what I don’t understand or am having trouble with. With those topics, I will ask a friend in my class to explain how to do that type of problem or that concept. It is definitely important to ask the teacher for help if you are really struggling, but I have also found it really helpful to ask friends who are also in that class. This is because they might have a certain way of understanding the concepts that the teacher might not. Not to mention that they have also just learned how to do it. Once you understand how to do it, I would increase the difficulty of the problems until I am doing the hardest ones.
Group studying can both be very helpful and super distracting, and it is important to understand that everyone’s ways of studying are different, as what works for your friend or for me, might not work for you. The biggest tip I can give you is that you should try lots of different study habits, and if it doesn’t seem to work try something else. I would love to hear any of your test taking strategies and potentially feature them in the next issue of the advice column! Email [email protected].
-Sahana