When I was in elementary school, the biggest exam for a twelve year old girl was UPSR. Nowadays, when I was at the age of finishing my SPM, I always said, "UPSR is a piece of cake". Yeah, it's a piece of cake for a 17 year old girl but not a 12 year old girl. However, I only noticed the importance of UPSR when I was 12. Lucky you if you were remind as early as 10 with tuitions and extra revision books. So, I got no revision books and I only went free tuition from FELDA when it was few months away from UPSR. I did go tuition when I was in Standard 5 but then I quitted because my midterm was disaster. I never got myself below than top10, so no more night tuition for me for the rest of the year. What I want to say is, you can study from night meets with morning again if you want but if your result dropped dramatically, better you stop your unhealthy way of studying. You actually ruin yourself more if you continue.
After that, even though I didn't get any offer to any boarding schools in the world, I went to a top school at my area. The school that once produced a straight A student in Malaysia. I was in advance class, which definitely different than the usual normal class. Our results were monitored by the PPD and sometimes teachers threaten to drop any student who didn't manage to reach the requirements. However, during this period of time, I didn't remember myself studying. What I remembered was I fangirling over some hot guys and youtubing. And I also remember me copying my friends homeworks or rather bravely said I didn't finish the homework or pretended not bring the homework. I was quite rebellious and lazy. So, let's just say God was giving me chance to change myself by giving me straight As instead.
I wasn't kidding thought about God giving me chance because of that straight As, I managed to enter MRSM when I was form 4. I restarted myself and studied more than I did before. When I was form 4, I did an experiment. During midterm exam, I studied early. Means that, a week before the actual exam, I already made sure that I finished all the syllabus. Then during the final exam, I did last minutes studying which means I study one day or a night before the exam. The results for both exams were different. My final exam pointer was higher than the midterm. Therefore, I like to cram myself in one night especially science subjects that required calculations. However, subjects like History and Biology which required me to finish reading the whole syllabus, I start a week earlier so that I covered all the chapters.
Other than that, I also noticed myself didn't study during evening prep. I felt like my brain stopped functioning when the sun is above my head. Sometimes I was just lazy to study because of the heat. Therefore, when trial exam was around the corner, I prefered to go to library to study and at the same time to cool my head which reduced the headache. I also forced myself not to sleep at noon and evening by staying at class. I can't sleep in class unless I was tired or the class got bed in it. I didn't train myself to sleep in sitting position or any other position except lying on the bed with pillow and my beloved blanket. I also didn't train myself to sleep during class or lecture no matter how bored or sleepy I am. Although I didn't listen entirely but at least teachers and lecturers didn't disappoint or fell down when s/he saw his/her students sleeping in his/her class.
Some spongy brain students can absorb everything they see and listen without troubled themselves to jot down the notes. Lucky them, I envy this ability the most. Therefore, these kind of students are doing better in exams if and only if they concentrate in classes.
Some students need to listen, see and write so that they can understand (like me). One activity missed, and they will lost. For instance, you listen and paid attention to slides and lecturer speaking in front but your hands doing nothing except playing with pen. At the end of lesson, you might only remember 50% of the lecture and completely forgot about it tomorrow if you didn't do the revision at night. Sometime, you might remember lecturer told something but you didn't remember what exactly he said. Sometime, you blurred remembering the slides he showed in class but didn't exactly clear with his explanation as you didn't focus in class. And to solve that problem, hand should play its role by jotting down the important notes given by lecturer. Therefore, we need to listen carefully with what lecturer said, read the slides, watch the lecturer and jot down the important notes.
When I'm doing math, I prefer myself not to be disturbed and blast my ears with music. The reason was I might stress with my messed up calculation and if someone suddenly approach me asking question, I might accidentally furious as my emotions were unstable at that moment. And I blast my ears with musics because I could sing along when suddenly I found dead end how to solve the problem. This is my way to release stress. It's only applied when I study math or something about calculation.
I also hate memorizing because you trained your brain to answer that question with the answer that you memorized before. What if the question was twisted? Your brain will fuck up, I believe. Therefore I prefered to read and read and read again loudly. I used to study history by reading the whole text book and believe me, it's worked. I got A+ for history with that technique. I read loud enough for my ears to hear with no disturbance from others. I remembered myself holding the textbook and read loudly for myself while walking around the air conditioning hall (tsk). I could not force my brain to memorize something but I could slowly train it to memorize.
Before I put the final full stop, let me remind you something.
1. Bring water to class and make sure you drink the bottle empty before the class ended.
2. Don't ever sleep in classes.
3. Pretend you focus in class if in case you are getting bored.
4. Finish all the homeworks by yourself.
5. Give commitment when you're doing group assignment. Make sure you hand in the assignment right on time.
6. Don't talk in class.
7. STOP studying last minute if you found out your results are worst.
8. Involve in group study. Much better than studying alone. Two is better than one~
9. Phone in flight mode or silent if you want to study for exam. Social media is tempting, I know but study is important.
10. Get enough sleep. Not less and not more. Just enough for you to gain the energy back. And NEVER sleep at noon or in the evening. It's not good for brain health especially.
I think that's all from me. It's only my ways and rules. Everyone have different study styles. Stop copying others and find your own study style. I'm having battle with my eyes to stay open until I finish this writing.
Good night and have a good dream.
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