A test of character: Exams challenge discipline, work ethic, and your ability to take care of your mental health. Chapter 12: Ready for Battle: Before, During, and After an Exam This principle, popularized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954, argues that you should prioritize tasks by considering their urgency and importance: Well, I do admit there were pieces that did entertain me, though, overall, this book left me unimpressed. I expected much more from this book when I started reading it but, it was...in a sense, boring. The Pomodoro technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It consists of dividing work into 25-minute parts separated by breaks. You focus on one task and one task only.

Blurting is easy to put off because it is mentally taxing. It forces you to stare your knowledge in the face and be honest with where you’re at, without the luxury of hiding behind a textbook. However, it is an essential self-assessment tool to show you what you need to spend more time on. The more you repeat blurting the same concepts, the stronger your knowledge in them will become. Talk about your mental health struggles and don’t isolate yourself emotionally. Accept that exams are stressful and they’re not everything in life. Chapter 11: The Night Before the Exam Be sure to update your tasks and obligations, crossing off (or deleting) anything that’s completed. Next, Bowler recommends prioritizing your tasks and plans based on 1) your level of understanding of the topic and 2) each task or plan’s deadline. To do this, devise symbols that indicate each task’s priority level and write the correct symbol next to each task and plan. For example, you might write three exclamation points next to high-priority items, two next to medium-priority items, and one next to low-priority items.Third, you can connect elements of a concept to parts of a physical object—when you look at the object, it will help you remember the elements of the concept. For example, connect the three main stages of the hydrologic cycle to your water bottle: First is evaporation—you can connect this stage to the top part of your water bottle that’s foggy because of evaporation. Next is condensation—you can connect this to the water droplets inside your bottle and imagine that they’re the product of condensation, like raindrops. Finally, connect precipitation to the water sitting at the bottom of your bottle—imagine this is the rainwater that has fallen and collected. Secondly, the tone is also terrible. This author writes like she's the authority on everything and it all feels rather pretentious. It feels as though she's looking down on everyone else, including one section where she is clearly looking down on those she went to school with. The desirable difficulty is about realizing when something is hard and doing it anyway or making something more difficult. The difficulty should be right for you. If it is, the content will be more meaningful. Chapter 4: Study Methods

What happens next is a panic-induced mayhem of highlighting everything in the textbook (without even questioning if it's actually helpful). But I'm here to help you change this! As always this was a self-help book which gave the excitement. Which self-help book didn't? A self-help book is written to make you feel good. And that's the reason, most of the self-help books have the same words, maybe just a different scenario and subject. Re-assess the importance and urgency of tasks and plans to ensure you’re using your time wisely. For instance, if you’ve scheduled a spaced repetition session for this week but still remember the information perfectly, delay or skip the session. Shortform note: Blurting has become such a popular method of studying that teachers have created blurting worksheets and templates. These papers are specifically designed to help students test their knowledge and then actively reflect on what they remember and what they need to spend more time revising.) Method #3: Create ConnectionsOnce you’ve listed your obligations, deadlines, and tasks, Bowler suggests analyzing which study methods would best help you accomplish each task. These will be the plans you need to enact to complete the task effectively. What happens next is a panic-induced mayhem of highlighting everything in the textbook (without even questioning if it’s actually helpful). But I’m here to help you change this! How has the education system got away with expecting students to take exams to determine their future life prospects without ever actively teaching you how to study? We’re given information. We’re given textbooks. We’re even taught each lesson in that textbook. But perhaps the most essential process – that of distilling, learning and memorising the content – is left up to you. Let me tell you, it took me a long time to realise that highlighting my biology textbook wasn’t going to get me an A*... Thirdly, this isn't Jades fault, but it's amazing how much the exam system has moved on in the little time she's left school. This is a shame of course, but the publishers should have had people on hand to be more up to date and change things around where necessary. Stephen Kosslyn, a psychologist and neuroscientist, divided human learning into two: “think it through” and “make and use associations”. “Think it through”: the more deeply you think about an idea, the more you remember it. An example would be “active recall”, a technique that instead of re-reading, encourages you to think about what you remember. Active recall is about being active rather than passive and the main problem with it is that it goes against human nature since we’re always looking for the path of least resistance. SAAD: Associations