The Night Before Exams...

I am writing this blog post the night before my first set of exams for year 11 start. I have been studying all weekend. Going over notes, meetings at the library and hours of annotating poems, trying to pull everything possible out of them - but it has left we asking why.

For all of my subjects, I am in a position that I could fail the exam pretty horribly, but still pass the course. For physics, I could not show up, and still be in a better position than most people if they got 90%. But something has kept me working hard all weekend.

We have all heard the argument that exams aren't worth anything. That a mark is just a number - and it doesn't define your life, or who you are. But I think it does. It might not define who you are as a person, or what your future is going to be like. But it shows how committed you are to the exam at hand. Now, teacher can and will tell you not to stress about exams, but you will. And you are completely justified in stressing.

If you stress, exams obviously mean something to you. And that is a good thing. So when it comes to exams, just remember that stress is a good thing - but don't let it affect the outcome of your work. 

For me, I have put in a lot of hard work over the course of the semester - and I am in a good position going into these exams. I have high hopes for what I can achieve here, and I am ready to go at them with full force and do my best on every single one.

For everyone else out there who is undergoing exam stress right now - take a deep breath, relax, and walk away from the work for half an hour. Explain to yourself, or to someone else, why you are so stressed over these exams. Maybe then you will see why being stressed is illogical, and then make sure the stress doesn't affect your work. You will do great, I promise.

Organisation!

Organisation during school time can be very hard for people. I know this, as all through school I have been very disorganised. I have had to learn in the last year and a half how to be organised. I will now put how I organise myself in terms of storing school work, then I will talk about how I go about keeping track of homework. Lastly, I will go through how I organise my notes.

So to store schoolwork, I have gone through several types of organisation. I have tried to use several organisation techniques that have not worked for me. These are:

1. The "1 Big Lever-Arch File Technique" - This is a TERRIBLE idea, especially in high school. While having everything in one place is convenient at first, it soon starts to get very messy, with all your papers dog eared and ripping at the punch holes. You will get lazy with your filing and begin to lose things everywhere. After only a few weeks at school you will have too much stuff in your file to manage. So my advice is to not go for this type of organisation.
2. The "1 Concertina File Technique" - While being better than the level arch file technique, you will be unable to see at a glance what you have in your file, so when you start getting loads of paper in each section, you will begin to spend a lot of time looking for different worksheets.
3. The "Keep everything at home and have a very small file for what I need at school technique" - While this can be effective, towards exam times and when you start getting a lot of homework to do, you will start forgetting things and will start to lose track of where you have put different documents. My advice - stay away from this method unless you want to spend a lot of time organising.
4. The "Level arch file for each subject technique" - This is the best one that I have found. Being able to see everything in your file is a massive help, and being able to page through it quickly is very helpful. You also cut down on the amount of papers in each of the file. This will keep everything very organise and you can carry around only the stuff you need to each class - and you will have all of the work that you need at every class.

Keeping track of homework can be pretty tough sometimes. Having a lot of homework to do, as well as tests to study for and even after school things that you need to keep track of. This is how I do it.

1. School homework diary. Ugh, I know this is horrible. All the way through Primary and Middle School you would have been forced to use these stupid books and even be put in detention if you didn't. So don't worry, this won't be a big section. I use the homework diary just to note things down at school. But I do not rely on my diary. For me, I just don't check it when I get home. Instead, I just use it for a reminder, maybe for when something is due.
2. Remember it! Now, I am not saying you should only keep track of things in your head, but it is a very good way to it until you get home. While being hard at first, you always have your diary as a backup and you WILL get better at it. 
3. White board in your work area. I use a whiteboard above my desk. This is the most important part of keeping track of your stuff. I have Monday - Friday written down on the board for 2 weeks. Underneath I write what I have due on each day and take 2 minutes after each week to copy over the next weeks stuff into the current week. I also have a list of tests and assignments and a to-do list. Lastly, I have a section to write down dates I am going flying, since I am a pilot and those days rule out homework.

Note taking is very important, but being able to study from them is even more important. I have come up with a system that has never failed me, so I will share it with you now. 

I have two exercise books for each subject. One is for notes, the other for other class work. This keeps your notes all together, concise and easy to find. All of you other stuff is in another place. The best part about doing it this way, is you don't have to rewrite your notes for exams - you have it all, organised and ready to go. You keep both of these books in each of your files for these subjects, and I have a third for tear out paper for homework, although this can be easily fixed by having books with easily torn out pages in the first place.

I hope you have found this post interesting, and maybe has even helped you get yourself organised. If you have any organisation tips, please put them down below in the comments :)

EXAMS!!!!

So this time of year is a pretty crazy time for a lot of students around Australia as mid-year exams are coming up and that is super scary.

For myself, I have 22 school days before I start my exams. At my school, exams take place over a 2 week period during which we can go home if we don't have an exam. Before the exams I have a HEAP of stuff to get through. I have at least two assessments for each subject before the exams, with some having up to 4.

I also have to get through a lot of content for my aviation course (a post about that is coming very soon).

So exams are a very stressful time, so a lot of students look for ways to handle the stress and to study. I decided that I would post some of my ideas and some things that I do. Please just note that this is MY opinions, and is most definitely not an ultimate formula for how to do well in exams. I may change a lot of this myself during these exams as I learn, and I would love for some of your input on these topics.

1. Start planning early!! This is the most important thing, in my opinion. Plan when you are going to study, when you are going to take practice tests and when you are going to do any assignments before exams. Having this all sorted out before you start getting busy with school is great and becomes very helpful.
2. Get ahead. During the holiday break (Easter Break for us now), get a bit ahead of your class work. Read the next few chapters of your textbooks, read your English novels and plays and start getting your notes organised for study.
3. Reorganise all of your work. Don't let your messy files just sit in your bag! If an organisation idea hasn't worked, change it. Make sure that you go into every term, especially exam terms, as organised and ready as you can. This will make your life a whole lot easier when you are looking for notes when studying.
4. Get into a routine - preferably with a lot of sleep and time for study. Remember, exam period doesn't last forever. You can sacrifice a few weekends with your mates for the 3 weeks leading up to exams. It just means your marks are going to be better and you are going to be happier with your results after the exams.
5. Don't stress. If you start to stress, you will get nowhere. Just pick away at it, and don't waste time. Wasting time will just make you more stresses. So if you feel like you have a mountain of work to get done, don't just sit there and stare at it, start climbing. Before you know it, exams will be behind you and you will be able to relax.

These are some of the things I do when preparing for exams. Are there any other tips that you can give people? How do you prepare for exams, and what do you think is the hardest part?

About this blog... and me.

Hi Guys,

So this blog is something I have been wanting to do for a while, because I have had to teach myself how to be an effective student over the past few months and I thought that I would help everyone else.

Just so you know a bit about me, and the workload I have at school, I am going to use this post to get that done.

I am South African, and I have been in Australia for just over 5 years. I live in Perth, and I am in Year 11. My subjects for Year 11 are:

• Mathematics: Methods
• Mathematics: Specialist
• Literature
• Modern History
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Aviation 3AB (Private Candidate)

As you can probably tell, I have a giant workload this year. I will be talking about private candidate subjects in an upcoming post, so stay tuned for that if you want to know more about how that works. Other than that, I am a maths and science person at school, but in the past I have been known to enjoy English and the Humanities just as much.

I am doing Maths Specialist because I am looking for a challenge. In my mind, if I can finish it and get a good mark, I will be really happy and proud of myself since I am certainly not the strongest maths student ever.

From this blog you can expect to see a lot about my philosophies (sounding smart already) about school and how to handle a massive workload and some personal things about how I am going. I also have plans for how to handle different things at school and generally how I believe you can go about getting the best marks possible at school.

Daily Schedule!!

Scheduling your day is often something that is associated with those badly photocopied worksheets given to you at the beginning of the school year by a teacher which you really don't care about, but it is in fact really important.

I am a current student, and I have had to learn how to schedule my day very quickly at the beginning of this year. Just to give you an idea of what I will be trying to get you to do, here is my schedule.

• 4:00 - Get up. I get up at this time because I have a lost of homework to do. I choose 4am because it gives me time to go downstairs and make coffee and catch up on social media before getting started.
• 4:30 - Homework. I will do whatever homework needs to be done. I am not one to schedule when to do different tasks (more on this later), I just go by importance.
• 6:30 - Breakfast and get ready. After doing homework for a while, I go downstairs and have a chat to my family while I have breakfast, then head back upstairs to get ready for school and pack all my books that I need.
• 7:20 - Leave for school. I catch the bus to school, so I use this time to chill out. I listen to music, talk to friends and just take my mind off school and the upcoming day as best as possible.
• 8:00 - Start School
• 15:00 - Finish School
• 16:00 - Get home
• 16:20 - Homework and snack. I just do light homework here, maybe some maths problems or some light research. I am never really in the frame of mind to do anything heavy now.
• 17:15 - Gym. I am a crossfit athlete so I go to a crossfit gym and this is the time I go every day. It is a good way to unwind and get all of the stresses of life out, but also something to work on and a way to feel good about yourself.
• 19:00 - Homework. This is where I really get down to it. Study, heavy homework, study skype calls (I'll write a post on this later).
• 21:30 - Bed. Because I get up early, this is when I try to go to bed every night.

So as you can see, my schedule is pretty full. I don't have a whole lot of time for relaxing during the week, but that is because I have a massive workload, and I made the decision not to when I chose the subjects that I did.

What you should aim for in a schedule is plenty of time for homework, and some time to relieve stress when you cannot do homework. The reason I believe this is important is because if you don't you will start getting wrapped up in the work and you won't be able to just take a step back, which is incredibly helpful.

My suggestion is to just try a schedule for a while, adding in things until it is working for you and the schedule is full.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and stay tuned another one next Monday!