According to syllabus, I tried Target Planner first. It is kind of a general plan to help me to organize my time for doing something, especially for complete a task for prepare for an exam, or planning the progress of a project. I was a little worried about my Economics exam because since I am an international student, I had no idea about what the exam would be. I knew we would test the first 3 chapters.
What I did on using time for preparing an exam? Here are my experience:
On the first day: "Okay. I am gonna to review ECN. Where should I start? Of course is Chapter 1! After a good start, I suffered couple of hours studying!!!!!! Until I have to go to sleep because I cannot read or remember anymore! The world in front of my eyes are so dark!! I am so tried!"
On the second day: "I am tried. I had studied a lot. So how about using my free time today for playing video games? Hahahahahaha!!!!!!"
On the third day: " I am still tired, I need sleep! Good sleeping, better studying!"
On the forth day: " En, where did I stopped at the first day? I cannot remember. That's not a big deal, I can restart! Okay, Chapter one."
On the fifth day:" Music with studying!!!! Chapter one, start! Oh, I don't like Jay-z, I would try to find my Lady Gaga's CD. What's a nice song, fine, I won't study anymore, but I will study tomorrow, For God sake, I promise I will study tomorrow."
On the sixth day: " Saturday!!!! I need shopping, I need do laundry, I need sleep!"
On the seventh day: " Chapter one......"
On the eighth day:" OTTO, MY GOD! I only have two days leave. Oh, I am so upset, Chapter one....."
On the ninth day:" I still have two chapters left! What should I do!!!!!!"
On the exam day: " I am dying!!! "
See, that what I used to do. All my low grades came from here. But now, I am changed! I am not like the stupid one in the past anymore! Do you want to know the reason? Obviously I use my TARGET PLAN!
Here is my Target Plan for my first Economics exam.
I chose to studied Chapter 3 for the first 4 days because we would just finished chapter 3 so I still had fresh memory. As a result, it would be more easy and efficient for me to review Chapter 3.
And according to that rule, I would move to Chapter 2 and then Chapter 1.
On the last two days, I would try to test myself to see if I had already remember all the principles and theories I need to remember and see if I would be able to apply them in different examples.If I figure out questions, I would still have time to find the answers.
Wow, I am not in a mad rush anymore and it did worked! I reviewed all the things I need to reviewed, I did all the exercises and I even had extra time for having fun! ( How nice my life is!)
Now, I am going to talk about my 20-MINUTE TEST PREP.
In China, we have an old saying, " Every little makes a mickle", I think it is a suitable sentence to describing 20-MINUTE TEST PREP. Using little periods of time, go over materials again and again, until I remember all the stuffs and can make applications, even according to the syllabus to anticipate questions for myself. It pushed me to learn actively instead of being a learning machine only taking useless notes and even logging into Facebook during the classes.
I post every steps about my strategy usage.
1. After each class: (I only picked up the most important points on it and some of them are outlines. And I read them over and over again to make sure I have remember all the things whenever I was free)
2.At the end of each week ( I figured out 8 questions. Since my ECN class always concerns about principles and functions, I put most of my attention on them)
3.One to two weeks before the exam( Actually because of my ECN exam was on 23rd, September,so I only have about half of the week to prepare this. Plus, I added examples, graphs, analysis and some of my own understandings in them. And I marked the important points to remind myself pay attention.)
The 20 minute test prep was only really successful with my Spanish class. All of my other classes are art classes with only hands-on work without note taking. However for my Spanish class it worked perfectly. I liked that you were able to take the important points out of your work and go over them during your free time.
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