How to ace your exams in two weeks

Don’t have long for that one exam and you still haven’t started studying? Do you feel frustrated and overwhelmed? Does it feel like you have a lot of revision to get through and it’s starting to pile up?

Well you’re not alone. Around 75% of students I’ve met have felt the same way but after learning a few important techniques and implementing them, they’ve been able to achieve their dream grades.

First it’s important to prioritise and a great technique is setting up a revision timetable. You don’t need any fancy materials, simply go into your phone’s calendar (or you can always print out a manual calendar) and write out what you will do each day coming up to your exam. For instance, one day you’ll review the content, and on another day you’ll complete a past paper that you’ve been putting off. With each day you’ll gain confidence and by the time your exam rolls around, you’ll be ready!

Setting a reward

For you to do well in your exams, you have to stay consistent. I’ll say it again, you have to stay consistent. The best way is to give yourself a reward. If you complete the task you’ve set for yourself everyday for a week, you can go shopping, binge watch a movie or have a fun day out with your friends. This will help you stay consistent as you have something tangible to look forward to other than the fact that studying will help you do well in your exams.

Watching motivational videos

In your break times, between your study sessions, instead of wasting time scrolling on tiktok or instagram reels, try to watch some study motivational videos. A really good channel is Motivation2Study: https://www.youtube.com/@Motivation2Study. By immersing yourself with motivational videos during your free times, you’ll find it much easier to get back into studying compared to procrastinating and ultimately wasting time.

Having a good self discipline

Essentially good discipline is pushing through even when studying is not appealing and you’d rather binge watch your favourite show or you’ve had a rough day at school and you just want to sleep instead. Self discipline is like a muscle, the more you work on it the stronger it becomes. To make your discipline stronger you have to do the hard things even if you don’t want to. For example, taking a cold shower in the mornings, or cleaning up your room every weekend, or sitting down and getting your homework done on the day you get them assigned. All the tiny things in your life that you overlook can help to improve your self discipline, so when it comes to studying it’ll come naturally and you’re less likely to procrastinate. Once you’ve mastered your self discipline, you’ll easily be able to stick to your study timetable consistently.

Extra top tips:

It’s important to start small. Remember something done is better than nothing done at all. This means even if you’ve completed your practice paper and you’ve only gotten 30%, it’s better than pressuring yourself to get 80% and not getting anything done at all. Another hack is to have a goal tracker. Everyday you have completed your studying goal you give yourself a tick and if you haven’t, simply restart the goal to the next day. Once you’ve built the momentum, it’s easier to stick to it.

Building a good sleep routine will help you feel refreshed the next morning and will allow you to focus 10 times better during your study sessions.

Cutting out entertainment and distractions, for example blocking or uninstalling social media apps, tiktok or youtube. Even powering off your phone and hiding it until your exams are over will help limit your distractions and improve your focus ten fold. Remember for you to succeed you have to sacrifice something to gain something better in return.

Well I hope these tips have helped and I wish you the best of luck in your exams.