If you have, then, I’m sure your now questioning why you let this happen. You are probably feel overwhelmed and stressed out with the amount of work to be in the little time you have left. You still need to pass but what’s the best way to approach the problem? Of course we’ve got you back at How to excel in college, with 5 steps to help you with this problem.
1.The first thing to do is to organize yourself. Find a friend /classmate who takes good notes and goes to classes and tutorials regularly. You’ll need to photocopy the notes you missed . Its better to photocopy ,as writing will take up too much precious time. Ensure you ask the classmate early as the longer you take to ask the less likely it is the person will be willing to lend you a book. That person has to study too, after all. You may even have a friend who did the course previously , if the teacher is the same, more than likely so are the notes, so you can also ask such a person to lend you their notes. In addition, try to obtain a copy of the required text.
2.Choose the information you will study. You will not be able to finish studying everything for the exam. So a wise choice would be a good 60-70% of the material which will make up about 80% of the exam.
Now that you have all the notes, it is time to study. Start with the notes you missed first. You need to become familiar with them, so allocate more time to studying them than to those you already understand and have studied.
3.Next, Avoid being overwhelmed by splitting the notes into manageable pieces .These sections , shouldn’t take more than an hour to complete. Read each section slowly at first . If there is anything you don’t understand try referring to your textbook for clarification.. Make certain you understand the concepts. Practically speaking, however, if there’s some material you don’t understand and realize you wont have time to, its probably best you try to use memorization techniques, such as concept maps, to remember the information.
4 .Now that you’ve read and understood its time to memorize. To do this, reread each section before moving on to another. Writing helps memory so try to do this while studying, if you have enough time. Practice by doing tutorials and look at past paper questions. This last step is very important ,you need to become familiar with possible question, this will definitely boost your grade.
5. Join a study group if possible, to fill in any gaps in knowledge that you may have. Be careful to do this after you’ve done a great deal of studying on you own. If you don’t you will find yourself being lost as you may not have covered the material which is being looked at.
