Thursday, 27 February 2014

EXAM TIME!!!

Exams are just around the corner.
Obviously, you're either trying not to study or you're taking a break, because otherwise you wouldn't be reading this.Or else you're being deeply philosophical, musing over who invented exams.
To help my fellow thinkers and exam-writers, I am posting this.

I, like so many of my classmates, have by now become a veteran exam-taker. So I can now give you five tips for surviving exam time.

Yes, exactly. Exam alert. The exams are coming, so quickly read this and get back to studying before someone finds you...well, not studying.

RULE NUMBER 1:
Don't stay up late. Never stay up late before an exam. Ever. You might be studying, but that is not going to help, because in order to write the exam, you have to be awake. It's not really going to help if you start snoring in the middle of a description of an experiment demonstrating the necessity of carbon dioxide in starch production.

RULE NUMBER 2:
Eat. Yes, I'm serious. Eat before the exam or you will collapse in the middle. Once, in the middle of a math exam, I started having visions of butter-covered potatoes I'd seen on a cooking show. And I'd eaten breakfast! Thankfully, I had finished the paper, but...don't starve yourself.

RULE NUMBER 3:
Try not to freak out. How can you not freak out before an exam? If you can't stop your stomach from turning in anticipation, pretend. Pretend you're perfectly fine. Pretend that you're not on the verge of having a panic attack. Pretend you're calm. You might just fool yourself into calmness and that will become real. Which, of course, means that you focus more on the paper.

RULE NUMBER 4:
Don't daydream. That will take your mind off the test and will cause you to cringe when you see the marks on the corrected paper. The minute you catch yourself daydreaming, bring back your focus to the test. Daydream later, instead of biting your nails and wondering about how you wrote.

RULE NUMBER 5:
Don't think about the exam after you've written it. Because this will ruin your peace of mind for the next exams. If you're thinking, "I wrote that it was active voice but my classmate wrote that it was passive voice, will I lose a mark?" while trying to revise how to find the inverse of a function, it's definitely not going to help you.

Believe me, these tips actually work- for me, but cross your fingers and hope that they work for you, too. Good luck for the exams!
Oh, and as for these tips...you're welcome.

Monday, 17 February 2014

Quote of the Week

First quote of February...

9307674
"She can't afford to commit more troops,' Holly whispered. 'The gate is her priority, and she needs to have as many Berserkers watching her back as possible. We are secondary at this point.'
'That will be her undoing,' Artemis gasped, already suffering under the weight of the flak jacket. 'Artemis Fowl will never be secondary.'
'I thought you were Artemis Fowl the Second?' said Holly."

-Eoin Colfer, The Last Guardian