How to navigate the last few days leading to the Leaving Cert and Junior Cert exams

AS this year’s Leaving Cert approaches, many students will be trying to do some last-minute revision and preparation for the exams.

Maintaining focus over the coming weeks will be a challenge for many as the stress and fatigue of months of hard work can take their toll. However, with careful planning and preparation, students can achieve quite a lot in the short space of time that is left, and remain focused, calm and motivated.

Success for some will be achieving high grades, for others it will be passing the exams, success is relative to the individual.

However, taking the time to prepare for the exams in a realistic way will allow each student, regardless of the results they want to achieve, to be as ready as possible.

Planning and Revision

When it comes to revision, many students try to focus on certain subjects and decide what they will revise when they sit down to study. This can create a lot of anxiety as it can be difficult to focus on one particular topic at a time, especially when the pressure of the exams starting soon is taken into account.

Over the coming days, it’s important that students plan when they will revise each subject but also plan what topic within each topic they will study at certain times. 

This allows students to focus on the key topics that they need to focus on and identify areas that they could improve on. This method gives young people a sense of control over what they will be doing over the coming days and reduce the amount of stress they might feel.

Setting Realistic Goals

Whenever exams are approaching there is a tendency to think that we can cram a lot of work into the last few days. Although a lot can be achieved, thinking that it will be possible to revise everything in each subject in a short space of time will result in increased stress and anxiety and will also become counterproductive. When we try to do too much in a short space of time our brains are incapable to retaining the large volumes of information, we are trying to force it to remember.

This results in students feeling that they can’t remember what they have tried to revise and makes studying feel like a waste of time. By setting realistic goals for each area of revision, students will get value for the time they put into revision as they will retain more information. This will also help build self-belief and momentum as when we feel like our efforts are helping us to progress towards our goals, we will become more focused and motivated.

Active Learning

Not many people have the capacity to sit and read a textbook and retain the information. This is known as passive revision and many students become extremely frustrated when they attempt to read over textbooks or notes and find that what they are able to remember is very little.

Active learning requires students to revise in a way that allows the to study the material they need to learn and also use that information in a practical way to reinforce the learning. 

I always advise students to spend some time revising the topic they have planned to study and then try an exam question related to that topic. 

This will show how much they have learned but will also allow them to identify areas that they need to go back over again. This method is more productive and gives students an important sense of progress in return for the effort they are putting in.

The Hard Days

Over the coming weeks students will experience some inevitable ups and downs. The pressure of the upcoming exams as well as months of hard work will have an affect and many students will feel exhausted at times. Some days it might be difficult to find the motivation to revise. This is normal and when it happens its important that young people don’t become overly critical of themselves.

Many of us believe that to achieve anything we must first be motivated and then take action. However, in most cases to find our motivation we must first take action. On the difficult days students need to try and take some positive action, even the smallest amount of revision on these days can give a sense of achievement and help students persevere when it is difficult to do so.

Comparing

All of us have a tendency to compare ourselves to others, more often to not in a negative way. Students often fall into the trap of comparing themselves to friends and classmates and feel like everyone else is doing more than them. 

It’s important to remember when this happens that the only person, we can control is ourselves and we need to focus on the things that we are doing and will do in the future and measure our progress in this way rather than criticising ourselves by constantly looking at what others are doing.

There will be challenges over the next few days and weeks for students, however focusing on the positive actions they can take will allow them the best chance of achieving success.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan White is a second level teacher, 6th Year Head and wellbeing author at Bishopstown Community School. He also facilitates wellbeing workshops for companies and organisations. For more information visit www.changeswellbeing.ie linkedin Alan White or facebook Changes Wellbeing

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