Revision- Tricks to keep you focused and revising efficiently.

So for most of us the exam season is fast approaching, and after four years of important exams I believe I've gathered a few key skills when it comes to efficient revision. You may be procrastinating right now, but I'd like to believe that after reading this you will be closer to revision success.

Revision Tips- In no particular order...

1. Create a work space

Sitting on the sofa or the bed with a messy pile of revision textbooks and papers next to you is NOT a suitable workplace. Possible side effects include inefficient revision, difficulties writing, not enough space for all materials required, and developing weak stomach muscles and bad posture which results in weeks of physiotherapy (trust me, for I have experienced this). Find a desk or table, and claim it yours! Before working remove irrelevant items off the desk and keep it tidy, as this will promote an organised and motivated approach to beginning your revision. 

2. Avoid ALL distractions

Revision time is created for the sole purpose of revision. This means you need to turn off the television, music player and if you must use your computer to revise, be strict with yourself to keep off all social media and irrelevant websites and programmes. If you must keep your mobile on in case of important messages and calls, keep it away from your desk so you are not tempted to use it otherwise. Inform those who are living with you that you are revising and ask them nicely to keep unnecessary noise to a minimum. Trust me, being halfway through a successful session of revising and then hearing your sister start using the rowing machine directly above your room is not a pleasant experience.

If you know there will be noisy distractions coming from outside the house which are out of your control, invest in some ear plugs. It's a small price to pay for the better grades you will get for doing so. 

2. Create a timetable

Relying on grabbing a free moment during the day to do about ten minutes of revising before being called to dinner is not the key to good revision. Especially when juggling more than one exam it is important to make a timetable in order to prioritise revising for your nearest exam dates and to make sure you have done sufficient revision for the next ones which will be coming to greet you around the corner.

Make sure your timetable doesn't look too intimidating, personal experience has showed me that creating a colourful timetable or just drawing a smiley face next to a topic I'm going to dislike revising for helps make revising a more inviting prospect.

Just because exams are approaching this does not mean you need to revise 24/7. Depending on how confident you are feeling with your exams, I recommend leaving weekends/a day/a half day completely free every week, so that you have a large amount of time to do whatever you wish and it makes the timetable look even less daunting.

3. Create daily agendas

A good way to keep yourself motivated during revision is to make as many little goals and targets as possible in order to reassure yourself that you are making progress and are not doomed for all eternity. I have found that a good way to do this is to create an agenda for the next day before you go to bed. An example of a daily agenda could be as follows;

• Be able to draw the respiration cycle without looking at any information
• Look over Maslow's hierarchy of needs
• Practise a few standard deviation questions

By targeting your main goals for the day, you will be able to achieve the most important parts of your revision. Also, if you have managed to exceed the tasks on your agenda, this will be an added bonus to your sense of accomplishment at the end of the day! Writing an agenda will also help to relieve stress before sleeping as it is a way of removing bad thoughts about exams onto the piece of paper which can then be tackled the next day. 

4. Changing your revision methods can be beneficial

I have only managed to master which revision methods work best for me after my fourth year of official exams (AKA my June 2012 A-level exams). For a lot of exams in the past I have picked one method and stuck by it thinking that if I change my way of revising I won't be able to remember all the information by the time of my exam. I have learnt the hard way that it is better to change your revision method when you feel as though using another technique will help you to remember the information better. 

My Trusty Revision Technique

It may not be a very creative method, but scribbling down notes on my least known topics after going through a past paper or a set of example questions helps me to remember information very quickly. These notes are also great to have a quick look through close to the exam, as these are the facts which are known to trip you up. 

5. Target your least favourite topics first

You may prefer to revise sustainability rather than the Krebs cycle, but this is probably because you know more about sustainability than the Krebs cycle... (in my case I know nothing about either...)

It is much better to tackle those unfriendly topics as soon as you can, as if you've managed to remember the most dreaded sections of your exam then that's the worst part of your revision done! Masses of stress are then destroyed and the prize of this tip is being able to revise your favourite topics, which is what all these exams are for, for you to do what you want to do in life!

6. Plan your free-time

It may be important to plan your revision timetable, but it's just as important, if not more important, to plan when you're going to take some time off! I'm not trying to say that your free-time should consist of a strict schedule of what you're going to do and where, but it's important to make time to do things you like to do, whether this is meeting up with friends or simply an hour on the laptop. 

 By doing this, a daunting day of revision doesn't appear as daunting. You can easily spend around 6 hours a day doing whatever the hell you want, isn't that what you'd do on a normal day anyway?

7. Keep your work time and free-time as separate as possible

This is another reason why you shouldn't work on your bed or on your sofa, by keeping your work area and free-time places separate you can really enjoy your free-time to the full.

After spending an hour doing hardcore physics, if you're anything like me then your brain will feel frazzled and you'll need a good break to calm down and prepare for your next revision session. Go into another room if you have to, just keep the materials that you've just been revising from completely out of sight. By doing this you're mind will be taken off the pressure of revising and exams and you'll be able to focus on relaxing.

8. Do not stress, because you will get pregnant, and die.

Well getting pregnant and dying is a bit of an exaggeration, but stress will get you nowhere.

You can only do the best of your capabilities, as long as you've revised a good amount and avoided being a lazy couch potato then stress is not necessary, it will only make revision more difficult. Instead of saying "I can't do this" and "I'm going to fail", instead say to yourself "I can do this", or "This is my problem, and this is how I'm going to tackle it". A good way to overcome this stress is to see problems as challenges, and to see challenges differently.

9. What to do when rebelling against tip number 8.

If in reality you're actually now stressing to the maximum, DO NOT FEAR 

There are plenty of ways in which you can calm down after a stressful situation;

• Do yoga. If you don't know yoga, do some stretches and pretend you know what you're doing.
• Take deep breaths.
• Count to ten slowly.
• Close your eyes.
• Have a refreshing drink or snack, you deserve it after all the work you've been doing!
• Take a walk.
• Blast out some music. Relaxing or Head-Banging, this will help you escape from reality and stop your brain feeling like it's in a constant contraction.
• Have a bath. Relaxing and cleansing, two birds one stone.

10. Do not do unnecessary revision activities

If you're about a week or less away from your exams, doing activities like drawing detailed posters then not finishing it until you feel your poster looks perfect is not a good idea. This is just your way of thinking that you're revising when in fact you're having a drawing session and wasting time, you clever procrastinator you..   

Of course there's no problem in visualising facts by turning them into posters and sticking them around your room in places you always look, but don't be a perfectionist over it. If you can read or see it then your job is done!

11. Preparing for the exam

The day before the exam can be a stressful time- but don't forget you're a human being and the basic needs to be alive and healthy come first!

• Have a good nights sleep- Between 7-9 hours is the required amount, but don't stress if you can't sleep and you need to be up in less than 7 hours, just relax, resting in bed is just as useful even if you're unable to sleep.
• Have breakfast- Even if you're like me and don't usually have breakfast, having breakfast is great for brain power and to avoid awkward stomach rumbling in your morning exams!
• Prepare your exam equipment the night before.
• If you want to go over something before your exam, have it laid out ready so you don't waste time routing through folders and papers trying to find the information you're looking for.

That's all folks! I hope you all found my tips useful and the best of luck in your exams! I post new blogs every Sunday. Goodbye for now!

My Collar Bone- The Untold Story

I know I've actually told this story a billion times...

Considering my entire arm is now in agonizing pain just from carrying the vacuum cleaner up one flight of stairs I thought I'd share with you delightful readers the entire story about how I now broke my Collar bone, or Clavicle for all you who like things medical term style.

Not the best way to start the day...

It was a Monday morning, 12th November I do recall. I woke up, unknowingly to find out that this day would be one of the worst days of my life.

My daily routine is that when I wake up I straight away go to the bathroom and wash my face. Great thrilling stuff. Anyway I get up to go to the bathroom and feel instantly dizzy and nauseous, which was unusual considering I had no reason to be; I hadn't been out drinking the night before nor had I been eating excessive amounts of unusual food. So I staggered quickly to my bathroom and watched my face move around in the mirror in a circular motion, perfectly normal... Thinking that I just had a serious case of a head rush I decided to start walking back to my bed, in the process of doing so I realised I wouldn't make it and aimed to sit on my chair which is just outside my bathroom.

The scene of the crime- My University Bedroom

Expectation;

To land on my chair

Reality;

I landed on the floor.

Expectation;

Because I had my eyes closed, I was convinced I landed on my chair, a bit harder than I wanted to but landed sideways on the chair with my right arm pushed against the wooden arm rest. I'm not sure why my eyes were closed, I may have possibly passed out for a second but I cannot tell you that for sure!

Reality;

I had somehow just fallen straight to the floor. Which seems ridiculous when the idea of trying to just fall flat on the ground without reaching your arms out is not something your body naturally lets you do. My right shoulder had landed on one of the legs of my office chair, which explains why I thought I was on the wooden arm rest.

On with the story...

So I opened my eyes realizing I was on the floor. I was very confused, and at this point I realized that this wasn't just a head rush, as the room was still spinning and yeah, I'd just unknowingly managed to fall flat on the floor instead of a chair. So I decided instead of trying to get up I'd just grab a cushion from my desired destination of the chair and lie down for a bit until the dizziness stopped.

If you thought I couldn't get more idiotic...

Lying down flat on my back staring at the ceiling, I noticed that there was a slight pain from my neck to my shoulder. I often get aches and pains around my back so I grabbed it to massage it back to normal... and there it was. There was a bone sticking out of my shoulder, I hadn't noticed it before to I decided to check whether it was the same on the other side... yeah it wasn't the same.

This was where the panic began. Here I was in my pyjamas lying on the floor with a bone sticking out. LOVELY STUFF. This was also where the extreme pain began, now that I realised that something was different to my normal bone structure. I called my flatmate and she and my other flatmates then tried to get me to stand up in order to go in my flatmate's car to the hospital. This wasn't happening, the pain was too intense to move any part of my body. So the ambulance was called and the student accommodation staff came to see what was happening, I'm pretty sure my eyes were closed again because I honestly don't remember seeing them, just hearing their voices. When the ambulance EVENTUALLY arrived they too tried to lift me up and failed, I also had plenty o' gas and air but when they got me to sit up I still remember it being as painful as before. The morphine in the ambulance however was a hilarious pain-free time. (Don't do drugs)

Leicester Royal Infirmary was packed. I had to wait in a queue of beds on wheels, one of my most surreal experiences, I can definitely say I've never felt less human. When I had my bloods taken, it was by someone who doesn't get told what's wrong with the patients, so yep I had my right arm pulled away from me, I screamed and the Nurse said 'oh have you hurt your arm?' and being the honest person I am I said 'no'. I must have looked like the weakest human being in the world, but technically I hadn't hurt my arm, and I was in too much pain to think to say what's actually wrong with me.

Amazing drawing of what the X-ray looked like :)

After an extra long wait I finally saw a doctor. He seemed more concerned about the fact I fell to the ground and felt dizzy than the fact I had a bone sticking out looking like it was about to pierce the skin. To be fair, I did stand up as requested and suddenly went deaf. THEN without any explanation as to what was wrong with me I had to wait for an X-ray then to see another doctor. The X-ray showed that I had broken my collar bone in three places, well done me. However after a large amount of waiting I was given a lousy white cloth sling and allowed to leave. Bear in mind that I broke my collar bone at 11am, got in the Ambulance at around 1pm and got back to accommodation at about 6-8pm. Big day.

Left to my own devices...

My lovely flatmates gave me flowers and chocolates :)

For that week I spent all my time in bed and the times I wasn't in bed I was throwing up. I have never watched so much catch-up television and family guy DVDs in my life. I don't remember eating until about Thursday, I could have done but I honestly do not remember it.

An example of the painful clavicle brace I had to wear,
I have no idea where my actual one is,
I probably burnt it in a fit of rage.

Thursday morning was my follow up appointment at the hospital. It was delayed THREE HOURS. My bone was still nearly sticking out of my skin but the doctor's words was, and this is not an exaggeration; 'it should heal itself over time, but if it starts coming through the skin let us know'. How reassuring. ANYWAY then I was given this terrible collar bone brace which turned out to be the most painful invention ever created, ranked above the guillotine. It was a stupid idea the strap rested exactly where the bone was sticking out, ouch. It didn't help that I had to have my top taken off to put this on and random people kept walking into my booth. Douches.

After this delightful morning I decided I couldn't survive without 24/7 help anymore and called my wonderful family to come pick me up.

This will add to my reasons why Wales is better than England

My scar post-surgery, pretty hot stuff.

How my scar looked like after the plasters and stitching were removed

So I arrived back in the lovely Horseman's Green and immediately took that bloody collar bone brace off. My parents insisted I get a second opinion, so the next day I went to the doctors. I was immediately sent to Wrexham Maelor hospital where I was told I immediately needed surgery to have a metal plate inserted. Thanks Leicester Royal Infirmary. Thanks a bunch.

Turns out one of the parts of the bone that had broken had pierced straight through my muscle and no matter how long I waited it wouldn't have healed itself, instead it would have just eventually gone through the skin. Yay. Also I was told I had a stomach virus, and after surgery I was made to stay the whole weekend. Boo hiss boo. On the plus side my stomach virus meant I had my own hospital room, with my own TV, and my own bathroom. Every cloud does indeed have a silver lining.

Mr Scar and Mr Titanium plate.

At first I loved the idea of having a badass scar. Now with people squirming at the sight of it I'm beginning to dislike it.

Reasons to love it

Technique for hiding my scar, using my hair!

• Nobody else has one on their collar bone
• Possible conversation topic?
• It will give me an excuse to yell at people if they walk into me. (I have yet to try this, people don't walk into me as much as I thought).
• I can cover it up easily with my hair, I'll never have short hair again!

Reasons to loathe it

• The metal plate sticking out of my skin looks majorly gross and freaks some people out.
• You can see where the metal plate was drilled into my bone, again gross.
• The shuddering moment when I accidently touch it.
• Strapless clothes no longer look good- I wouldn't mind so much but for as long as I can remember I have had my perfect wedding dress pictured in my head, and yes it's strapless.
• I have developed collar bone envy.
• This scar is going to turn into one of those gross silvery lines and not disappear completely.
• When I get drunk I get random people to poke it and results in a painful morning after.
• I am only comfy sleeping when I lie on four pillows, hotels are gonna love me :).

 What now?

So I'll more than likely be getting surgery on it again sometime after November because the metal plate has started to move out of place and will therefore need removing. The positive being no gross sticking out metal but the negative is that my scar will reappear as bad as it used to.

Hope you've found my story somewhat entertaining. I'd like to thank everyone who helped me out last November, it means a lot :). Goodbye for now :)

Collar Bone image sourced from forums.mtbr.com via google images