If you’re like most students you may have noticed that the amount of time you’ve been spending on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter has significantly increased over the past few weeks or days.

If this is the case, don’t feel bad. It’s completely normal. But it’s still a big problem and the sooner you control distractions in your environment, the better.

Will power and self discipline are great ideas in theory, but at the end of the day after a long day at school, you most likely feel tired and your will power reserves are running low or close to nil. For this reason, it’s quite challenging for many students to resist the temptation to log onto Facebook. The stress and discomfort of thinking about exams also makes many students want to seek relief. The easy way to get relief is to log onto Facebook and switch off.

WIth all that in mind, an intervention is needed. There are a number of applications that you can download that will restrict your access to the internet and help y ou focus. Below are two programmes that I have tested and regularly use to help me stay focused on my work.

Self Control

Self Control is an ideal programme to use if you still need to use the internet for work but don’t want to be able to access certain addictive websites.

It contains a “blacklist” in which you type in the websites you want to be locked out from. When you want to activate the programme, you simply click start and select how long you want to be locked out for. It’s free to download but unfortunately it’s only available to Mac users with OS X operating systems.

Freedom

If the internet is too distracting for you and you don’t need it to complete your work (e.g. you need to read a book or practice solving some equations) then skip Self Control and use Freedom. This nifty little application will set you back $10US, but it allows you to lock yourself out of the web for up to 8 hours at a time.

If you’re unsure about spending $10US at this stage, there is a free trial version available. The good news is this application is available for Mac and Windows computers.

A student asked me with a cheeky smile –

“But what if I activate the programme and then just restart my computer when I want to go back onto Facebook?”

The creators of these applications aren’t stupid and they designed both Self Control and Freedom in such a way that deleting the application or restarting your computer won’t make any difference. You have to wait for the time to run out.

So even if you have poor self control, there is help out there. The key is to be willing to try out these programmes. It may mean that initially you have to force yourself to activate the programme and you may feel uncomfortable. But after some time the discomfort will subside and you will be amazed by how much study you’ll be able to get through in a short space of time.

Unfortunately due to limited space, my list of exam strategies never made it into the “Exam Extra 2010″ liftout.

Not to worry. My top 12 tips for acing exams are -

1. Do not cram. It simply doesn’t work because you cannot learn large volumes of information in one night (or a short space of time). Start preparing for your exams early by tackling a little bit each day.

2. Mind map as you read. This is a creative and active way to learn information at a deeper level. Make sure you draw exaggerated pictures, use different coloured pens and curve your branches to keep it interesting. For more information on mind mapping click here.

3. Incorporate exercise into your study plan. Doing 30 minutes to 1 hour of exercise every day will help to lower your stress levels and help you study more effectively.

4. Eat a healthy breakfast. A healthy, low GI breakfast will fuel your mind and give you the energy you need for a two or three hour exam. If you don’t eat breakfast, than you can expect to experience a 20% – 40% reduction in thinking skills (e.g. concentration, alertness and memory).

5. Avoid energy drinks. These will give you a quick burst of energy but shortly after, you will crash and burn and feel worse than you did before. Drink plenty of water instead.

6. Break your study tasks down to combat procrastination. For example, saying “I need to read my chemistry book” is likely to overwhelm you. Instead, you could break this down to “Today I will read 1 chapter of my chemistry book”

7. Give yourself breaks. Your brain can only absorb so much information at a time. Study for 45 minutes (no more than 1 hour) and then take a 5 or 10 minute break. Get away from your desk and move your body.

8. Avoid negative people with a “meh” attitude. Surrounding yourself with people who say they are going to fail and brag about the fact that they have hardly studied will not serve you. Keep away from them, especially on the morning of an exam, to ensure you stay in a positive frame of mind.

9. Don’t waste energy ruminating. Dwelling on what you could or should have studied more thoroughly come the morning of an exam is a complete waste of your time and energy. Focus on the fact that you now know so much more than you did before and a large number of the exam questions you’ll be able to answer.

10. Sleep is important for full brain function. Get at least 8.5 to 9.5 hours each night.

11. Visualise exam success. Leading up to your exams, imagine yourself walking into the exam room feeling confident and relaxed and taking the exam. The act of mentally rehearsing doing an exam will help to decrease your nerves when it comes time to actually take the exam.

12. Don’t wait to feel motivated. You may think you”ll feel more like studying tomorrow but this is rarely the case. Taking small actions often leads to feeling motivated which in turn leads to taking more actions.

But don’t go thinking that eating something is going to be better than nothing.

Sure, a bacon and egg muffin with a hashbrown and expresso coffee may feel like a great idea the morning of an exam (especially if you’ve had a sleep deprived night of cramming facts) but please resist the urge to eat this greasy sludge and consume ridiculous quantities of caffeine!

Here’s the thing, if you eat a lot of food (particularly heavy, greasy food) before an exam you run the risk of decreasing your ability to think clearly and effectively (caffeine will just make you jumpy and increase your stress levels).

Your digestive system will be competing with your brain for oxygen rich blood (and your brain needs this in an exam!).

Whatever you decide to eat before an exam, make sure you eat it 2 hours before the exam to allow for digestion and peak mental performance.

What are the sorts of breakfasts that will fuel your brain for an exam?

1. Porridge with raisins and fruit

2. A bowl of muesli with cut up fruit (I recommend blueberries and/or banana)

3. Wholemeal toast with avocado and tomato

4. Wholemeal english muffin with an egg

5. Wholemeal toast with baked beans

What should you avoid eating for breakfast before an exam? (Note: These are examples of breakfasts students I work with typically have)

1. Coco-pops (or any sugary cereal for that matter)

2. Energy drinks

3. Fatty bacon and sausages

4. Hot chips

5. White bread with jam

If you have any other healthy breakfast ideas, let me know!

When I received my graduation certificate I thought to myself “How did I do it? What helped me get through the past 8 years of study?”

One thing automatically sprung to my mind: Mind Maps.

Anything that I was required to learn at university, I had to mind map. Why? Because rote learning no longer worked at Law school. For my legal units I had to really understand the information and mind mapping it all out allowed me to do this.

Interestingly, a few weeks ago someone sent me this question:

“I know the mind maps with a main idea on each branch can give a great review of the most essential ideas but the point is that law is full of data, definitions and I’m not sure how to present them….
So could you share with us some of your legal masterpieces?”

I would hardly call my mind maps ‘legal masterpieces’ but I’m happy to share them with everyone if it will help to break the illusion that legal mind maps need to be works of art or look a certain way.

Unlike my legal mind maps, the mind maps on this site (under the resources section) contain very few words. Ideally this is how you want your mind maps to be. Tony Buzan states in his book ‘How to Mind Map’:

“Use one key word per line. Why? Because single key words give your mind map more power and flexibility. Each single word or image is like a multiplier, generating its own special array of associations and connections…Phrases or sentences dampen this triggering effect.”

In theory, I really like this idea, but when it comes to the reality of studying several subjects at University and having a heavy workload, I just don’t think many of us would feel totally confident creating mind maps with only one keyword word per line. Speaking for myself, there is this fear that when it comes time to revise these mind maps just before exams, there may not be much triggering action taking place (and instead just a whole heap of confusion and stress).

How to Mind Map Legal Subjects

Let me show you one of the mind maps I did for my favourite unit, International Environmental Law (click on image to enlarge).

You’ll notice I haven’t stuck strictly to Tony Buzan’s advice of writing one key word per line. Based on my experience, I believe that for subjects that require you to learn large amounts of complex information in a short space of time you want to put down important points of law (in more than one word) and perhaps even write whole definitions. If you feel the need to write out a definition on your mind map, make sure that you break it down into pictures (the more personalised, humorous and exaggerated the better).

Create a Simplified Mind Map of your Mind Maps

Once you’ve done your detailed mind maps, it’s a good idea to create an overarching mind map that contains significantly less text. You want to do this on one big piece of paper to bring together all the information and clarify things for yourself.

Mind Mapping Legislation

Mind maps will be your savior when it comes to understanding confusing and/or complex legislation. Often statutory laws are worded in convoluted ways and have a lot of exceptions. In order to fully understand these laws, I found I had to break down each law into different parts using pictures and coloured pens.

For example, section 48(1) of the Sale of Goods Act 1895 states:

48 Action for price
(1) Where, under a contract of sale, the property in the goods has passed to the buyer, and the buyer wrongfully neglects or refuses to pay for the goods according to the terms of the contract, the seller may maintain an action against him for the price of the goods.

This is how I broke down section 48(1) using pictures and different coloured pens:

Breaking Down Tough Assignments

It’s very easy to get overwhelmed by hypothetical legal problems that our lecturers throw at us. In order to decrease my stress levels and get clear on the facts of the scenario, I would always mind map out my assignment questions.

Not Sure How to Mind Map?

If you are new to mind mapping and not so sure how to go about creating mind maps, I recommend that you read my blog post on How to mind map for study success and also try to get a copy of Tony Buzan’s brilliant little book ‘How to mind map’. Tony Buzan has written several books on mind mapping (some of which are incredibly thick and contain a bit too much waffle). In my opinion ‘How to mind map’ is his best book by far as it is a simple, easy read and gets to the heart of mind mapping (it took me about 30 minutes to read).

Whilst the focus of my talk was on study skill strategies today, I feel they may have benefited as well from learning some simple stress management strategies.

Let’s face it, you can’t learn effectively if you’re stressed out. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, stress makes you stupid.

So here are 3 simple ways students who have exams coming up can decrease their anxiety and stress levels.

1. Breathe deeply

This isn’t just any old breathing. I’m talking about deep breathing. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed about the amount of study you need to do and whether you’ll be able to get it all done in time before the exam, I want you to stop. Find a quiet place. Sit up right. Breathe in deeply for the count of 5 (counting in your head 1…2…3…4….5), pause by holding your breath for 5 (1…2…3…4…5) and breathe out for the count of 5 (1….2…3…4…5). Keep doing this (as monotonous as it may seem) for 2 – 3 minutes. Just trust me on this one. Do it. It will calm you down and you’ll be able to think clearer and work more effectively.

2. Exercise

In my 7.5 years of study at university this has been the best way for me to decrease my stress levels. One hour at the local gym everyday during exams has made the biggest difference to me. Of course, you’ll find yourself thinking ‘But I don’t have time to exercise! I must study!’ but that’s just flawed thinking. Engaging in one hour (even just 30 minutes) of exercise will be an investment in your studies.

I recommend that you find a friend who is going through the same painful experience of doing exams and go exercise with them. Just make sure you don’t spend the whole time being negative about how crap it is that you need to do these exams, trying to predict the exam questions, etc. We all know and accept that exams aren’t fun to take. Why waste your time dwelling on this? You just want to get through this tough period. So by cutting out the negative talk you are ensuring exercise is an uplifting experience for you. Not a downer.

3. Take breaks

I recommend putting a timer on for 45 minutes, study for that period of time and then when 45 minutes is up, take a break. Should you go on facebook? A chat program? You could, but what will be better is to do some push ups/star jumps, go outside and get some fresh air….you want to get the blood circulating throughout your body. This will help to sharpen your focus and concentration for the next study session.

For some general tips on preparing for exams, click here.

I wish you all the best of luck (luck isn’t really the right word…but it will do!) with your exams. I know it’s a painful, stressful time. My advice is simple: just get through it. I don’t want to bag the school system, but learning actually becomes a lot more fun once you leave high school (well, that was certainly the case for me). Hang in there folks!

When it comes time to take your major exams, you really have to relate to yourself as a top class athlete. You need to eat the right foods, have the right mental attitude and let your body rest when it needs to leading up to your exams. These simple things can make all the difference to your mental clarity and performance.

You may be thinking ‘this is common sense!’ but common sense isn’t so common. I see it all the time, university students drinking energy drinks like water, getting very little sleep and eating fatty convenience foods whilst cramming for their final exams. I have to admit, I’ve also done this and I don’t recommend it. It’s a recipe for disaster or at best, mediocre grades and a stressful, miserable time.

Here are my top 10 tips for taking exams:

1. Get a good nights sleep

Studies have found that if you stay awake for 21 hours straight, you have the mental capacity of someone who is legally drunk (in terms of your ability to concentrate, memorise and recall information, etc).

You can’t afford to stay awake all night studying for an exam because you just won’t be effective on the day of the exam. Make sure you get on average 8 hours of sleep a night.

2. Exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, everyday

I make myself to go to the gym for 1 hour each day during my exam period, but 30 minutes of walking, jogging, swimming, dancing, etc will be enough.

Often students stop exercising when it comes exam time because they begin to think that they don’t have enough time (“I must spend every moment studying!”). Big mistake.

Exercise helps us study more effectively for various reasons. Firstly, it’s a great way to relieve stress and anxiety. Secondly, it gets blood flowing to your brain (supplying oxygen, antioxidant and glucose) which can help you to think more clearly.

Think of daily exercise as being an investment in your final marks.

3. Drink plenty of water

Often when we can’t think clearly and have a foggy memory, it’s because our brains need to be hydrated. While studying and taking your exams, make sure you take regular sips of water.

4. Remember, your teachers want you to do well

Years ago, I started thinking that my teachers and lecturers were out to get me and would mark me down wherever they got the chance. As a result of this thinking, I became too scared to write anything in one of my first tests for law! After receiving my terrible mark, my brother said to me “Remember sis, your teachers want you to do well. They will try to give you marks wherever they can. It’s in their interest to do so”

Don’t worry about writing a perfect answer. If you’re unsure, still put it down (even if it’s in dot points). They may not give you any marks for it, but they won’t take marks off. Just remember, your teachers really are on your side (despite all evidence to the contrary).

5. Focus on what you do know rather than what you don’t know

Chances are there will always be something that you could have studied more thoroughly or don’t know so well come the day of the exam. By that stage, you can’t do much about that, so is there any point worrying about it?

You are better off focusing on the fact that you now know so much more than you did before and a large number of the exam questions you’ll be able to answer.

6. Eat a low GI, nutritious breakfast

Studies have found that students who skip breakfast experience a 20-40% reduction in thinking skills (i.e. concentration, memory and alertness). You want to eat a low GI, nutritious breakfast to feel fuller for longer, stabilise your mood and give you plenty of energy for the day.

Here are some healthy breakfast ideas:

Raw museli or porridge with nuts and chopped fruit

Wholegrain toast with a variety of toppings (e.g. baked beans, tomatoes, avocado, etc.) and a piece of fruit

An omelette made with added vegetables (i.e. onion, spinach, tomato, and mushrooms)

A fruit smoothy

7. Avoid drinking caffeine (e.g. energy drinks, coke and coffee)

Caffeine is a stimulant drug. It gives you a rush and makes you feel good in the short term, but eventually it wears off and leaves you feeling cranky and wanting more.

It’s also a diuretic, so it makes you urinate, which means you lose water, become thirsty and want to drink more soft drink.

Studies have found that when we slurp on our cup of coffee or can of coke, we are actually inducing a state of stress. Caffeine drives the adrenal glands to produce stress hormones that in turn produce the “fight or flight” response.

Why not consider gradually replacing your caffeinated beverages with good old, simple water? If you must drink something sweet, try drinking low GI apple juice with no added sugar.

8. Go straight home after the exam

How many times have you stayed back after an exam to talk to your friends about what you put for each questions? How many times have you felt anxious after doing so?

Whilst it can be reassuring to know that you wrote the same answer as your friends, if you find out that you wrote something different and you have another 4 or 5 exams to take, this may throw you off your game.

The exam is over. There’s nothing much you can do about it, so move on and focus on the next one.

9. Take a few deep breaths when you get stuck

If you come across a question you’re not sure how to answer in the exam, stop for a moment and take a few deep breathes (in for the count of 3 and out for the count of 3). If you are not sure how to answer it there and then, move on to another question.

The worst thing you can do is start to panic, because as they say ‘stress makes you stupid’. You won’t be able to think clearly.

10. Dealing with writer’s cramp/elbow

I’m sure many of us are familiar with writers cramp/elbow. This can be due to holding your pen too tight. Loosen your grip or get a pen that you won’t have to press down so hard on the paper.

The reality is, even with a good pen, your elbow will start to hurt at some point if you’re taking a 3 hour exam. When it does hurt, have a rest for a few moments (yes, you have time to do this!) and stretch it out on your desk.

I hope you have found these tips helpful. If you have some techniques or strategies that work for you when preparing for exams, please share them below.

Then this evening, I saw an eye opening documentary on SBS called ‘The Boys from Baghdad High’ (Produced/Directed: Ivan O’Mahoney and Laura Winter). Watching this beautifully made documentary put everything into perspective.

‘Girls, exams and bombings’ was the tagline for this documentary where four 17 year old young men were given video cameras to record their lives as they completed their final year of school in Baghdad, Iraq.

If you thought studying was hard here (in safe Western Australia) then perhaps studying in Iraq for even a day would do us all some good.

These young men were typical generation Yers. They were just like my Australian male friends. They liked listening to pop music, had mobile phones, surfed the internet, had girlfirends, joked around with each other, had dreams and hopes for the future, etc. The difference was they were forced to study with power cuts, to the sound of bombings and guns firing shots outside their homes, knowing their classmates/friends had been murdered and kidnapped and that they could be next. Most of their free time was spent at home as it was just too dangerous to go outside.

I can’t even begin to imagine how stressful that would be and the effect that kind of stress would have on studying for final year exams.

It was no surprise that school attendance and motivation/inspiration to study was low at the school the boys attended in Baghdad. It was also no surprise that they failed several of their final exams. But amazingly, given all the stress and trauma they experienced, most of the boys got through and graduated in the end.

This documentary was inspiring to say the least. I’ve been complaining about my honours thesis, but after seeing what these young men went though it just seems ridiculous to complain anymore.

If in need of inspiration or a new perspective on your life as a student, I recommend watching ‘The Boys from Baghdad High’. You will be deeply moved.