Quick study tip: Break it up!

What's your best time?

Only three days left of classes here at Rindge, and the last day of finals is just a week from tomorrow on Wednesday, December 17th. 

Here is a study tip for students preparing for finals and completing final assignments: Break up your study time into manageable segments, an hour or less.  (For most people less than an hour is optimal.) Study or work for a while, then take a break, and then go back to work. 

You might think that you need to plan to spend all night cracking the books without out coming up for air, but that doesn’t work out for most students. If you plan to study hours at a time with no break, you’ll really only get a couple of  hours of work done. Figure out how long you can work without getting frustrated or inefficent–is it 20 minutes, 30, or 45? Then plan multiple segments of those 30 minute sesssions.

(Thanks to my car pool friends for suggesting this particular study tip.)

Study Tips for the Last Two Weeks of Classes

We have two weeks of classes left here on the Rindge campus of Franklin Pierce University. Here are five tips for preparing for exams:
1) Don’t wait until the day before the exam to study. Look at what you need to review between now and the exam and and do a little bit each day.
2) Make sure you know the format of the exam–will it be multiple choice, essay questions, or something else? Will you have to draw diagrams? Will it include material you’ve already been tested on? Look at the results of your previous work in the class. What did you do well on? What should you practice more? Use that information to prepare and practice for the test.
3) Form study groups with friends.
4) Go to peer tutor sessions for the class.
5) What do you still have questions about? Ask the professor in the last class session or during his or her office hours.