Before the Christmas break I wrote about how I had started to write my progress report that marks the half-way stage of my Physics Master’s project. Yesterday was the official deadline for it and I’m pleased to say that I handed it in several days before it was due, as I had completed the majority of it in the final week of the holidays. Whilst writing the report it was rewarding to see the different aspects of my project come together and amalgamate nicely in front of my eyes. It’s a massive relief to have it written, so I can focus on other things!
One of the highlights of my Christmas was visiting the festive-themed grounds of an Edwardian House called Polesden Lacey.
These ‘other things’ are those much-fabled exams that everyone seems to be talking about. This January I have three, which all fall in the second week of the exam period. I’ve been trying to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, because on one hand it gives me an extra week to revise, but on the other it means I don’t get a little break before Semester two starts. I know deep down it’s a good thing, but when other people start to finish their exams before you, you can’t help but feel slightly jealous of their new-found freedom!
This will be my fourth, and final, set of January exams and by now I have my revision ‘plan of action’ down to a tee. I thought that with the remainder of this blog post I would share some of my revision strategies with you:
Then comes the slightly unusual part: with these notes I then pretend to teach them to an imaginary person. My logic with this, is that if I can explain a concept coherently, with the notes only used as an aid, then I will have a strong enough understanding of that topic to take with me into the exam. This method also helps expose any gaps in my knowledge, or parts that I’m not fully sure about, which then allows me to tailor my revision towards these lesser-understood areas.
Once I am confident I have a good enough background knowledge, I then attempt questions from past papers, problem sheets and textbooks and will once again use the feedback from this to strengthen my knowledge.
Obviously this strategy may not work for everyone, or indeed for every course, but this is how I revise and it’s been good to me so far in my university career! Closer to the exam I also like to produce a mind map to link all the concepts together, with often requires a large piece of paper and very small handwriting!
My colourful and rather hectic mind map for Quantum Physics
James
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