Keep stress at bay, say VCE old hands

Keep stress at bay, say VCE old hands

Ben Haywood
VCE exam guide, The Age -- Monday, September 8, 2008

Ben Haywood gets some tips on performing well during the exams.

NO MATTER what your subjects, there is one question all students face in the lead-up to their VCE final exams: What is the best way to prepare?

According to those who faced the exams last year, getting organised is a good place to start.

Erin Doherty, who did year 12 at Cranbourne Secondary College, says organisation isn't his strong suit, but he eased into a routine without a great deal of planning.

"My study wasn't as structured as many other people's," he says. "For me, it was just about getting comfortable with a subject and then leaving that and moving on to one that I didn't feel quite so comfortable with.

"So I would just spend maybe a night on one subject and then move to the next."

Even with an ENTER of 95.8, Erin missed out on his first preference of a double degree in mechatronics and science at Monash University. Instead, he is doing a mechanical engineering/science double degree.

But his good result did win him the lucrative Schools Access Monash scholarship: a fully paid five-year course of his choice at the university.

For Deakin University arts student Siobhan Simper, a structured approach was important for keeping stress at bay. The Brauer College alumnus, who got 98.1 last year, split study for her five subjects across weekdays, tackling any extra tasks at the weekend. Very often, that left her weekends free.

"Then I could relax because I knew that I was preparing the best I could," she says.

First-year University of Melbourne bachelor of environments student Jessica King says keeping good notes throughout the year paid off in the months before the exams.

"When it came down to the last couple of months I started making posters of all my notes and put them all around my room," says the former Sacred Heart Girls' College student, who got 98.2 last year.

Because his notes were "a bit everywhere", Erin instead relied on textbooks and summary notes from revision lectures.

"Revision lectures were really good because they made me feel comfortable with what I did and didn't know.

"They summarised the whole subject and helped me identify areas I was a bit vague with."

They gave him a fresh perspective on subjects, too.

"I also did as many practice exams as possible. They really help you identify what you need to know and what your weaknesses are.

"If you can't answer a question, you go back to that topic and go through it again." He also recommends first confronting the topics you find hardest.

"Leaving the hard things that you really don't want to do and only doing the things you really like doing is probably the worst thing. It just sticks in the back of your mind and gets to you."

Jessica agrees that putting off things to the last minute only adds to stress.
She says leaving her most intense study to the days before the exams left her with little time to find answers to things she didn't know.

"That makes you feel really stressed out."

For Naomi Johnson, who is studying music at the University of Melbourne, flash cards were a fun way to memorise facts on the move, particularly for LOTE.

Speaking to her family in the languages she was studying - French and Korean - helped too. "They didn't understand anything, but they would still respond to it and ask me questions."

Jessica also put her family to work, getting them to quiz her on key knowledge.

"I found that if I did it with friends, they would just tell me the answers, but I could get a much more realistic sense of how I was doing from people who didn't know about the subject area." In the final days before an exam, most argue that less is more.

"If I had studied close to the exams I would have panicked, because I'd have realised what I didn't know," Siobhan says.

Naomi, who got 99.35 at Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar, agrees. "Instead of study, I tried to open my mind to the possibilities of the subject," she says. "For example, with the literature exam, instead of trying to read over the revision notes, I just went out into the garden and read through the poems, and really immersed myself in the feel of them rather than trying to pick up on something specific.

"If you think of your mind as a filing cabinet, instead of frantically opening up all the drawers and riffling through all the pages, it is almost like working out which drawers are important to you and putting a ribbon around them and saying, 'I know it's all in there, it will be fine, and when I need it, it will come flying out'."

As for exam day nerves, Siobhan says it is worth putting the exams into perspective.

"Someone said to me at the start of the year that you're not your ENTER, and I think looking back that is really true and I should have paid more attention."

-Source: http://www.education.theage.com.au/pagedetail.asp?intpageid=2036&intsectionid=11

http://www.education.theage.com.au/vce.asp