I am constantly grateful for all the new teachings that are so available about the workings of our amazing brains.  And that is exactly it – your brain is remarkable and it can serve you very well.  This is especially useful to know during the exam season!

How can you best enhance your learning?  

This season crops up continuously and the approach to exams, like so many aspects of our lives, increasingly improves as you learn new and improved ways of learning effectively.  Below are just a couple of pointers that I hope will enhance this time of preparation:

Approach each section of learning with curiosity and excitement.   What are you intrigued to be learning about today?  Exciting your brain opens you up to paying attention to the material.  

What is the purpose of what you are learning about?  How does it fit into the bigger scheme of your studies.  What are the advantages of learning this?  On this note, the advantages could be that you are enabling doors to open to the next stage of your studies; or that the learning itself is enriching your brain and teaching you skills of absorbing information; the contents of the course really is fascinating to you; or, in learning this content so you are on a stepping stone to future more riveting studies.  Find the reason as to WHY these exams are important, WHY your learning really matters to you.  

Teach the work that you are learning.  Discuss the material with yourself with understanding.  Make it relevant to your every day life.  And practice the material – get past papers and do them.  Making mistakes is great because in making the mistakes so your brain is trying to understand the material better and is working towards finding an improved way to the solutions.  Practising retrieving information helps to ensure that you remember it.  

Organise your notes in a way that is impactful to you.  Write notes about the notes.  Use your different coloured pens; draw pictures that represent the notes; make up rhymes to help memorise; spidergrams; relate the material to other material … use all the tools at your disposal to make the work sink in deep into your mind.  Engaging with your learning, immersing yourself in the material, helps with memorising.  

And throughout the learning process, remember to sleep deeply and nourish yourself with good food and movement.  Get outside, meet up with a friend – or two – have a lovely walk, and just know that these exams are stepping stones to other chapters of life but also they are exams – they become less significant in time.  They are just a part of the great scheme of life.