THE STATE of being cool is a human quality universally admired and painstakingly practised by teenagers. Now, just two weeks before the exams, you have the opportunity of turning coolness into an art form. Cool people are realistic. They know how to maximise their strengths and minimise their weaknesses. They cultivate an air of detachment while remaining totally alert and involved. Think of a duck: it glides serenely across a pond while the webbed feet furiously thresh the water beneath. That's cool.
To be truly cool about your approach to revision and exams requires self-confidence, the ability to keep your head when many about you are losing theirs. You know more than you think you do. If you have attended reasonably well to class and home work for the past two years, a lot of information, insights and ideas are lodged in your long-term memory waiting for stimulation, organisation and expression in well-structured and relevant answers.
The cool student knows that because questions and answers are the essence of exams, every revision session over the next two weeks should be built around questions and answers. There is little point in being rocket-fuelled with information if you don't refine exam skills: skilful interpretation of questions and construction of coherent answers. Quality is always more important than quantity.
(1) Draw up a revision plan and work the plan. Cool students know that nobody plans to fail. They know that unsuccessful students generally fail to plan. A plan gives you confidence, helps to organise your revision, saves time, prevents undue stress or panic and gives you a definite route to follow.
(2) Break revision sessions into units of 40 minutes. Begin with a question. What, for example, are the symbols used by Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights? Naming symbols such as nature, windows, locked doors and keys, books, graves, etc. is not enough. Ask yourself why Bronte uses the symbols? Use your text and class notes to fill in gaps in your knowledge. List the key words and concepts on an index card and check that you know them when you return to the novel again. What key references in quotations from the novel do I need to know?
(3) Relax for a few minutes before turning to another subject.
(4) The art of being cool demands a clear overview of the factors required for success in each subject. Your teachers have been inculcating these for the past two years. Write them down. Ask your teachers to go over them again if you feel uncertain or confused. Cool people always have the big picture in their minds - they see the jigsaw before trying to fit the individual pieces of information.
(5) Cool students inoculate themselves against the Magnus Magnusson syndrome: "I've started so I'll finish For many students the temptation to write down all they know about a topic becomes irresistible.
(6) Exam questions are precisely worded. Specific information is required to write a good answer. So a thorough analysis of question types, careful study of the wording of questions and practising writing opening and sample paragraphs is more important than you may realise.
(7) Avoid the 3R (read, retain and regurgitate) approach to exams. Examiners will seek evidence that you are thinking, organising ideas and structuring information into clear, relevant and well-structured answers.
(8) A useful exam technique is to pause for a few seconds after writing each paragraph and ask if you are answering the set question. In English, try to include evidence of your personal response to the play, poem or novel.
(9) To a considerable extent exams are tests of memory. To remember effectively you must first understand the subject or topic thoroughly. Then repetition becomes vital. Learn the topic. Repeat it at the end of the session, next day, as often as possible. Even when you think you know it, repeat it a few times more. Overlearn it.
(10) A key element of success in anything you do in life is the effective and efficient use of time. Make full use of past exam papers and sample questions. Know the format of each exam paper. Practise managing the time allocated to each question or topic and the allocation of marks.
(11) Review your mock exam answers and know why you might not have done as well as you should.
COOL PEOPLE have a sense of perspective. You're not the first and certainly not the last generation to sit for public exams. Remember all the smiling faces when results were published last year. Thousands of young people have experienced the tasks you face now and lived to tell the tale and even celebrate. So will you. Keep cool.
