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In this article, Matrix Scholarship student Vaneeza Kazmi shares the study hacks that she uses to ensure she aced her Year 10 half-yearly exams. In her article, she shares study tips that work.
In this article:
My name is Vaneeza Kazmi and I am currently a Year 10 student (2021) at Sydney Girls’ High School.
I have many interests, and in addition to sports such as cricket and volleyball (which I play competitively for school, COVID willing), I also enjoy painting, sketching, reading, debating and music.
My friends would describe me as empathetic, open and productive. Personally, I would describe myself as an approachable and compassionate person who is always willing to help the people around them.
This year, I think what I excelled most in personally was time management, which came as a bit of a surprise, since, usually, no matter how organised I try to be when exams come around, the panic of the workload building up ends up getting to me. From what I’ve heard from my friends and other people I’ve talked to, this isn’t an unusual situation for students to be in, especially when prioritisation of certain subjects over others leaves you a bit unprepared for more ‘minor’ exams.
In terms of things I struggled with, staying focused and motivated to keep studying for large 3-4 hour blocks was difficult, and I quickly learned that this method of study just didn’t work for me, so this particular exam period was a time in which I needed to review what worked best for me and what I needed to change.
Something else I struggled with that I know isn’t uncommon was having to constantly look out for my mental health; I had to be able to read my own signs and know how to handle myself in emotional lows and be able to combat thoughts of anxiety.
Ultimately, my goal for this article isn’t simply to outline the most effective study tips that I have for half-yearlies and that I’ll eventually use for my yearlies; what I want most is to be able to impart advice that helps you manage not only your study but also your mental and emotional health.
You’ll hear this phrase being used all the time, especially nearing exam time, but it can be difficult to understand exactly what working or studying ‘smarter’ and not ‘harder’ means, especially since the two are often treated synonymously.
The way I like to think of the difference between the two is that with smarter study, you target all your effort to ensure you can retain information for longer, and you understand your topics to the extent that you can manipulate them to your advantage in time-restricted situations. Strategies such as note-taking and highlighting important concepts (harder study) are valuable, but only until you input smarter studying techniques such as quizzing yourself on your notes or doing practice questions and exercises regarding your most important topics.
For me, these are the two most effective study strategies that I used for my half-yearlies.
With science, ensuring I went through all my topics and actively ensured I fully understood concepts so that I would be ready to manipulate the information I had to questions requiring critical thinking was vital.
For Maths, I found that if I didn’t understand certain concepts, I found it useful to go onto YouTube and find videos explaining how to use certain formulae and that also provide practice questions. Accounts like Khan Academy are really useful for this, and the Khan Academy website also has questions and modules you can work through.
With English, it just came down to the amount of research I did; while studying Hamlet at Matrix, I didn’t quite understand why the University of Wittenberg was important to the Christian context of the play. After doing further research, this became more clear to me, and I annotated this next to the corresponding section in the textbook.
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Resources provide an extra level of knowledge for you to bank for your exams, ensuring that you can take your essays and extended responses to a higher level.
This is a tip I found incredibly helpful for English; when doing critical studies on Shakespearean plays, for example, having a few extra quotes from critics who have studied the play and researching more on the context of the plays themselves (the monarchs of the time, their positions on different issues, etc.) can give you a really solid boost in terms of your understanding of your texts.
Sometimes, our resources are right in front of us, too. For my comparative essay on ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhita Roy and ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Erich Maria Remarque, researching the authors’ contexts, the socio-political issues at the forefront of their respective societies and more gave me so much valuable information. This not only made it easier for me to form a question for my essay, but it also gave me a real insight into the similarities between the themes and characters of both books, which, at first glance, seem very different.
When I didn’t understand ionic and covalent bonds and formulas, I consulted my Matrix Science textbooks.
Recently, when I didn’t understand some aspects of calculus, I used the Matrix+ videos from my course to understand the working out and theory behind derivatives and such.
As I said earlier, our physical, emotional and mental health are all tied together, and they each affect the ways in which the others function. Your mental health will always be reflected in the work that you put in, one way or another, and, as such, it is extremely important that in exam time, we put in just as much effort into our studies as we do our mental health.
There are many ways that I employed this during my half-yearlies:
For example, something I used to do quite a bit was brush off my stress as something minor and ignore it until I would eventually become ‘burnt out’ and struggle to find the motivation to do work. Knowing this, I made sure not to ignore how I was feeling when tackling my half-yearlies, and instead made sure to either switch up my study routine or just take a break until I felt better.
Even the littlest of things can help us reorient ourselves and feel better before continuing.
Ignoring problems helps with nothing – at some point, the stress and the anxiety just build up and come crashing down.
So remember, know your own signs of when you’re feeling down, and just take the time to make sure your mental health is up to speed with the rest of you to make sure you’re working at your best.
I hope these tips help, especially since yearlies are coming up for a lot of us. Lockdown definitely isn’t helping, I know, but, hopefully, this was even a little bit useful in providing some insight on how you can tackle your upcoming exams. As always, stay happy and healthy 🙂
Written by Guest Author
We have regular contributions to our blog from our Tutor Team and high performing Matrix Students. Come back regularly for these guest posts to learn their study hacks and insights!
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