About six weeks ago I was lucky enough to get upgraded to business class on a flight to Vegas. On the flight out to Vegas, everyone is always in high spirits – getting into party mode. The flight back is a totally different affair with everyone exhausted and depressed either to be going home or that they lost so much money in the casino!
On this particular flight, there was a group of men who were excited to get the party started. They stood around the bar playing cards and downing many drinks. As I study behaviour for a living, I love to people watch and I quickly honed into one of the guys who was getting very over excited. He went hard, downing drink after drink and mixing the drinks to full effect. In fact, he was lapping his group of friends by at least two drinks to their one. After about two hours into the flight, you could see he was struggling. He went to sit back down and passed out with his head slumped into his chest, missed the food service and the rest of the flight as he had to be woken up when we landed.
He lacked the ability to pace himself, whereas his friends had a great rest of the flight and never seemed to be too drunk. Now I see a similar thing in the 7000 + buyers I have taught over the years. Not with alcohol, but with the ability to pace themselves. The majority of students fall into three major categories:
The first category is to do too much, spending hours every night, and at weekends on their study to the detriment of everything else in their lives. These students may get great results on their first exam series but then they simply burn out, just like the man on my flight they have pushed it too hard and are burnt out and need rest.
The second category is to do too little, leave it to the last minute and then freeze as they are overwhelmed by the amount of information they need to learn in such a small space of time. Some students will panic and not sit their exam – not even give it a go, due to sheer overwhelm.
The final category is the students who take it steady, just like the rest of the group on the plane, little and often, enough to retain information but not overwhelm themselves and burn out. These are the students who excel in their exams and find studying less stressful than the other groups.
My advice would be to create a revision plan where you study little and often, maybe in 20 mins bursts throughout the week. Micro-learning is proven to be an effective memory retention technique and can ensure you are in the successful final category!
As they say slow and steady wins the race
Cheers
Laura
