It’s that time of year, again where millions of high school, matric and tertiary students are battling stress and anxiety as they prepare to sit their final exams for the year.
Many students struggle with organising their study schedules and finding resources and tools that will facilitate their learning processes. However, thanks to technology, students can now navigate this nerve-wracking period by making use of readily-available online resources.
It’s a date
Some of the leading causes of exam stress include regrets associated with procrastination, lack of sleep, and a lack of direction for how to conquer the revision process. Having a clear study plan is crucial to managing exam stress because it gives you a sense of direction and control.
The more prepared you are, the more likely you are to succeed. With an application like Google Calendar, you can minimise your stress by using it to plan your study timetable, set reminders ahead of exams, and synchronise study group meeting requests from your email.
Conveniently, you can also synchronise your calendar across all your mobile devices, to ensure that you stay on top of your game. Having a plan of attack, as you revise for exams, is very important as it can help you prioritise, be more productive, and keep track of the topics you have covered and still need to cover.
Sharing is caring
When it comes to exam time it’s important to remember you’re not alone. Team up with motivated classmates to study together. This way you will have the moral support of a group of people working towards the same goal as you, thereby reducing stress while you use your textbooks, your own notes and other useful material to create revision notes in preparation for each exam.
Working in a group, you can divide this task among group members on the Cloud using apps like Google Docs. This powerful tool makes it easy to work remotely as a team by allowing group members to collectively edit, make comments, and track individual contributions.
With Docs, group members can easily divvy up study-focus sections, allocate them and consolidate the notes into one centralised document. The Google Docs suite offers free collaborative word processing, spreadsheets, slide presentations and even survey forms.
Get in the zone
Music and sounds are important tools that can help you focus, calm your nerves, and even help concentrate while you study.
If you prefer to study to more traditional sounds of music, take advantage of YouTube Music’s extensive library. The Classical Focus playlist offers a selection of carefully selected pieces to help you focus while you study. Or if you draw more inspiration and motivation from spiritual tracks, the SA Gospel and Soul playlist could be what you’re looking for.
What’s even better, is that YouTube Music Premium has a 3-month free trial for students, giving you access to an endless list of meditation, relaxation, sleep, and exercise tracks to help you destress.
YouTube It
When your written notes just don’t cut it and you need a bit more explanation to make concepts come to life, don’t fret. YouTube continues to have a repository of content generated by tutors, teachers and students.
If you are revising Macbeth, a simple YouTube search for “Macbeth analysis” will call up content creators analysing William Shakespeare's classic, giving you unlimited resources related to your field of study.