Successful Students
9
9. …don’t cram
for exams. Successful students know that divided periods of study are more
effective than cram sessions, and they practice it.
If there is
one thing that study skills specialists agree on, it is that distributed study
is better than massed, Last-night, last-ditch efforts known as cramming. You’ll
learn more, and earn a higher grade by studying in four, one hour-a-night
sessions for Friday’s exams than studying for four hours straight on Thursday night.
Short, concentrated preparatory efforts are more efficient and rewarding than
wasteful, inattentive, last moment marathons. Yet, so many students fail to
learn this lesson and end up repeating it over again until it becomes a wasteful
habit. Not too clever, huh?
When you
cram, you are taking the shortcut, and shortcut never produces any real
worthwhile results. Also, when you take shortcuts, you feel rather rotten
knowing that you could have done better but didn’t. Shortcuts cut you short. You
can’t plant watermelon seeds and harvest fresh watermelons the next day. It takes
time. Cramming for a test or project and expecting to make a high score the
next day is like planting watermelon seeds and expecting to harvest and eat
fresh watermelons the next day. Plus cramming for a test or project doesn’t help
you academically, so why even do it. Plan ahead, prepare ahead. Give yourself
plenty of days and weeks to prepare for upcoming accountability opportunities.
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