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Bit of a nightmare!
Hey guys, first of all i'd like to say that it's great to be here! Found these forums by chance, and they're fantastic!
Now, onto the ugly part
After recieving Seven 1s at Standard Grade (English, Art, French, Geography, Computing, Maths, Graphic Communication) and an A in Intermediate 2 Physics last year, i was thrilled. After promising 'myself' that i would do as much revision as possible for my highers, i now find myself in a dilemma.
Like most teens i play the computer...'alot'. Now unfortunately, this year i've been glued to it (Probably addiction, rather worried) and have neglected to do daily revision of my current higher subjects (English, Maths, Physics, Geography, Art). Now i've passed all of my NABs well, but i recieved terrible prelim marks. Got C's in Physics and Maths, a B in English and Art, and only one A - in Geography
Without sounding boastful or obnoxious, i'd like to think of myself as a rather intellectual guy. These prelim reults devastated me; all thanks to that stupid computer! I'm now really panicking, as there are only 6-odd weeks until the final exams and i've lost my confidence. Am i completely doomed to failure? Or is there still time to brush up on my subjects - I'm willing to revise from after school until midnight if necessary! Is there anything, and i mean 'anything', that i can do to recover from this - Constant use of past papers perhaps?
Please, any help / info you could provide would be much appreciated!!!
Cheers
Greg
Now, onto the ugly part
After recieving Seven 1s at Standard Grade (English, Art, French, Geography, Computing, Maths, Graphic Communication) and an A in Intermediate 2 Physics last year, i was thrilled. After promising 'myself' that i would do as much revision as possible for my highers, i now find myself in a dilemma. Like most teens i play the computer...'alot'. Now unfortunately, this year i've been glued to it (Probably addiction, rather worried) and have neglected to do daily revision of my current higher subjects (English, Maths, Physics, Geography, Art). Now i've passed all of my NABs well, but i recieved terrible prelim marks. Got C's in Physics and Maths, a B in English and Art, and only one A - in Geography
Without sounding boastful or obnoxious, i'd like to think of myself as a rather intellectual guy. These prelim reults devastated me; all thanks to that stupid computer! I'm now really panicking, as there are only 6-odd weeks until the final exams and i've lost my confidence. Am i completely doomed to failure? Or is there still time to brush up on my subjects - I'm willing to revise from after school until midnight if necessary! Is there anything, and i mean 'anything', that i can do to recover from this - Constant use of past papers perhaps?
Please, any help / info you could provide would be much appreciated!!!
Cheers
Greg
Scroll to see replies
I kind of had the same as you, fantastic SG results, slipping down in Highers. My revision strategy is doing past papers, and if I get stuck at a question, rather than going straight to the answer and going "ohhhh that's the answer", I'm going to my notes/textbook, and WRITING DOWN what is it I got stuck with. And pinning this to my wall above my computer screen (so I look at it!) The act of writing stuff seems to lodge it my head anyway. Good luck!
P.S - I'm a fellow computer addict.
P.S - I'm a fellow computer addict.
About the computer thing, that's probably what killed my chances of medicine or law level grades last year too. I assume you also game? 
Try this on for size; get your father or whoever you can trust to change the password to the PC, and delete the guest account. That way, unless you are desperate enough for a fix to go to a mates house, you can only go on when your father feels you have covered enough (which admittedly might be a while) and you are sorted.
Try this on for size; get your father or whoever you can trust to change the password to the PC, and delete the guest account. That way, unless you are desperate enough for a fix to go to a mates house, you can only go on when your father feels you have covered enough (which admittedly might be a while) and you are sorted.
Its not too late to improve your grades, all you need to do is think - The Computer will never change, this is the only time to get good highers and increasing your chances for UC at Uni.
Here was some of the Revision Techniques I used for subjects we shared:
English - Write Quotes for all texts on paper and read it atleast once EVERY night, get an adult to test you on them. Also just do practice essays and learn them, I know you can just have a set essay and think thats you but if you learn some essays and the ways to write them it will be easier. For Close Reading dont do PP's, read about how to do the techniques before doing PP's its been proven they dont help you revise, there designed to test your ability not to improve it.
Maths - The best thing is past papers.
Physics - For Physics I revised like 5 days and I got a B band 3 and I sucked at physics. What I suggest you do is write, not read, WRITE every single note that you need in physics. We got red books of summary notes and such and copy that whole book in your own words then do past papers.
Geography & Art I did not do so I cant really say
Here was some of the Revision Techniques I used for subjects we shared:
English - Write Quotes for all texts on paper and read it atleast once EVERY night, get an adult to test you on them. Also just do practice essays and learn them, I know you can just have a set essay and think thats you but if you learn some essays and the ways to write them it will be easier. For Close Reading dont do PP's, read about how to do the techniques before doing PP's its been proven they dont help you revise, there designed to test your ability not to improve it.
Maths - The best thing is past papers.
Physics - For Physics I revised like 5 days and I got a B band 3 and I sucked at physics. What I suggest you do is write, not read, WRITE every single note that you need in physics. We got red books of summary notes and such and copy that whole book in your own words then do past papers.
Geography & Art I did not do so I cant really say
Hi Greg, welcome to the forums (and nice to see someone local for me, I'm from not too far away from Inverness!)
Firstly, don't worry. Of course you can turn things around between now and the exams, but it will require a lot of work on your part.
The first piece of action I would suggest is, plain and simple, get rid of the games. When I was studying my Highers, aside from general computer gaming I had a nasty habit of stopping a sentence in my revision and reflexively opening Minesweeper and starting to play that before I even realised what I was doing. Solution was to delete minesweeper, and it worked!
If you revise on computer, it might be an idea to try just working at a table for a while. Start your revision earlier on in the day and don't let yourself on the computer before you've done a certain amount of revision. Enlist the help of your parents if necessary, even if they need to unplug the keyboard and hide it until you prove to them that you've done your daily amount.
Plan out your revision - you might find it helpful to do one subject a night, or you might find it better to do a little of every subject every night. Figure out what you need to revise for each and how you're going to go about it. I would suggest going over the things you've studied, do a couple of past papers, find out where the gaps are, study them up, do some more past papers, etc. until you feel more confident.
Ask around and find out if there are any Easter study classes you could go to. (to be irritatingly locally specific, I went to some at Alness Academy for English, Maths, Physics and Geography and they were very helpful). If your school offers any revision classes, take advantage of them.
I've not studied Art, so I can't really give any subject specific advice on that front.
For English, learn your quotes, write practice essays and only give yourself the amount of time you have in the exam.
For maths, learn any formulae (just writing them out time and time again worked for me), get practice questions out of the text book or any extra books for the sections you have problems with. Get your teacher to mark past papers if they'll agree to that.
For physics, I think somebody told me last year that you don't need to learn formulae any more? Write out all the necessary information from each unit, read it over several times, write it out from memory. Practice calculations
IIRC, I found the Chemcord Higher Physics book handy if you can get hold of it.
Geography I found was generally a memory thing, so read things out and write things out nonstop (I think I still remember the song I wrote about the formation of corries/aretes). Practice your diagrams. Past papers are especially handy in geography as the questions don't tend to vary too much.
Revise as much as you can fair enough - in sixth year I was cramming all day during study leave since I hadn't done much work before that
- but don't exhaust yourself. My mum always enforced a strict rule on me for exams - after 9 o' clock on the night before an exam, don't even think about revision. Relax, have a bath, watch some telly, go to bed early. (I only broke this for my last ever exam when I was up spouting out memorised Higher Drama quotes until midnight, and the next day I was so pent up I managed to forget to put the question numbers down).
It's only a few weeks, and then you'll have a nice long summer so you can play computer games as much as you like!
Firstly, don't worry. Of course you can turn things around between now and the exams, but it will require a lot of work on your part.
The first piece of action I would suggest is, plain and simple, get rid of the games. When I was studying my Highers, aside from general computer gaming I had a nasty habit of stopping a sentence in my revision and reflexively opening Minesweeper and starting to play that before I even realised what I was doing. Solution was to delete minesweeper, and it worked!
If you revise on computer, it might be an idea to try just working at a table for a while. Start your revision earlier on in the day and don't let yourself on the computer before you've done a certain amount of revision. Enlist the help of your parents if necessary, even if they need to unplug the keyboard and hide it until you prove to them that you've done your daily amount.
Plan out your revision - you might find it helpful to do one subject a night, or you might find it better to do a little of every subject every night. Figure out what you need to revise for each and how you're going to go about it. I would suggest going over the things you've studied, do a couple of past papers, find out where the gaps are, study them up, do some more past papers, etc. until you feel more confident.
Ask around and find out if there are any Easter study classes you could go to. (to be irritatingly locally specific, I went to some at Alness Academy for English, Maths, Physics and Geography and they were very helpful). If your school offers any revision classes, take advantage of them.
I've not studied Art, so I can't really give any subject specific advice on that front.
For English, learn your quotes, write practice essays and only give yourself the amount of time you have in the exam.
For maths, learn any formulae (just writing them out time and time again worked for me), get practice questions out of the text book or any extra books for the sections you have problems with. Get your teacher to mark past papers if they'll agree to that.
For physics, I think somebody told me last year that you don't need to learn formulae any more? Write out all the necessary information from each unit, read it over several times, write it out from memory. Practice calculations
IIRC, I found the Chemcord Higher Physics book handy if you can get hold of it.
Geography I found was generally a memory thing, so read things out and write things out nonstop (I think I still remember the song I wrote about the formation of corries/aretes). Practice your diagrams. Past papers are especially handy in geography as the questions don't tend to vary too much.
Revise as much as you can fair enough - in sixth year I was cramming all day during study leave since I hadn't done much work before that
- but don't exhaust yourself. My mum always enforced a strict rule on me for exams - after 9 o' clock on the night before an exam, don't even think about revision. Relax, have a bath, watch some telly, go to bed early. (I only broke this for my last ever exam when I was up spouting out memorised Higher Drama quotes until midnight, and the next day I was so pent up I managed to forget to put the question numbers down). It's only a few weeks, and then you'll have a nice long summer so you can play computer games as much as you like!
PHYSICS PHYSICS PHYSICS!! you want to speak to me about this one!!!
i did higher but i wasnt in the right class so i wasnt taught it. i totally ignored the teacher, bought a chemcord revision book (little red A3 book), and learned pretty much everything i needed to know from that, and from doing pastpapers.
i got 23% in my prelim, and a band 2 A in the exam,91%.
you may not need to remember the formulae but you DO need to remember what each one is for. i realised that they go in Topic order, and by using an actual exam databook i learned which equations i would need for each Q, and where they were on the page.
PS. you dont need to understand it. you just need to be able to do the calculations and remember the definitions of things like e.m.f. . . . . .. and a lot of the multiple choice Qs are repeated from old papers.
i did higher but i wasnt in the right class so i wasnt taught it. i totally ignored the teacher, bought a chemcord revision book (little red A3 book), and learned pretty much everything i needed to know from that, and from doing pastpapers.
i got 23% in my prelim, and a band 2 A in the exam,91%.
you may not need to remember the formulae but you DO need to remember what each one is for. i realised that they go in Topic order, and by using an actual exam databook i learned which equations i would need for each Q, and where they were on the page.
PS. you dont need to understand it. you just need to be able to do the calculations and remember the definitions of things like e.m.f. . . . . .. and a lot of the multiple choice Qs are repeated from old papers.
Thanks for the fantastic replies guys!
I've arranged for my parents to hide the keyboard and mouse for most of the day until the exams are over - I'm sure that will help nullify my addiction! Going to get stuck into some past papers and note-taking for the time being. Wish me luck, and thanks again!
I've arranged for my parents to hide the keyboard and mouse for most of the day until the exams are over - I'm sure that will help nullify my addiction! Going to get stuck into some past papers and note-taking for the time being. Wish me luck, and thanks again!
Bear in mind the danger shown in Trainspotting; the character barricades his door from the inside to go on "cold turkey", but his addiction overcomes his resolve and he breaks out. Moral- never let the parents hide the stuff some place you could find them
BloodBrother
Bear in mind the danger shown in Trainspotting; the character barricades his door from the inside to go on "cold turkey", but his addiction overcomes his resolve and he breaks out. Moral- never let the parents hide the stuff some place you could find them
Also remember those three buckets
Heh, yeah.
i was exactly the same. great standard grade results. bad higher prelim results. i got 3 C's, 2B's and an A. but i crammed in the last four weeks.i basically wrote all my notes out again (this helps me remember) and pulled my grades up to 4A's and 2B's. good luck!
LittleMissVet
i was exactly the same. great standard grade results. bad higher prelim results. i got 3 C's, 2B's and an A. but i crammed in the last four weeks.i basically wrote all my notes out again (this helps me remember) and pulled my grades up to 4A's and 2B's. good luck!
You did six highers? In one year?!
Samtooth
I got AAABB In maths physics computing english and history last year and I didn't start revising till around this time.
Don't worry, just get to work.
Don't worry, just get to work.
But it is different for different people. I think I might have re-read my english book but the majority of my revision was done during study leave. I just worked very, very hard the night before.
lucyrobyn
LittleMissVet, was your Edinburgh vet school interview on the 18th of December? if it was then i think i met you.
yeah it was. how did your interview go? how 'bout glasgow?
yeh, i had my hair tied back and glasses on, and there was a really grumpy bloke next to me (my dad). n my interview was at like 12.30.
i didnt get into edinburgh, i was soo bad that i found out the next day!! they kinda pissed me off actually, i dnt wana go there now, they were really rude. i had my glasgow interview, and it went really well. but im only on the waitinglist. arg. its because of my grades so if i get BB in my AHs i can reapply for an unconditional. (and i might still get in this yr but the chances are slim. . .and i have to wait until May!!!).
i didnt get into edinburgh, i was soo bad that i found out the next day!! they kinda pissed me off actually, i dnt wana go there now, they were really rude. i had my glasgow interview, and it went really well. but im only on the waitinglist. arg. its because of my grades so if i get BB in my AHs i can reapply for an unconditional. (and i might still get in this yr but the chances are slim. . .and i have to wait until May!!!).
lucyrobyn
yeh, i had my hair tied back and glasses on, and there was a really grumpy bloke next to me (my dad). n my interview was at like 12.30.
i didnt get into edinburgh, i was soo bad that i found out the next day!! they kinda pissed me off actually, i dnt wana go there now, they were really rude. i had my glasgow interview, and it went really well. but im only on the waitinglist. arg. its because of my grades so if i get BB in my AHs i can reapply for an unconditional. (and i might still get in this yr but the chances are slim. . .and i have to wait until May!!!).
i didnt get into edinburgh, i was soo bad that i found out the next day!! they kinda pissed me off actually, i dnt wana go there now, they were really rude. i had my glasgow interview, and it went really well. but im only on the waitinglist. arg. its because of my grades so if i get BB in my AHs i can reapply for an unconditional. (and i might still get in this yr but the chances are slim. . .and i have to wait until May!!!).
im goin to glasgow. hope to see you there. GOOD LUCK!!!!!!
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