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Are people being honest when they say they don't revise and get good grades

I know it seems like a silly question but I just want to know if this really is the case . People say they do no work or very little and still get great grades. Some other people just say things click. But I want to know why. Why can that happen to some people and not others.

I don't mean to moan but this is really bothering me when I have worked for hours and someone else can just do that.

Reply 1

gjd800

At school I did barely any revision at all and did well. At college I was barely there, did no revision and came out with a mix of Bs and Cs, so hardly great. Throughout my university career, I did the work as it came but it was a rarity that I revisited any of it.

I have my viva in a few weeks and I doubt I'll even re-read my thesis in full before it.

There's a difference between not doing any work and not revising in the traditional sense. I've never been a big reviser, but I do the work first time around.

As for reasons, I don't know. If you do the work as it comes then it tends to stick, at least for me.

Reply 2

ZombieTheWolf

nah i had exams i barely revised for and did well in sorry for the flex

Reply 3

Anonymous #1

Original post by ZombieTheWolf

nah i had exams i barely revised for and did well in sorry for the flex

Good for you, no need to boast, not everyone is as smart as you

Reply 4

ZombieTheWolf

Original post by Anonymous

Good for you, no need to boast, not everyone is as smart as you

I was just being honest. It wasn't the majority of my subjects just like 2 or 3 out of 10....?

Reply 5

kkboyk

Depends on the person. Most are either lying or overexaggerating. During GCSEs and a few A-level exams I hardly did any revision. I've left it until a few days prior to the exams, and did a few hours of recap and ended up getting an A for some of my exams. It was mostly because I had a good understanding of the subject already, so I could afford to slack off.

At uni it's a different story though 😂

Reply 6

TommyDH

No, they're just trying to act cool.

Reply 7

RichPiana

I never revised.

Spoiler

Reply 8

Anonymous #2

In GCSE I was 100% honest about not revising. I was lucky that I was able to retain the information throughout the year. Got 8 A*s, 3As.

Royally screwed me for A Level since I wasn't in the habit of doing work at home at all.

Reply 9

tazarooni89

Original post by Anonymous

I personally found that up until GCSE level, it was quite possible for me to get top grades with little to no revision in certain subjects. These were namely Maths, French, Spanish and to an extent, Latin.

I found that these subjects are very “cumulative”. Each time you learn something, you have to continue using it in whatever you’re learning next. For example, you can’t be solving quadratic and simultaneous equations if you’ve forgotten how to do basic algebra. Or you can’t be forming complex sentences in a language if you’ve forgotten all your basic vocabulary. Learning new stuff is constantly forcing you to practise the old stuff, making it harder to forget. So by the time the GCSE exams come round, there isn’t much specific “revision” to do; you’ve kind of automatically been “revising” it all this time anyway.

On the other hand, I found that the sciences and geography required a lot more memorising of facts by rote. I had to do a lot of revision for them, because I wouldn’t be able to just remember random facts about rivers and rocks that I learnt two years ago and never used or looked at since.

Reply 10

FloralHybrid

Not necessarily. It might just be that class work is enough. You can attend most of the lessons, do the set work, and depending on the teaching style that can effectively be revision. So yeah some people don’t really revise and do well.

Reply 11

Profesh

Personally, yes; although I could also memorise and regurgitate entire exercise-books verbatim when the need arose.

Of course, this quickly loses its lustre once you're being assessed by people one or two SD smarter than you are—as I discovered upon coasting my way into a top provincial law school and dropping out inside of one year, because my essay technique, self-discipline and time-management were uniformly ****ing abysmal.

I've landed on my feet even so: but while cognitive aptitude certainly expands one's palette of viable occupations, industriousness is exponentially more valuable.

Reply 12

Kater Murr

Yes. I didn't need to work for grades.

But, in some ways it's a curse. (Bear with me...) I've got no work ethic and my general knowledge is poor - 'cause all those study bunnies spent more time working than me, building up good habits and self-discipline. I'd be terrible on University Challenge.

So, don't be sad.; be a nerd!

Reply 13

Kindred

This is actually something I used to feel a little guilty about, but for at least a good chunk of my life I was able to do well without revising or even doing much in the way of homework.
I have not always done well in school. I struggled quite a bit in junior school actually. In secondary school though I was able to do well in most subjects with very little effort outside of class. The exception was with languages which I expect is mostly down to never learning any vocab.
I paid attention and put effort in with my lessons, but outside of school I found it hard to do homework or revise (a combination of various factors plus probably a little bit of being lazy). Despite that I managed to get Cs to As in everything (again except languages).

I have no idea how I did it. In maths for some questions I even just knew the answer without doing any working out or by doing some random other method. For some reason secondary school just came kinda naturally to me.

It's not something I would suggest even for people who can do it cos obviously I could have done better if I had put more effort in so it's not really something to be proud of and I always felt pretty bad when other people were clearly putting in loads of effort and I was just magically bsing my way through.

It also did not last. I found things much harder at college and uni and if anything my being able to magic my way through meant I never learned the skills I needed to properly help myself later. I did still have other factors contributing too like poor health and family issues, but I even with that I could have made better use of my time I'm sure.

So yeah some people are just able to do well with little effort. It's unfair and sucks, but it's just how things are. I think it may have something to do with how people process information and remember stuff (like I'm decent a patterns and working things out, but utterly terrible with specific information like dates or equations).
Some people do also like to sound like they don't put much effort in when they actually do so there are two sides to it.

Reply 14

Trust Orang

But did you get the London look at least?

Reply 15

Moments

GCSE was a breeze, no revision pissed around playing football all day = 8 A/A*

A- level ..... yeah ..... didn’t quite go that way. Saved my future by the skin of my teeth and even then needed to know someone to get into work.