Starting GYG!

Hiya! Here I am, not really knowing what I am doing or how to work this blog. I am keen to document my journey so far and following up to my National 5 exams in May!

Currently on Christmas break, and after a long and tedious process of having prelims. To be completely honest - it was really hard. Keeping up with studies was really something. It gave me a sense of what the real exams will look like, or maybe an idea of how not to handle the process.
Throughout the end of November and December, stress really had a grip on me. I pretty much gave up on having fun really for these prelims.

I said no to going out with my friends.
I said no to spending time with my parents.
I said no to playing my favourite sport.

And so many other things beyond that. And in reality, I was still a huge procrastinator. I spent time on my phone a lot trying to avoid the anxiety that was constantly looming over me.
One thing that definitely does not help is teachers constantly nagging us about the importance of the prelims. Implying that if we don’t do well, our chances in the real exam are slim.
I really hated that. I felt it was ridiculous to say that. It only put more pressure on me than it should. I was aware that they weren’t very serious about it, and were only telling us these things to make us work harder but it was really stressing me out.

Having prelims was the first time I have ever encountered an exam-like experience, and it would be a lie to say it was not scary walking into that hall and finding your seat. Being faced with questions I have not seen in past papers, felt like I did no revision at all. When, I did. I sacrificed so much of my time only to learn that my brain is actually useless.

Now, these were just thoughts that were running around my head while taking my paper. Especially mathematics. But it felt like my own brain was trying to sabotage me.

However I did learn some useful things for my real Nat 5s. And for whoever reading this, maybe you’ll make use of these things I learned too.

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Quizlet, is so underrated. It practices active recall so well. I’ll use this example - revision for my Geography prelim. Geography is a hard subject to grasp because of the wide range of topics it covers. Prior to the prelim I have done knowledge organisers, chalk talks, past papers and most importantly Quizlet. I woke up at 6am whipped my phone out and started doing my geography flash cards for 1 hour till 7. And I’ll be honest - I think it helped the most out of all the things I have done to revise before. This is because Geography consists of so many key terms. If you prefer a more game-like mode Gimkit is great.

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Different revision techniques work for different subjects. You might have a favourite technique you use every time you revise for a test. But as I’ve mentioned before I believe Quizlet works great for subjects with many key terms. Eg. Quizlet- Geography and Art. However in terms of other subjects like history, English, maths - past papers are your best bet. So remember to experiment with the techniques to see what works best.

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Trust me, cramming the night before - only works for tests. I’ve done that for a few subjects because I have completely ran out of time, but it’s really ineffective. This is because prelims and especially exams cover topics from a few months ago that you have not reviewed since. And it becomes very overwhelming to see topics you forgot about at 10pm.