Somewhere along the line, many students come to the conclusion that studying for exams means staying up all night, drinking coffee by the gallon and rereading their textbook and notes so many times that their eyeballs bleed. Indeed, most students decide what to study next based on whatever is due next (or overdue). Few students make a study schedule ahead of time and then stick to it.
The problem with cramming is that it gives you a misplaced sense of confidence that you know the material. In fact, although you will probably remember some of it for a while, you won’t remember it for long. That’s because you have not taken the time to repeatedly organize the information in your memory, connect it to what you already know, and pave the new mental roads that will help you retrieve information later, as on the exam. That’s one of the reasons many students “blank out” when they actually take the test.
There is an alternative to those painful all-nighters. Rather than cramming all your attempts to test yourself into one giant awful block of time, test yourself regularly throughout the semester, say once a week, and be sure to include material you already know in your regular testing sessions. The secrets to doing well on a test tomorrow aren’t different from the secrets to doing well all semester.
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