HSC Students
Studying for your HSC
It bothers me that a lot of the "study skills" I was told I "should" be doing for my HSC didn't actually work for me.
Let me ask you - do study timetables work for you? Well, they didn't work for me, at all! I could hardly ever get started when my study timetable said I should, and if I actually made it through the 1
hour study time I had allocated to a subject (after it took me a while to get into what I was studying), I was often on a roll, so then I had the dilemma, should I stop and stick to my study timetable,
or should I keep going since this seemed to be productive but then I'd run behind on my schedule, and have that guilty feeling of being 'behind' in my study.
So I ditched study timetables, and worked out my own method of covering all the material I needed to study for my exams. Because who else realises that not all subjects take the same amount of time to
study? You'll know which subjects you find quicker to study, and which subjects take a while! So why should all subjects get slotted into 1 hour slots (or whatever you've put on your study timetable)??
On the other hand, who finds that cramming works? Of course it does! So why isn't anyone teaching us about the best way to cram, and explaining why cramming works? (Yes, there is a best way to cram!)
I was also told that I should get up at 5am because so-and-so's son did, and did really well. But I struggled to get up in the mornings and would just make it to school on time, and I studied better at
night.
And there were so many other things:
- Should I be doing lots of practice exam papers, and where was I meant to find the time to do these??
- Why did so many teachers recommend summarising the textbook to make notes? I hated doing this, it took a long time, and I could write on autopilot without engaging my brain, so I wasn't learning
efficiently. There had to be a better alternative!
- Sometimes I'd read through pages in my textbook and then when I thought about it, I'd have no idea what I just read - how could I fix that?
- Should I be doing a certain number of hours of study a week to do well?
- How could I get motivated to get started with my study???
So I worked out my own answers to these questions (and many more!), and realised I developed study techniques that actually worked!
Then, after I had finished school, a friend who knew I had achieved a UAI (as the ATAR was called then) of 99.90, asked if I would help his sister, who was doing okay at school but not great. I said I
wasn't sure if I could be of much help, as it had been a few years since I had done my HSC and I didn't remember a lot of the details from my subjects.
But I sat down with her, and we just went through some study skills and techniques. We didn't cover any content from any of her subjects. A few weeks later, my friend told me that she had gone from
somewhere in the middle of her class to near the top of many of her classes! Then I was surprised, not at her talent, but at how much I had taken study technique for granted, and how much it really
affected exam results! So because of her, I did a 'brain-dump' and wrote down everything I did when I studied, and this is now my book. I hope it helps you as much as it helped my friend's sister. These
are real, honest study techniques that actually work and make efficient use of your study time.
Yes, I want to order Top Study Secrets now