My Top 5 Revision Tips

Exams. Everyone has to take them at some point in their lives. But what we're not prepared for, however, is the stress that comes with them. And what is stress brought on by? Revision, revision and more revision.

There's no way you can escape it. Exams are a part of life that apparently determine what you can and can't do when it comes to looking for work. I wish I could make an argument that this isn't the case but in pretty much every human being on the planets case, their grades mean what sixth form/college/university course/job they can do when they're older.

If you're in Year 11, like me, you will know that exams are less than a month away. This means more work, more revision, less sleep and more panic. It also means out teachers working us harder than ever to try and teach us everything we need to know and to get our target grades and possibly above. 

So, here are some of my top tips on how to revise. You might already do some of these but I just thought they might be helpful to you:

1. Take Frequent Study Breaks

Revising a lot in one go isn't efficient because your brain won't be able to take in all of that information. So my advice is to revise in small bursts of 20-30 minutes and then take a 5-10 minute break. What I do is revise for 30 minutes and then watch a YouTube video that's about 5-10 minutes long and then do another half an hour and the cycle repeats. I usually revise for a total of 3 hours.

2. Get Plenty Of Rest

If you think that the night before your exam you will benefit better by getting no sleep and revising all night instead then you can think again. If you go without sleep then your brain won't be able to function properly in the exam and you are less likely to remember everything you spent all night revising for. It's much better to get a full nights sleep to make sure you're absolutely ready for your exam. You can always quickly go over your notes in the morning. 

3. Set A Time

When revising, the best thing to do is to make sure you know how much time you should be revising for each day. You don't need to revise for the whole day because that will probably make you go insane. As I said earlier, I normally try to revise for 3 hours each day which kind of seems like a lot but I'm normally awake for 12 hours+ each day so 3 hours is nothing. Obviously if your exam is the next day you might want to revise a little more than that but on average, I'd say no more than 3-4 hours of revision a day.

4. Make A Revision Plan

Something that will help motivate you to revise will be a revision plan. You can plan ahead of what you're going to revise and when you're going to do it. I normally plan a month at a time to make sure that my revision plan is up to date and as I get closer to my exams, revise the subjects that I have first. For example, up until about May half term I'm only going to revise the exams I have before then (as well as one or two others that are in the first week after half term) to make sure I get enough done. 

5. Practice Papers

Your teachers may have already told you this but by doing practice papers you're able to get a feel of what the questions will be like in your exam. Obviously they won't be the exact same questions but they might be similar and practice papers can also help you practice your timing. Timing can be an issue (it is with me) in exams so the more practice you get, the better you'll be with it. Treat the practice paper like it's your real exam so don't spend any longer on it then it says on the paper.

So there are my five top tips to get through revision. At some point I am going to write a post about what to do on the day of your exam and during the exam so look out for that!

Apart from that I would like to say thank you for reading this post and I am so so sorry that it's so late. 

If you have any other queries about revision then please don't be afraid to ask. And if you have another revision tip that you'd like to share then please comment down below. I'm in the same boat as you and I want us all to come out with the grades we want.

Good luck with revision!

Love Beth xx

My Anxiety Attack

Today I want to talk to you about something that I hadn't necessarily presumed had gone away; but something that I didn't expect to happen. I know that many of you reading this will have experienced these before, as have I, so I want to tell you about what happened and how I dealt with it. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am talking about an anxiety attack (if you hadn't already guessed by the title).

Tuesday night I was lying in bed and thinking about the next day's events. I had revision sessions at school on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and I didn't really know what to expect from that. I was also really nervous about them because I didn't know who was going and I wasn't entirely sure what was going to happen or how the day was going to run. I must also stress that it is currently the Easter holidays for me so it wouldn't be like an after school revision session where I would be with my friends before hand and be able to walk in with them. I had to walk into school by myself and I guess it was the fear of the unknown that was scaring me the most.

As I was in bed, I was mostly relaxed. I was watching old episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S  but in the back of my mind I was worrying about what was going to happen the next day. I was also afraid of walking in late and everyone else would be in their classrooms and I wouldn't know where I was supposed to be or where to go. 

After I'd finished watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S I decided to play candy crush and that was when I started having my anxiety attack. At first I was just like 'oh I'm just feeling like this because I'm nervous, I'll be fine in a second' so ignored everything that was going on. But then it started getting worse and as it was my first anxiety attack in months I didn't really know what to do. It was then that I realised that the best thing to do would be to start taking some deep breaths to try and calm myself down. But it didn't help. Most anxiety attacks I've had have normally lasted 5-10 minutes but I still felt the same 15 minutes later.

I then remembered that I'd created a playlist on Spotify of songs that are about anxiety so I started to listen to them because when I listen to the lyrics, I feel like I can understand my anxiety better and it also calms me in a way knowing that these people have been through the same (or similar) things that I was experiencing then. You can listen to that Spotify playlist Here.

Another thing I did was to read my blog post on dealing with anxiety and tried out some of the tips I'd written and they really helped. If you don't remember that post or want some tips on what to do when you're having an anxiety attack (or how to cope with having anxiety in general) you can read it Here. Obviously I couldn't do all of the things on that list but I did do some of the things I mentioned earlier as well as visualising myself relaxing on the beach. I imagined being able to listen to the waves and that combined with the deep breathing and the music helped a lot. However, it took a little over half an hour for my anxiety attack to stop but it took about another hour for me to feel completely okay and able to go to sleep.

The reason why I'm telling you all of this is because I know, from experience, how scary an anxiety attack can be, especially if it's your first one. I remember my first anxiety attack was when I was at school and I was late for class and I had absolutely no idea what to do or who to go to. I did try staying outside my classroom for five minutes to try and calm myself down but, as I had no idea what to do, nothing I did worked so I ended up walking into class over 20 minutes late and in the middle of an anxiety attack. It was not a nice feeling.

So that is why I am writing this for you. I want you to be fully aware of what to do if you ever experience an anxiety attack because, at the time, I had no idea on what was happening to me. But I was too scared to tell a teacher, or anyone, so nothing was done about it. So I urge you if this ever happens to you when you're at school to tell a teacher or someone you trust. If you're not at school and you're with friends, family or at work then excuse yourself from the situation or make sure that someone that's with you knows your situation and will be able to help you and take you somewhere to calm down. This also applies if you're in a lesson and this happens. 

I hope this has helped you in some way to understand anxiety attacks and what to do in the situations that you're in at the time you have your attack. Please don't be afraid to ask me any questions which you can do by commenting down below or dming me on social media or emailing me. You'll find all of my social media links and contacts in the contacts tab at the top of the page.

Thank you for reading and remember that you're absolutely not on your own when it comes to your mental health.

Love Beth xx