Speaker 1: Hi everyone, my name is Andy, so AUCT medical student. If you're a returning subscriber, thank you, thank you so much for watching one of my videos once again. And if you're here for the second time or the third time, but you still haven't subscribed, please do the right thing and subscribe. And if you're new here, welcome. I hope you do stay and become a part of my journey as I become Dr. Andy. So on this channel, I share my life and experiences as a medical student through hospital vlogs, day in my life vlogs, study vlogs, and I also do study tips. So if you're interested in that kind of content, please be sure to click the subscribe button and turn all notifications on. We are finally in that season when we are approaching our final exams. It is time where our anxiety levels are all skyrocket high. We are so, so burned out at this point, literally the most exhausting time to be as a student. And I know that my TRIX students just finished their trial exams. I'm sure you guys are so exhausted at this point and that you have to prepare for your final exams as well. It is so, so crazy. So on today's video, I'm going to be sharing with you how to start preparing for your final exams, whether you're in high school, in any grade, or you're in the university, these study tips will help you start prepare for your final exams today. So I've been posting videos on study tips about how I got seven distinctions in my TRIX, how long did I study to get those seven distinctions, giving tips on the study routines and all of those stuff. So if you are new to the channel and you haven't watched any of those videos and you're in my TRIX, you're currently trying to prepare for your final exams, please watch those videos as well. They will really, really help you. And also if you are like in grade 10, grade 11, you are approaching my TRIX, I think those tips are better if you start using them before grade 12. And if you start adapting to those study routines before grade 12, so that when you get to grade 12, everything is a lot more easier. So on this video, I am going to be sharing with you how to start preparing for your final exams step by step from the planning process to how you study, how you take notes, how you do past papers, how to study the practical subjects like maths and physics, and how to study the notes, heavy subjects like life sciences and geography. So let's get into it. Before you even start doing anything, you have to start by fixing your mindset. I know maybe you've been having a difficult academic year, you didn't do well with your past exams, and you are so anxious, even if you are doing well, you're currently anxious because final exams are such a big deal, especially if you are in my TRIX. But before you start with your preparations, you need to fix that. So what I'm trying to say is start by believing in yourself. Even though you might have failed previously, but for you to carry that mindset that you are a failure to your final exams is not going to do any good. Stop focusing on bad energy, stop focusing on people who are sharing you bad experiences about their final exams. Stop listening to that, literally shut out the negative world. You need all the positivity you can ever get at this point. Be proud of yourself that you've made it this far and believe that you have what it takes to make it up until the very end. Another thing, prepare yourself to work hard. If you want to get something you've never gotten before, you have to be willing to do something you've never done. You cannot continue with your old habits that made you get bad marks. You have to adapt to new habits, be willing to go an extra mile and sacrifice a lot of stuff in this period in order for you to get the marks that you want. And the first thing in your preparation of your exams is definitely planning. Failing to plan is planning to fail. So you cannot go in there, prepare for exams blindly without knowing how much work you need to put in, how many stuff you've already covered, and how much work you still need to know. You have to plan ahead in order for everything to run smoothly. So this is what I do when I plan for my final exams. The first thing you have to do is count how many days are left for you to write your first final exam. So you'll start counting from today to the day before your exams. So for example, let's say you have 20 days left for your final exams. The second thing you need to do is count how many topics you need to cover before your exams. So what you want to do, you want to take each subject and divide it into all the subtopics the subject has. For example, if one subject is 15 topics, you are going to write all the 15 topics down and you're going to do that for all of your subjects and have a list of all the topics that are in each subject. In this example, I'm going to say 60 topics or 60 lectures. And then what you need to do is take the 60 and divide by 20 days and it will give you three, which means each day you have to be studying a minimum of three lectures or a minimum of three topics. If you want to know when to study what on which days to study which subject, please refer to my old video on how to make a revision timetable for your exams. There I explain very well what subjects to start studying, what subjects to study towards your exams, and how long you should study each subject, how frequently you should study each subject. If you haven't watched that video, I will link it on the screen. The next thing you have to do is preparation. So you need to prepare yourself before you actually do the preparation for your exam. So what you need to do is number one, reflect, do your reflection, reflect on how you have been doing this year. Think about the marks that you have been getting. This helps you to know where you actually stand currently, and it helps you get an idea of how much work you actually still need to do. And number two, while you are still reflecting, you actually need to go back to your past exams. That is where you start before you go to any previous past paper, go to the past papers that you've written, ask yourself that if they can give you the paper that you've written in March this year, are you going to get 100%? And if your answer is no, it means you've been doing something wrong the whole year. Because if you are getting your script and your mark is 60%, you need to be worried or you need to rather be curious what happened to the 40%. And you need to do corrections to determine what went wrong. Was it lack of preparation, lack of time management, lack of understanding, or silly mistakes? You need to know that because if you do not ask yourself or if you do not make corrections, that thing is going to repeat itself in June in your trial and again in your finals. So the third part of your preparation is actually organizing your resources. So now when you're actually organizing your resources, you're going to take all the notes that you've been making the whole year, and you're going to take all the YouTube videos that have been helpful. If not the specific videos, at least you know the site or the YouTube channel where you can find them. And the third thing, you're going to download all your past papers or at least know the site to source your past papers. So you want everything to be in one place before you start preparing for your final exams. Let's talk about the actual studying. So firstly, we want to talk about content heavy subjects. These are your life sciences, your geography. And if you are doing medicine, it is most likely all of your courses. I'm going to share with you a note taking method that will help you even if you didn't make notes for the whole year. So first of all, revision notes are different from the daily study notes. When you are preparing for exams, you want to make sure that you limit note taking as possible and you focus on studying. I know a lot of people confuse the two that taking notes is actually studying, but you do realize that when you're taking notes and you're writing everything down, you get lost in those notes that you do not even remember half of the stuff that you've written down. So there is active studying where you actively recall your work and there is just note taking. So right now I'm going to share with you how to actually take down notes that are exam friendly. So you are going to take your notes like you are setting a paper or rather you are writing a memo. You are going to make it a Q&A. So this method of note taking actually helps you to engage with your notes while you're taking them. And it keeps your notes so, so organized because everything is just a question and an answer. And while you're in that exam room and you're just trying to remember what you've written on your notes, it helps you so much when your notes are organized in this manner because you can actually see it in your mind that, okay, I had this question on my notes and this was the actual answer instead of literally having all diagrams, all highlighters and everything all over the place and you can't actually locate where is what in your mind when you're in that exam room. So please make things easier for yourself and write your notes as Q&A. Another thing when you are actually studying, study like you are going to teach someone and that way it is so hard to forget because you put so much concentration into it. Let's talk about studying practical subjects. These are your accounting, your mathematics, your physical sciences, the subjects that needs calculations and a lot of practice. The first thing I have to say is stay away from your textbook. Studying notes for a practical subject instead of spending time practicing is not helpful at all. Practical subjects are not the subjects for you to sit down and read over and trying to memorize a calculation. You actually need to actively practice. So studying for these subjects is definitely going to be so different from studying for those content heavy subjects. So here what you need to do is number one, work on exemplar questions. If you're going to be using a textbook, use your textbook to source exemplar questions. If you are struggling so hard with a topic, especially in meds or physical sciences, and it is hard for you to answer a question from a past final exam paper, go to your exemplar questions in your textbook because those questions are so much simpler in your textbook as well. You'll find that they are working out each example step by step. So what you need to do is check on how they're actually doing it and pick a different calculation from that one, but similar difficulty and try to answer it without checking the memo and see whether you understood that concept really well. Instead of sitting down and actually reading or browsing through your study guide or your textbook. What I used and what I actually prefer is watching YouTube videos. I cannot emphasize how important or how helpful YouTube videos are. I used to watch Mindset Learn Extra while I was in grade 12, where they actually do past papers and they work out every question step by step. So what I would do when I watch those videos is, I would pause when there's a question, solve it myself, and then continue watching the video and let them solve it step by step. Compare what I've done with what they are doing and see what the difference is, if I got it wrong. And this is one method that really, really helped me to do as many past papers as I can. For example, for the Mindset Learn Extra channel that I'm talking about, they took their questions from different past papers from different provinces and they will solve them. So while I was actually doing that, I was actually doing past papers. So if you're a person who struggles to sit down with a past paper and actually solve the questions on the past paper, this method will really, really work for you. Find a video where someone is doing past papers and solving the questions and literally sit down, solve the questions with them, understand how they actually do it. And in that way, you are actually doing past papers. So now that you know how to prepare for your exams for your content-heavy subjects and the practical subjects, we are going to move on to how and when to do past papers. A lot of people believe that you have to do past papers when you've already mastered all of your content. That is not correct. You can start doing your past papers as soon as today. As much as you do not know anything, you realize how much knowledge you gain by just doing past papers. I'm going to show you when do you actually get time to do the past papers. So the first thing you will do is pick four past papers. Three papers you are going to be doing topic by topic right now that you are preparing for your exam and one you are going to be doing two days before you write the actual exam. Let's say today is day one and one of your three topics that you are studying today is algebra. So after you have practiced algebra's exemplar questions, you are going to take questions on algebra from your three past papers. And that is what you're going to do after studying each and every topic. Give yourself maybe 15 to 20 minutes to actually solve that question without seeing a memo and then now mark yourself by using the memo. If it happens that you got less than 80% for that topic, check your mistakes and check what went wrong and redo the question again without the memo and mark yourself up until you are satisfied. Because the mistake that most people do is they write, they answer the past paper and then they get a very low mark. They check the memo and they try to memorize or browse through the memo and think that now they know what to do. So now a few days before your exams, you have three past papers that you have done for each subject in full. But if you are a person who feels so confident about their work at this point, you can literally sit down each and every day doing past papers. But if you're a person who's not confident about their work at this point and you really want to know how you can do it, you can definitely use this method that I am telling you right now. So now let's talk about what you actually have to do a few days or a day before your exam. Take the fourth past paper that you haven't opened and have never done before and answer it like you are writing the actual exam. So if your exam is three hours long, take that paper and answer it in three hours. It doesn't matter if the stuff that you know or you don't know, write it like it's your actual exam. And this has to be a paper that you have completely never seen before and you've never seen the memo. And then after answering that question, mark yourself. This paper will more or less determine how much you have been preparing and how ready you are for your exam. And it also trains you in terms of time management. If you're a person who usually doesn't finish their exams, at least now you will know what pace you should be writing your exam. So before I wrap up this video, I want to talk about a very, very important thing about this process and that is time management. You won't be able to do everything and cover all the work that you need to cover if you cannot manage your time. So stop procrastinating. If your timetable that you've set to yourself is saying that you should be studying this topic today, or you should be covering this amount of work today, please make sure that you do that because you do not want your work to completely pile up, up until you are burnt out. And you do not want to go into your final exam without covering a certain topic thoroughly. So please don't play yourself from day one. Make sure that you are consistent and you stay on top of your game. I hope now that we've come to the end of the video, you know where to start when it comes to preparing for your final exams and you know exactly what to do. So if you found this video useful, please give it a thumbs up and please do not forget to subscribe to my channel. I'll see you again on another video. Bye.