How I Revise

After years of taking mostly note-based subjects in high school, I like to think that I've become pretty good at revising. I took higher modern studies, admin, business studies, english, RMPS, and advanced higher history. So basically, I've written a lot of notes and essays, and colour coded a lot of mind-maps in the past few years. With a few exams coming up, and my 2nd semester of second year at university starting, I thought it'd be a good idea to share how I personally revise when there's a lot of notes to learn.

Step #1 - Always Write Lists

When I start revising, I like to write a complete list of all the topics. I then break it down further and add in the areas of each topic I need to learn and the type of questions that can come up. This means that as I'm revising I can tick off each section I complete and I can also highlight the most important areas or the topics that are most likely to come up in the exam.

Step #2 - Mind Maps

After writing my lists, I then create a mind map for each topic and split it into different sub-topics. I think this is really useful for when you have to learn quotes or references for topics - everything is in the one place and you can see exactly what you need to learn. I usually fill my mind maps up with quick bullet points from the textbook I'm using to get a general idea of the topic and refresh my memory. I also colour-code the sub-topics so I can clearly see what belongs to each topic.

Step #3 - Practice Answers

After creating my mind maps, I like to find past papers and start writing practice answers for the exam. I usually type these up on my MacBook and later on I copy the answers into my assessment notebook (can you tell I'm super organised yet?) to help me learn them better.

Step #4 - Condense and Read

Finally, I then condense the answers into short bullet points for each answer. This helps jog my memory and I can then decide if I want to try and write out the full answer without looking at any notes. Once I've completed this, I then begin to read my notes over and over or get my mum to ask me questions on each topic.

So there you have it - that's how I revise. Hope you find this helpful, the exam period can be a stressful time! 

How do you revise?