Examinations and tests are like the ladder or steps that grant us access to the next phrase if we can successfully identify the strategy that best suits our reading style on our path to excelling in such an examination. Just like everyone else, I've gone through various examinations in different phases of my life and tried to follow other people's strategies that made me fail woefully until I discovered mine.
As students, we are fond of creating a reading group, organizing tutorials, staying up all night, and even reading to understand each topic we've been taught immediately after the lectures for better understanding, and all of these are indeed good ideas that will grant one the possibility of being well prepared for the forthcoming examination and the likelihood of excelling in it.
But as good as they are or sound to the ears, not all of these strategies can work perfectly for everyone because each individual has a unique style of accumulating knowledge that might be totally different from their peers', and discovering this style of theirs that will best suit them is the beginning of the journey towards triumping in their examinations.
During my undergraduate days in the university, we had various strategies for reading; in fact, it made it quite easy to join anyone in one, as they were all aimed at assimilating knowledge, and I can remember how I joined almost all the reading groups in my department then, just so I could get other people's opinions and understanding of the subject matter.
But then along the line I realized most of these reading groups ain't really helping me, probably because they're held in the open and most times we get distractions from what is happening outside the classroom where the tutorial is held or some students just walk into the class to cause mayhem, so due to not having anything to show for the time spent there I decided to quit and focus on other strategies.
Another style of reading I tried that ended in failure was trying to follow my friends' and roommate's methods of reading to prepare for examination. For them to do that, they usually sleep at night and wake up at midnight to read till as long as they can go. I remember waking up mid-sleep one day and seeing my friends and roommate reading. That made me feel as though I wasn't serious enough with my academics, so I decided to join them the next day in reading through the night.
I asked them to always wake me up at midnight whenever they wanted to begin reading, and that was how I joined them, but the worst soon showed forth on that very night, as I was unable to assimilate anything into my head and I was having serious headaches due to the fact that my sleep was disturbed. Yet I continued reading for hours, and in the end, I can hardly remember more than two definitions from the books I read.
I took has probably because that's the first time I'm trying such, so I still did the same for two more days, but when I realized the outcome was far from what I desired after reading in preparation for examinations, I stopped joining them to read at midnight and focused on the style that seemed to suit me perfectly and that always yielded positive results.
My best style of reading is to simply stay awake immediately after eating dinner while everyone goes to sleep. Reading in that way is good for me because by then I'm still in the right frame of mind, there won't be a headache due to being woken up mid-sleep, and there won't be any noise or distraction from anyone else other than the cricket and the sounds of those sleeping beside me. Like this, I can read into the midnight before sleeping; in fact, it even makes things much easier for me and my roommate because by the time I'm going to sleep, I'll be waking him up to come read in his own perfect time.
Aside from that, another reading that suits me well in preparing for examinations is simply to sit down with a few of my coursemates and friends in one of our hostels to discuss the various lessons we've been taught, that way each and everyone of us shares our understanding of the topics and our plans for answering questions if any of such come up. It was a very helpful idea, and I'm grateful for these mediums as a channel that groom and improve my assimilation ahead of examinations.
Thanks so much for reading through; I hope you had a wonderful read and probably learned a thing or two from my reading strategies in preparing for the examination. The article was inspired by a Kronias article that explains the HIVE learners community prompt; you can read through it to get the full details.
𝔗𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔨𝔰 𝔰𝔬 𝔪𝔲𝔠𝔥 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔥𝔯𝔬𝔲𝔤𝔥, 𝔥𝔞𝔳𝔢 𝔞 𝔟𝔩𝔢𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔡 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔭𝔯𝔬𝔡𝔲𝔠𝔱𝔦𝔳𝔢 𝔡𝔞𝔶 𝔞𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔡.