Coming back to school is often exciting and seen as the time of new opportunities. However, when the initial excitement wears off, you’ll find yourself with the daily grind that is studying and preparing for exams.
There are no easy solutions when it comes to study habits and time management. It’s about building the habits up over a period of time. This means that if you want to achieve academic success, you’ll have to study in short bursts, all year round and divide your attention across subjects equally.
Create your own style
First thing you should know is that there are no universally useful habits. Everyone is different, and what works for one person doesn’t work for the other. The key here is to trust yourself and to spend at least some time experimenting with different approaches to studying.
You’ll soon realize what works and what doesn’t for you, and you can build on that
once you know which practices tend to stick. This does mean that at least something you try won’t work, but think of it as research instead of wasting time.
Having a study area
It’s important to have a portion of the home or of your room that’s designed to be a study area. There are a few reasons to do so. First, it gives you a chance to have all of your supplies and comforts ready at one place when you’re ready to start studying.
Secondly, if you train yourself to always study in the same place, simply sitting down in your area will focus your mind in the right way, and you’ll get into the mood that’s made for studying. It takes time to form such a habit, but it all starts with a simple thing as setting up your own desk and a few decorations.
Getting help
There’s nothing wrong with needing help outside of school and hiring tutors. There are also ways to find tutors online and you can rely on international educational organizations and find an education centre in Hong Kong that offers such tutoring services.
It’s important to always have in mind that having a tutor isn’t a replacement for studying on your own. In fact, using the services of one will be most beneficial and effective if you prepare for the study sessions with them on your own.
A plan
An overall study plan is something many students decide on to bother with. It seems to them like it’s too much of a big-picture effort, and they study on a day-to-day basis without an overall plan. It’s possible to study like that and achieve good results but it’s needlessly harder.
It’s best if such a plan is designed early on and if it’s done for each subject separately. Just having a broad plan ready means that you’ll be able to manage your time more efficiently and to divide your work into manageable units.
Taking care of yourself
In the end, it’s important to remember to take care of yourself alongside doing schoolwork. The two tasks are very much interconnected. Making sure you’re healthy and well rested will help with every facet of studying and preparing for exams.
It’s sometimes as simple as making sure that you have a healthy sleeping schedule, that you eat right and on time and that you have at least some sort of physical exercise plan. These three habits will get you a long way when it comes to putting you in the right headspace for studying.
Students need to work on building healthy educational and academic habits. It’s these small steps that will help them study more efficiently and with more success.
