Coping with the pressure!
It’s a difficult and stressful time of the year. Whether you’re in Year 12 or 13, you have your most important exams to date. These determine whether you can apply to your course and/or university of choice (if you’re in Year 12), or if you secure your offer (if you’re in Year 13).
Read our 3 most important tips with coping with the pressures of A-Levels whilst making these years some of the bets years of your secondary school life!
1. PLAN in advance
Something that has helped me the most is keeping a diary or a weekly timetable.
Per day, write down what topics you need to cover and by what time. Schedule in enough breaks and ‘treats’ so that you remain motivated.
Always have redundancy in your timetable. Sometimes certain topics take you longer than others, it’s important to anticipate this when planning. But if you haven’t, then have a few extra breaks allows for movement in your timetable.
2. Make time for your family and friends
Spending time with my family is what kept me sane during A-levels. Even if it was 30 minutes of a game of pool with my brother or a quick park run with my niece, these breaks remind you what’s important in life and help you power through the treats.
They also activate the ‘reward’ and ‘happy' centres in your brain, so when you return back to work you feel more energetic and motivated to start revising again.
3. Cut out unnecessary and time-wasting activities
This is purely my opinion and so may not apply to everybody, but during exam time there some things such as social media that are an absolute waste of time.
In moderation, they may allow you to keep in touch with the world and know what is happening and that may be a nice and short break from work.
But these days, people spend at least 2 hours collectively in a whole day checking their social media feeds, texts etc etc.
For every time you look at your phone whilst you working, studies have suggested you lose 4 minutes of what you have just revised and stored in your memory.
Try and keep notifications off if you used iPads for revising and keep the distractions as limited as possible!
If you require any further help then please do not hesitate at all to get in touch! We know exam season is well under away and our tutors will always get back to you within 24 hours! Email hello@step2med.co.uk for more information!
