21 creative ways to survive during exam season

1. Actually revise. Duh.
2. Read examiner’s reports.
3. After becoming frustrated with examiners blaming everything on students rather than the difficult paper they set, eat.
4. Eat some more.
5. Eat even more, that you’re full enough so you won’t have to leave your room for the rest of study leave.
6. Somehow break your internet. It’s officially the worst distraction.
7. Make a song about what you’re revising. Any genre. Other than k-pop. K-pop sucks.
8. Try not to regret not paying attention in lessons.
9. Accept the fact you probably aren’t going to have any friends for a few weeks.
10. Make sure you actually own enough stationary to get you through the exams.
11. Eat.
12. Sleep.
13. Breathe.
14. Remember to stay clean, you can afford 20 minutes not revising in order to have a shower.
15. Revise at some point without music, you won’t have Britney Spears to listen to in the exam.
16. Use The Student Room as your way to vent. Not Twitter. Please not Twitter.
17. Recite: ‘Procrastination is bad’ whenever you start to procrastinate.
18. Place post-it notes the places you go most, i.e the fridge.
19. Occasionally throw darts at a picture of Michael Gove.
20. Turn up to your exams.
21. Read this blog to make yourself feel a little bit better.

 

Standardised Testing – The Oh-So Wrong Fast-Track To Success

One thing I have never agreed with throughout my short 17 years of life is standardised testing.

It is common knowledge that human’s brains work in a variety of different ways; different types of students are different types of learners. For example, we have the Auditory Learners – the people who learn quicker or do their best when hearing information rather than reading it. As well as Visual Learners and Kinaesthetic Learners, all of which are fairly self-explanatory.

Now, the Government are all for catering towards all 3 types when it comes to teaching in schools, giving schools grants to spend on tools such as Interactive Whiteboards, which is all well and good, but when it comes down to examination time, where does all this effort go?

Suddenly students have all of this fancy learning equipment taken from them and are simply placed in front of a rather intimidating exam paper, hearing the ever-unenthusiastic voice of an invigilator say, ‘You may now begin’.

It’s as if the Government have forgotten about everything they have previously preached about different types of learners.

It’s a sink or swim situation when it comes to written exam papers, and I argue that the majority are mainly a test of memory. Soon enough results day comes around, and surprise surprise, many are disappointed, others are happy, some will go to good universities, the rest have to settle for something less than they expected, and in the end ‘research’ has apparently and unfortuantly shown that the candidates that attend good universities are more likely to reach a more successful career.

All because they were good at remembering stuff.

As Albert Einstein once said: ‘Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.’