We always hear a lot of advice about approaches and tricks on how to pass an exam and if we fail using them, we simply try again and again, but we are not aware that sometimes we are unconsciously admitting to fail. In this article I will try to make a pattern about the actions that may lead to not pass an exam.
Do not attend your lectures
Even though some of them may not be as efficient as we would like them to be and they can be early in the morning, or late during the afternoon, lectures are really important and skipping them can have a considerable impact in a few more hours needed to understand and learn something. Next time you want to stay in your sofa and watch some cat pictures in the internet instead of attending the lectures, try to reconsider whether you can learn the same stuff that is supposed to be learned that day on your own.
Do not start learning until the night before your exam
It’s just the first month and you may say that it is too early to start learning, because there is enough time left until your midterm, but you are wrong, because studying just a day before a midterm is not just a bad way to learn, but it can also be accompanied with a lot of stress and it would be normal if you cannot even pass it. If you start learning from the beginning, studying before an exam should be just a review and not learning for the first time and your lectures can be more interesting, and you have another reason to attend the lectures.
Do not try to learn but just keep reading
If you were in a situation that you may have been constantly rereading a lesson and then you thought that you knew everything in that lesson, but just after taking an exam you did notice that you didn’t learn it, then you should try a new approach. Instead of being concerned about the number of times that you read a lesson, try to use more efficient ways to learn and not just simply reading a lesson for 50 times. A very good method is The Feynman Technique, which can quickly spot the unknown things in a lesson and then you can quickly learn them.
Try not to have your system of learning
I don’t know about you, but I cannot catch two rabbits that are running simultaneously, because they are fast and can escape quickly from my hands. And if you think you can, then you can use the same approach towards learning. I would suggest you to always make a plan before learning about the things that you intend to learn during that learning session and try to be very specific like, I am going to read the first chapter, or I am going to answer the Review questions, etc., because by being specific you can later on figure out whether you accomplished that or not, and not being vague by just saying that you are going to learn for half an hour.
Think about excuses for your failure before taking your exam
Pessimistic and lazy people always try to think about excuses and sell themselves short even before giving an attempt. Instead, if you are really wanting to pass an exam, don’t except yourself to fail but aim high and do not belittle yourself. Try to do your best and stay positive.
So the next time your are simply not achieving to do a thing that you have put in your to-do list of things that you should do to pass an exam, try to figure out whether you are contributing more towards your failure than your success.
This article was inspired by the article How to Solve Difficult Problems by Using the Inversion Technique written by James Clear. It is a great article and I highly recommend you to go and read it.
