Here we are at the end of the first semester of the 2022-23 year, whether you are a college student or high school student, everyone is scrambling to get ready for final exams and then shift their focus to a joyous holiday season. This has been an enjoyable several months for me, tutoring students from California to Pennsylvania, from college all the way down to freshmen in high school. It is a blessing to me to have the opportunity to help students find success and hopefully some level of enjoyment as they study math.
I thought I would write this blog post after a relatively long period of time not publishing any because I wanted to remind students that though their final exams and grades are obviously very important, everything needs to be put in perspective. With that, I thought I'd offer some simple suggestions on preparing for final exams.
Perhaps the biggest key to preparing for a final exam is to plan in advance. Hopefully, your teachers or professors have provided you with study materials such as final review packets that accurately portray the information that will be on your final exam. If not, a student needs to look back at tests, assignments, or other material from throughout the semester to review on their own. If they have received study materials for the final, planning to complete the material before the exam date involves sitting down with the calendar and conservatively estimating how long it will take to get everything done.
It's really important that you do not save it until the last minute and then cram in the last day or two, or even the night before your final exam. Instead, do a little bit day by day. Get out a calendar, and for example if you estimate that it will take you 8 hours to get all the work done, and you have four days to do it, then set aside at least two hours each day and work efficiently to get it done. Preferably, even try to get it done a day or two early so that any material that you feel like you do not completely understand, you have the opportunity to ask about.
With preparation ahead like this, you're far more likely to be able to walk into the final exam with a feeling of confidence. So often when students describe test anxiety, part of the problem is that in their mind at least, they have not done adequate preparation. Of course that is not always true. There truly are people who suffer from anxiety that is not caused by lack of preparation. But it is undoubtedly true that anything and everything that you can do ahead of time will lower that level of worry that you might have.
Furthermore, it is a lesson of life that we need to learn that when we do our best, and we feel like we've prepared adequately, then our performance is going to be the best that it can possibly be. If that's true, then regardless of the outcome, we can hold our heads high and say that we did our best. With that, and again without factoring in the grade that we got on the final or the grade that we got in the class, we can step away to our holidays and enjoy them without worry because we did in fact do our best
Finally, for almost everyone they encounter things in life where they just need a little bit of help. That doesn't mean that they cannot be successful in that area. Sometimes it's just a matter of receiving a little bit of assistance, which then sets them on a path to success in that area. If math is that area for you, feel free to contact me using the link below and let's see if tutoring services might be a benefit to you. The online tutoring services that I provide are less expensive than in person, and for the students that I've worked with, they have found the online format to be very user-friendly and beneficial in that they don’t need to travel for a tutoring session or even have a tutor come to their home. Sessions are typically 1 hour, and can be done on a weekly basis or as needed. I try to keep things flexible, and completely oriented to the needs of the student.
https://www.facebook.com/AMannTutor/
