When only 15 days left and all that syllabus untouched, which you thought was too easy or too cumbersome to start with before, it is all the more scary, threatening to kill your semester almost at gunpoint. Here are some handy tips on how to save that semester in 15 days and take the edge off some of that preparation stress:
- You can’t read all the texts now, reason out
In the last 15 days, if you haven’t still read that novel or that one play, you probably will not. Let’s face it. The next best possible thing you can do is to read up on the Virtual learning PDFs that the DU site provides, (most of them are pretty useful). Combine them with some good essays and online summaries and analysis and you are mostly off the edge.
- Not more than 2 hours per text
So, if you’re gonna spend 6 hours on that favorite text, you won’t want to read that “mostly, I just find it boring” one anymore, but you gotta. So, the strategy is to decide a schedule of 2 hours per text regardless of its interest quotient, that way you get to spend a little time with every author and you don’t get tired much of that one text you kept doing the whole day.
- Better write that down
Mostly we tend to read literature and read up a lot of information because writing all that down will take a lot of time, there’s honestly so much about each play, novel, and poem. But, you ain’t gonna remember all of that, I bet, if you just read it, the best way to go is to write down – just the important themes, names of the critics and the dates of the texts and any essays you wanna cite to sound impressive in that paper.
- Give yourself a break
It has hardly helped anyone to lock up and redundantly try to mug up the texts before the exams. You stand a better chance at remembering all that information about Foucault’s famous words and Illiad references and of course all the critics and philosophers, with frequent and well-spaced breaks. Listen to new and old bands, get into that jazz, keep that drama going… Whatever works for you, but relax a bit.
- First hand preparation
Get your hands on the previous years’ question papers and have a good first hand knowledge of the kind of questions asked. Most importantly the ones that have been repeated often. Solving these papers is a good exercise for time management, testing your waters, and boosting confidence. Try them out.
- Sleep on it for a while
It might only seem sensible to forego the sleep and finish the syllabus. However, you wouldn’t want to be falling asleep or feeling terribly lethargic at a point in time, you might actually need all that sleepless concentration. So, try sleeping for at least 4-5 hours, to keep the preparation going without falling sick, and believe it, you do not want to fall sick before exams if you haven’t knocked the syllabus off the shelf yet.
