10 Memory Hacks for Study Weeks

By Ainslie McCormick

By the time you get to University you will have faced many an exam and battled on through the pain. As tough as they might be sometimes, it’s time for us to accept that they are an inevitable part of student life and deal with it.

With that said, your thoughtful and supportive friends in the social media team at The Griffith Collective have compiled a trusty list to make studying for your exams as close to pain free an exercise as possible, because we are all feeling the same pressure right now.

So, whilst we can’t tie up lecturers and force the answers out of them, or sit your exams for you, we do have some timely memory hacks here to help with retaining all that info you’ve packed in to your head before your study and exam weeks begin.

Take note…

Exams are NOT our Enemies – thanks to these 10 Memory Hacks for Study Weeks:

1. Speak out loud instead of reading in your head (probably best to not do in the library)
2. While ugly, Times New Roman is the easiest font to read and becomes easier to retain content
3. Create Palm Cards to test yourself or with a partner, one per subheading with the most important points listed to quiz on
4. Take notes with different coloured pens (this is can get super fun and addictive believe it or not)
5. Reward yourself with a treat; this could be a gummy bear on each paragraph of the text, or an m&m each time you get a palm card answer correct. (caution: sugar high)
6. Take better notes by pretending you are doing them for someone else
7. Print and stick up key notes on your mirror in the weeks before the exam to embed in memory
8. If you listen to beats while studying; make them instrumental (vocals can impair information retention)
9. Feng Shui! Change up your study space for more improved information retention
10. And lastly; an oldy but a goody – Don’t stay up all night before an exam! One night of missed sleep can impair reasoning for up to four days… 🙁