Page 272 - Use Your Memory

22 Remembering for
Examinations

You need no longer fear examinations:
• No more the year-long dread that increasingly looms like a
storm on the approaching horizon as the year progresses.
• No longer the frantic, rushed, sweaty, frightening final few
weeks' and days' build-up of tension before the event.
• No longer the stressful dash into the examination room in order
to save every available second.
• No longer the nervous first rush through the examination
paper, during which you read so fast that you have to read it again
to find out what is actually being asked.
• No longer will you need to spend as much as fifteen to thirty
minutes of a one-hour examination jotting down random notes,
scratching your head, frowning, frantically trying to recall all that
you know and yet at the moment for some reason seem not to
remember.
• No longer the frustration of not being able to dig out the essence
from the mire of your generally disorganised knowledge.
The common scenario suggested above applies not only to
those who know little about the subject but often to those who
have a great deal of knowledge. I remember at least three students
in my undergraduate years who knew more about certain subjects
than practically everyone else in the year and who consequently
used to give private tutoring and coaching to those who were
struggling. Extraordinarily, these bright students would regularly
fail to excel at examination time, invariably complaining that they
had not had enough time in the examination room to gather
together the mass of knowledge that they had and that for some
reason they 'forgot' at critical moments.
All these problems can be overcome by preparing for examin-
ations using the techniques for reading and studying outlined in
Use Your Head and Speed Reading, applying the Mind Map
memory techniques as outlined in chapter 23 and especially by
using the Major System in conjunction with the Link System.
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