First published on 27/6/18 on Meraki
Hello!!
I really needed a break from studying so this piece was produced. I’m in the midst of my MYEs, and my last paper is tomorrow (YAY!!). Anyways, I decided to take a look back at the past 4 months of JC life, and come up with 10 tips for all those coming after me. I will most probably have more parts to these tips but these are what I can think of for now. I’ll come up with new content soon!
This was made after reading through many many forums and blogs, and all rights to the content still go to the original writer, whoever you may be. I just thought that it would be good to consolidate the points I have seen. It helps me stay motivated too haha.
If you have any tips, feel free to let me know in the Contact Page, and I’ll be sure to include that in my next tips post, with due credit of course!
Meanwhile, I hope this helps:))
- Consistent studying means more than keeping up with tutorials. It means writing notes during the term if you need to write notes to study.
- Do your past year papers! Tutorial questions are not set in the same style as your exam questions so unless you’re okay with looking at foreign looking questions, do those papers!
- Keep a positive mindset. I’m not going to sugar coat this at all. JC is hard. The intensity and the mad speed at which everything is happening IS draining. Search for inspiring quotes to help you along the way, and just remember this every time you feel like giving up: This is my CHOICE and I’m NOT giving up!
- Make good use of your breaks. Yes, JC hours are long, but most of the time, you are going to have ridiculously long breaks in between lessons, so make full use of those to complete your tutorials or any revision you need to do. The more you do in school, the less you have to do at home and the more time you have to lepak!
- No sloppy work! If you’re gonna spend time and effort doing tutorials, just make sure it is quality work, if not, you might as well not do it at all. Most of the time, your teachers are not going to collect your work to mark (most of the time they just walk around during class time to check that you have done something at least), but it is really to your advantage to do your tutorials before class. Note down key points that your teacher mentions while going through the questions and still, review the whole worksheet once he/she is done with the chapter.
- Stay focused during lectures. It may have been a long day and you’re utterly zonked but PRESS ON!! It is way harder to try to learn new material on your own and since you’re not going to pon the lecture and sit there for that hour, absorb as much as you can manage to. Granted that you may not understand fully what is going on (it’s near impossible to understand everything even when you are feeling fresh), but it is so much easier to understand the notes when you understand 30% of it, compared when you understand 0%.
- Study and Revise! I will have a separate post on this soon!
- Have faith! So many before you have done this successfully and so many after you will. Let loose during your holidays and go back to face a new term refreshed! Or as refreshed as you can. As a J1, you don’t really have much of a break in a sense, March holidays are usually mostly taken up by CCA Camps, June hols are essentially a study break for MYEs, I’m guessing September hols will be Promos prep already, but come year-end hols and then you can take a breather. That might also be a good time to relook at the year’s material and figure out what you’re good at and what you’re not-so-good at.
- Keep a planner. There are way too many things and way too much content to deal with on a daily basis in JC, so do your brain a favour and write everything down, from the date of a Lecture Test to another one of many PW submission dates and most importantly, exam dates. Note down all the work you have to do, and keep in mind the deadline
- Make yourself a checklist at the end of the semester. This is something I like to do. Just list down everything you are supposed to have completed by the end of the semester and tick those you have completed. This way, you will enter the new semester knowing what you are lacking behind in, so during any extra breaks you can find, you can always look back and complete those items. They also serve as an extra revision so that you don’t forget Sem 1’s work in the midst of Sem 2. The only reason why I don’t list them down in my planner is that I don’t know when I’ll have extra time to complete these, so when I print them out on an extra sheet of paper, I can shift it around easily without flipping through my entire planner to find this,
One Step At A Time 