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Posted Dec. 3, 2015

Planning Your Christmas Revision Schedule

Postgrad Files Revision

Revising over the Christmas holidays can be a tricky task – there’s so much out the to drive you to distraction. Despite what you might be thinking, it is possible to enjoy your Christmas and to get a whole bunch of revision done, and we’re here to show you how.

Pick Your ‘Skip Days’ In Advance Despite all your best intentions, you’re not going to revise everyday – it's simply too tiring. Pick three skip days in advance, and then allot yourself two free slots as backup. These free slots can be used to swap out for any given day, guilt-free. Of course, Christmas Day itself doesn’t count towards these five skip days – that's no fun at all! Giving yourself space to breathe in advance (plus some guilt-free days as a backup plan) means that you won’t be worried about having no time to enjoy yourself, and the guilt-free skip days left open mean that if something else important or interesting comes up, then you don’t need to worry about changing your plans.

Don’t Revise What You Know This might sound very obvious but you’d be amazed at how many people ignore it! Revision isn’t meant to make you feel better to start with – if you’re reading things thinking ‘wow, I remember so much of this’ then you’re doing it wrong. You want to be looking at the things you’re not confident with, and don’t necessarily remember. It will be hard at first, but much more rewarding at the end when you’ve actually learned something, rather than just comforting yourself with things you already knew to start with.

Don’t Overdo It While revising a little bit every day is a really good method, be aware of the ‘a little bit’ part! Spending each day, all day revising is how you wear yourself out – it’s far better to do little and often. If you revise too much, you’ll likely overwhelm yourself and remember very little of it, whereas taking it in small chunks increases the chance of you remembering. We recommend doing at least an hour a day, but if you’re confident you could easily manage more – just make sure it doesn’t take over.

Make a Timetable Make a timetable and stick to it. Having a sense of order will help keep you to a rhythm, plus make sure you feel like you’re obtaining set goals. It doesn’t have to be a perfect one – forget colour co-ordination and exact, meticulous detailing and timings. As long as you have at least a rough overview of times and goals, you’re good to go. We’ve even made one for you to work from – assuming you've got three modules (as many taught terms do):

Saturday 19th - 11am-12pm topic a, 1-2pm topic b Sunday 20th - 2-3pm topic c Monday 21st - 2-4pm topic a Tuesday 22nd - 2-4pm topic b Wednesday 23rd - 2-4pm topic c Thursday 24th - 8-10am reassess weak points of all topics + note focus areas Friday 25th - Christmas! (Free Skip Day) Saturday 26th - Skip Day Sunday 27th - 11am-12pm topic a (new areas), 1-2 topic b (new areas) Monday 28th - 2-3pm topic c (news areas) Tuesday 29th - 10-11am topic a, 2-4pm topic b Wednesday 30th - 10-11am topic a, 2-4pm topic c Thursday 31st - Skip Day Friday 1st - Skip Day Saturday 2nd - 11am-12pm topic a, 1-2pm topic b, 4-5pm topic c Sunday 3rd - 10am-12pm reassess weak points of all topics + note focus areas

This timetable structure is easy to build upon as the holidays go on, adding in more hours where you might need to, and with regular check-ins planned for you to reassess what you need to be doing. Starting from something like this, you should soon be well on your way to having planned your Christmas revision!

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