Its almost the end of the academic year, and if you were one of those students who have put off their preparation for the exam until the last minute, dont you worry. Help is at hand. I will give you a few tips (and tricks) that will help you sail through the examination. This can be applied to examinations at all levels be it a Primary school examination, or an examination at a professional level. Feeling a bit curious, are you? If you are then read on.....
Most examinations whether they be school-leaving examinations or professional examinations are unfortunately still based on the principle of 'regurgitation'. What this means simply is that if you learn ''by heart'' (rote) a few topics, and keep your fingers crossed that the same topic is asked in the examination, you should pass. This situation though is rapidly changing especially for professional-level examinations.
So her are a few tips for your exam success:
a) What do you think is the first thing you need to do to pass an exam? Buy a good (text)book, did you say? A good tutor? Preparing in advance?
No, the answer to that question is simple: The first thing you need to do to pass an examination is to SIT the exam!! Silly though it may seem, there are many students out there who for one reason or the other do not go to the exam. If you do not go to the exam, you would be an absentee and hence fail the exam summarily-its as simple as that.
Hence, on the day of the exam, make sure that you start early form home. It would be wise to physically travel to the exam centre from the place where you stay a day before the exam as a 'trial run' just to familiarise yourself with the route especially so if the exam centre is not within an area familiar to you. You would not want a taxi driver to figuratively 'take you on a ride' on the day of your exam, would you?
b) Much before you can sit the exam though, you need to make sure that you are ready to pass trhe exam. This especially applies to Entrance exams to professional courses etc. I know that most of the times you will have no choice and that either peer pressure, 'social pressure' or just the curriculum would expect you to be sitting and passing that particular exam. But ask yourself this honest question before you decide to sit the exam: ''Would I pass this exam with my current level of preparation if I sat this exam?'' If the answer to that question is ''no'', then have a rethink. You have to be careful though- dont be too harsh on yourself. There are many good students out there who postpone sitting the exams only because they lack self-confidence. It is wise to ask one of your tutors/teachers if THEY think you are ready for the exam- if the answer is ''Hmmm.... perhaps so...'' or something as vague as that, pin them down to be honest. After all, it is you who is sitting the exam, and you have to re-sit the exam ( and pay the whole exam fee again) if you were to fail, so please ask them to be honest and frank- and dont forget to thank them for it. Some of you may not have a good relation with all your tutors or indeed the one to who you have put the question to. In that case, take a second opinion, perhaps even a third. The bottomline is : Be SURE to PASS the exam when you sit it!!
c) So you have decided to sit the exam, and to go to the exam in time-that's excellent!
Now, you will have to ensure that you will pass the exam at this sitting. How do you do it?
I want you to do a small task- call it 'homework' if you like.
For exams that have a standard syllabus ( like the ones in schools or the Board exams):I want you to take out your standard textbook ( the one that is prescribed by the 'authorities') and go through the index, and mark each and every chapter that YOU think is important- remember to include the sub-topics of the chapter too. Make sure you mark them with a pencil ( I will tell you why in a moment). After you have done so for each chapter and for each subject, take a break. That's right, take a breather- you dont want to get too tired right away, do you?
Now, I want you to get hold of previous question papers for that exam, and I want you to go through each question paper for the past 10 years- thats right, the past 10 years. That is because researchers will tell you that there is a likely possibility of some standard questions from past question papers being repeated.
You may now be thinking, ''Where can I get hold of past question papers?'' You have a few options: Try your school or college library-it may have a colection of old question papers. Some Boards also sell previous question papres ( for a fee, of course). The internet may be a good place to look at too. Just Google it. If you cannot find them, then go for the second-best, and look at model question papers. There must be hordes of those readily available, and examiners have been known in the past to just 'copy and paste' a few questions from these model papers. The reason you need to go through the previous years' question papers is not only to familiarise yourself with the questions but also to see a pattern of those topics which the examiners have been setting questions on. For example, if you are sitting a Math exam, and there has been a question on Quadratic equations at least 8 times in the last 10 years, there may be a hint there that the Board and the examiners think that it is an important topic that they need to test you on. Another easy method to do that is to go through your class notes- everytime your teacher/tutor said ''and this is an important topic...'' it probably is, so dig out your classwork too.
Once you have got hold of the previous exam papers/model questions/important topics as told by your teacher, I want you to do one more thing.
Go back to your textbook on that subject ( in which you would have hopefully marked the topics that YOU thought were important), and mark all the topics on which the previous questions were based- I mean all of them. Preferably, use a different-coloured pencil. You would have now seen that a pattern is emerging- there are some topics that the examiners have rarely set a question on... and there are others which have been examined quite frequently. Once you can see this pattern, may I offer my congratulations- you are half-way through passing your examination.
More tommorow......
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Saturday, 2 January 2010
A Happy New Year to the Human Race
Hello there! So, you were just browsing the net and came across my blog.. Thanks for staying back and reading it. I hope the title of my blog has intrigued you. Just before you think I am a visitor from outer space, or from one of the moons of Jupiter, let me assure you that I consider myself human. Unfortunately, I find that the real human race is fast becoming extinct.
Why do I think so?
Before I defend my stance, let me ask you to participate in a simple exercise-please do. Thank you.
I want you to take a paper and a pen, and write down the number of times in the past week that you were genuinely kind to a stranger. If you think buying presents for loved ones ( evenly remotely 'loved' as in friends, acquaintances etc.) was an act of kindness, then think again. The only two reasons that people give presents/gifts duing the Christmas period is because: a) They think they are expected to, and b) they got a good deal ( on the present/gift)!
For most people, the days of giving a present or a gift to commemorate the birth of The Son of God are now as distant as the white clouds on the horizon, slowly floating away from you.
If you cannot think of the last time you were genuinely kind towards a stranger in the last week, I want you to go back by a fortnight, a month, and so on till you can remember.
Now that that is done and dusted, I want you to participate in another exercise:
I want you to think of the last time when you saw a person, and thought: '' There goes ( or comes) another human being'', and write it down.
The answer may surprise you: there is a distinct possibility that you may not have an answer. Why is that so?
It is because we are no so engrossed whether someone is a man, a woman or a child, white or a black, or a caucasian, an oriental or a hispanic, or whether he/she looks like a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew that our collective psyche has forgotten that we are actually looking at another of Nature's miracles: a Human being!
In the journey from infancy through youth to old age, we are so preoccupied with peoples' origins, their beliefs and their cultural practices, that we have forgotten that we are looking at another of our own human selves. In this day and age, we are redefining the meaning of both 'day' and of 'age' as we know them to be. Let me explain:
From the evolutionary point of view, sunset heralded a time to rest and of winding down of the day's activities and yet, here we are, in 2010, where we actually have night-shifts, and graveyard shifts for many workers, and this whole circadian rhythm that the human body is used to, is now topsy-turvy thanks to the demands of our society, demands that we have made of each other. 'Age' is no longer relevant in our society- no one is considered to be wise just becuase they tend to be older ( and perhaps rightly so), but we now see it to be unfashionable to be thought of ageing. I would congratulate the Cosmetic industry for so deftly and mesemerisingly brain-washing our collective psyche that not many of us would tolerate those wrinkles on our collective foreheads, or those crows-eyes around our eyes. No ,they are not the signs of ageing anymore- they are sings that we 'do not look after ourselves properly', and that we should, and hey ho- they ( the cosmetic industry has an answer for that). I never understood why they lie to us using fancy numbers and get away with it. To cite an example, ''19 women among 22 found xxxx to be really useful!'', and therefore we should use it too. Ok, I am happy for those 19 women, but I am more interested in knowing WHY your xxxx product did not work on the other 3 women but you are not going to tell me that, are you? Also, statistically speaking, the sample size of the women/men tested in these ads is so ridiculous that a stiatistician would probably use the quoted data as tissue paper, or far worse. Scientifically, you can never prove ( or disprove) anything with the kind of sample sizes the cosmetic industry quotes.
So, in today's world, it is not fashoinable to grow old. Nor is it fashionable to smile at strangers. If you do so, it is either because you are a pervert or you are probably crazy, or perhaps a bit of both.
We all are so tied up in knots within our own minds, with our own thoughts of ''I'', ''me'', Mine'', that we have neither the time nor the inclination to think of other Human beings. That is what makes this whole idea of saving the planet laughable. How can we save other species when we cannot think of ourselves as human beings in the collective? We need to remember that we share the planet, and not own it.
The day we realise that, and are a bit more open to the thought that we are all humans, would be the first day of the first new year in a new millineum, and to see the dawn of such a day, I need your help.
I request, nay, beg you to do the following for the next day, and see for yourself if that makes a difference:
a) SMILE, not only at people you know, but even at strangers. In fact, I urge you to smile at anything and everything: your car ( imagine the places you would not go without it), your pencil ( what would you write with if you didnt have it? A pen, did you say-well then, smile at your pen ;-)), the trees around you that give you the oxygen, the snowflake on your window as it slowly trickles down as it transforms into a tiny rivulet of water- did it not remind you of your last holiday in winter, or perhaps it has paradoxically reminded you of the warm summer months). Keep smiling, and dont bother about what others think- people who think you are crazy are missing out on the simplest of Life's pleasures, the ability to smile.
Once we all do that, we will FEEL and therefore BE happy from the inside, and in our exterior world asthe world that we create for ourselves is but a mirror-image of our world within.
More tomorrow..... and keep that SMILE GOING, My human friend and co-habitant of this beautiful planet......
Why do I think so?
Before I defend my stance, let me ask you to participate in a simple exercise-please do. Thank you.
I want you to take a paper and a pen, and write down the number of times in the past week that you were genuinely kind to a stranger. If you think buying presents for loved ones ( evenly remotely 'loved' as in friends, acquaintances etc.) was an act of kindness, then think again. The only two reasons that people give presents/gifts duing the Christmas period is because: a) They think they are expected to, and b) they got a good deal ( on the present/gift)!
For most people, the days of giving a present or a gift to commemorate the birth of The Son of God are now as distant as the white clouds on the horizon, slowly floating away from you.
If you cannot think of the last time you were genuinely kind towards a stranger in the last week, I want you to go back by a fortnight, a month, and so on till you can remember.
Now that that is done and dusted, I want you to participate in another exercise:
I want you to think of the last time when you saw a person, and thought: '' There goes ( or comes) another human being'', and write it down.
The answer may surprise you: there is a distinct possibility that you may not have an answer. Why is that so?
It is because we are no so engrossed whether someone is a man, a woman or a child, white or a black, or a caucasian, an oriental or a hispanic, or whether he/she looks like a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew that our collective psyche has forgotten that we are actually looking at another of Nature's miracles: a Human being!
In the journey from infancy through youth to old age, we are so preoccupied with peoples' origins, their beliefs and their cultural practices, that we have forgotten that we are looking at another of our own human selves. In this day and age, we are redefining the meaning of both 'day' and of 'age' as we know them to be. Let me explain:
From the evolutionary point of view, sunset heralded a time to rest and of winding down of the day's activities and yet, here we are, in 2010, where we actually have night-shifts, and graveyard shifts for many workers, and this whole circadian rhythm that the human body is used to, is now topsy-turvy thanks to the demands of our society, demands that we have made of each other. 'Age' is no longer relevant in our society- no one is considered to be wise just becuase they tend to be older ( and perhaps rightly so), but we now see it to be unfashionable to be thought of ageing. I would congratulate the Cosmetic industry for so deftly and mesemerisingly brain-washing our collective psyche that not many of us would tolerate those wrinkles on our collective foreheads, or those crows-eyes around our eyes. No ,they are not the signs of ageing anymore- they are sings that we 'do not look after ourselves properly', and that we should, and hey ho- they ( the cosmetic industry has an answer for that). I never understood why they lie to us using fancy numbers and get away with it. To cite an example, ''19 women among 22 found xxxx to be really useful!'', and therefore we should use it too. Ok, I am happy for those 19 women, but I am more interested in knowing WHY your xxxx product did not work on the other 3 women but you are not going to tell me that, are you? Also, statistically speaking, the sample size of the women/men tested in these ads is so ridiculous that a stiatistician would probably use the quoted data as tissue paper, or far worse. Scientifically, you can never prove ( or disprove) anything with the kind of sample sizes the cosmetic industry quotes.
So, in today's world, it is not fashoinable to grow old. Nor is it fashionable to smile at strangers. If you do so, it is either because you are a pervert or you are probably crazy, or perhaps a bit of both.
We all are so tied up in knots within our own minds, with our own thoughts of ''I'', ''me'', Mine'', that we have neither the time nor the inclination to think of other Human beings. That is what makes this whole idea of saving the planet laughable. How can we save other species when we cannot think of ourselves as human beings in the collective? We need to remember that we share the planet, and not own it.
The day we realise that, and are a bit more open to the thought that we are all humans, would be the first day of the first new year in a new millineum, and to see the dawn of such a day, I need your help.
I request, nay, beg you to do the following for the next day, and see for yourself if that makes a difference:
a) SMILE, not only at people you know, but even at strangers. In fact, I urge you to smile at anything and everything: your car ( imagine the places you would not go without it), your pencil ( what would you write with if you didnt have it? A pen, did you say-well then, smile at your pen ;-)), the trees around you that give you the oxygen, the snowflake on your window as it slowly trickles down as it transforms into a tiny rivulet of water- did it not remind you of your last holiday in winter, or perhaps it has paradoxically reminded you of the warm summer months). Keep smiling, and dont bother about what others think- people who think you are crazy are missing out on the simplest of Life's pleasures, the ability to smile.
Once we all do that, we will FEEL and therefore BE happy from the inside, and in our exterior world asthe world that we create for ourselves is but a mirror-image of our world within.
More tomorrow..... and keep that SMILE GOING, My human friend and co-habitant of this beautiful planet......
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