With finals just around the corner it’s important to have a game plan. These exams are meant to draw upon your knowledge of a an entire semester’s worth of notes, quizzes and tests so here’s a few tips to study without banging your head on a wall.

1. Set a pace. If you know that you’re doing well in one subject but lacking in chemistry knowledge then spare some extra study time for the subjects that need it, and try to do a little each day so you don’t end up cramming.
2. Determine how you learn best: Contrary to popular belief, there aren’t only 3 kinds of learners. See for yourself:  And while we all feel we’re stress learners, that’s not quite the deal. If you have the time, try out each of these methods to find which one would suit you on the long term, there can be more options to studying then staring at the same sentence for 5 hours.
3. Ask you friends/family to help you stay focused: Tell them to confiscate your technology when you’re studying. Download whatever material you need for work, put in some headphones and go at it.
4. Do all the practice problems: This one is pretty self-explanatory.
5. DON’T. HIGHLIGHT. Unless you absolutely have to. Highlighting leads to passive reading. You start studying on autopilot, and there’s no point of having 4 pages of neon orange that you don’t remember reading.
6. Break your study time in chunks: With breaks, most students lose focus at 25 minutes. It’s a mistake to keep going once you do, since you won’t actually learn anything and you’ll hate every minute of it. If you feel yourself losing focus take a 5 minute break  and do something nice like talking to someone or listening to music.
7. Note-taking: Sure, all the pictures of notes with MacBooks, sharpies and pretty colored pens might look ‘aesthetic’ but don’t try to replicate that if it doesn’t work for you. If you scribble down your notes on napkin with a black pen, then by all means, do that. There really is no point having an ultra-pretty study guide that you don’t really use, or worse, don’t have time to use.
8. Talk to your teachers. Seriously if they know that you care and want to make a good grade then they’re more willing to help you out. Ask about key topics or things that might be a bit fuzzy if you learned them at the beginning of the year.
9. Use SparkNotes, use CliffNotes, watch the movie version, use Khan Academy, Crash Course, WHATEVER. If you’re in a literature course, you should absolutely read the material you’re given; however, sometimes, it’s not possible or even necessary to read everything.
10. Take good notes the first time around. Some people say rewriting them is a good way to memorize but let’s be honest, you’re not going to do that. Instead bite the bullet and do what you can the first time so you can read them later. It’s also just more time efficient. And don’t ask other people for notes, they’re not you and notes need to be personal to be effective.