A-Level Psychology Week 3 Exam Preparation Tips

3 Weeks Until Exams!!!

Hello, again! I hope all of you are well, and I hope you have all enjoyed and benefited from my blog so far.

I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of feeling a bit anxious about my exams. While I know I’ve been revising and putting the work in, I can’t help but feel like there is an unscalable mountain of content I need to revise and memorise. If you have been feeling this way too, just remember, you are not alone… there are so many young adults currently facing an overwhelming amount of stress and anxiety. It is absolutely normal to be feeling nervous – how we tackle this anxious feeling is what is going to either make us or break us!

The thing about stress, is we need to face it head on. Running a bubble bath with a fortune worth of Lush products or firing up fifa to ‘relax and destress’, isn’t actually all that helpful. It may allow us to procrastinate and distract ourselves from the stressy feelings briefly, but it doesn’t actually fix anything.

One of the best ways to counter stress is to tackle it directly, and the easiest way to do that is to make a list! That normally helps me. I have talked previously about having lists of what you need to do each day in terms of revision and practice questions. For me, having a list of exactly what I need to do in a day helps me not only to keep focus, but to also limit my stress and anxiety. Without my lists, I overthink about the whole syllabus, but having lists breaks it down into much more manageable chunks.

Now, it's 3 weeks until exams… what should I be doing?

1. You should now hopefully be in a routine regarding revision. Whatever methods you use, be it lists or a timetable, you should have formed a routine. If you have decided not to form a routine, let me convince you why routine is important!

o It will increase your productivity… think about it: if you are used to starting your work at the same time every day, you find it almost natural to wake up and revise

o It will increase your motivation! You will have done your work yesterday, and you would have felt pleased with yourself. Then the next day, you will feel ✨intrinsically motivated✨ (yes, I tried to reference Social Learning Theory – just pretend you are your own role model) to continue to revise

2. You must be thinking, “you keep talking about making a list of things I need to cover today, but what should I even include in this list?” Let me break this down for you, with examples from Social Psychology. This is what I would have on my list for Social Psychology, if I was revising that topic today…

o Start off with a recall activity of everything I remember from Social Psychology.

o Give myself a time limit of 10 minutes for this.

o (You can do this with a mind map or whatever you want).

o Use another colour and add, using my notes, what I have forgotten.

o Go through and revise the things I have forgotten.

o (Use any revision technique that works for you).

o Take a break – do something else for 10 minutes.

o Come back and do the recall activity again.

o Do a past essay question on Social Psychology and mark it.

3. If you have found that by the end of this, your second recall activity was the same as the first, and you haven’t really remembered more, ask yourself why.

o Maybe you need to create some personal kind of anecdote for the content? I did this with some hard topics. For example, to remember classical conditioning, I remembered it by linking it to my fear of spiders.

o Maybe you don’t yet understand the topic?

· In this case, you can definitely ask your teacher for further resources to help you

· You could ask peers and your friends. I found that asking my friends was always more helpful because they explained it in a more helpful and easier way

· Watch YouTube videos on it

Go on websites like simple psychology and look at some other explanations on the theories or topics that you find difficult. Sometimes all it takes for the cogs in your brain to start moving again is for something to be explained in another way

Try to explain it to someone else. I've always found that explaining a difficult concept to my brother and him asking me questions really helped me to understand it myself. If you can explain it, you will definitely understand it.

I wish you well in your revision this week. Although the exams are fast approaching, try not to let it consume you with stress. If you are finding this is the case, you will burn out if you don’t take breaks and days off. Remember, this is not a race, it's a marathon, (as cringy as that sounds.)

I look forward to you reading my blog next week!

Until then, remain strong, calm and confident.

Jalisha.

Have any questions about how to prepare for your A-Level exams? Having problems with any hard to understand content or tricky past exam questions? Then ask Jalisha. Jalisha will be hosting a series of Q&A webinars in the 2 weeks before final exams. Post your questions here, and Jalisha will answer them in these sessions.