math exams English exams physics exams chemistry exams computational exams engineering exams they're here and you're behind and I know exactly what that feels like that overwhelming sense of emotion and feeling constantly guilty because you're in this endless cycle of knowing that you have so much to study for but at the same time feeling paralyzed in the moment because it is so overwhelming man I think that that's probably Universal experience for all of us students and I want to help you get out of it life happens no matter how perfect youy try to make your Learning System no matter how perfect you go throughout the processes I get it life gets in the way and sometimes we feel behind I want you to have a six-step method that you can utilize so that when you're in those moments you can immediately jump to it know how to get out of it and so that you can continue living not just a productive life but also a mentally healthy life because school can become really really frustrating if you don't know these six steps my name is June youu if you're new to the channel welcome if you're returning welcome back look final season's just ended I know a lot of us felt a big sense of relief when it was over and I know a lot of us struggled our way through them and I get it studying for exam season is is really really difficult and especially when you feel behind it becomes a 100 times worse I hope that the Learning System now is allowed you guys to be productive throughout the entirety of the term so you don't feel this way when it comes down to it but again we had family health issues the last couple weeks that made me a little bit behind on some of the work so I get it life comes in the way I want to be sure that you guys are helped and you can save this video and use it whenever you feel a little bit behind know your way to dig out of it and let's get right into it so if you learned anything in this video please leave a comment below if you have any questions leave them below too give this video a thumbs up and of course subscribe with all that being said sit back relax and enjoy the video step one prioritize your study materials this is a really crucial step that we begin with because we have strengths all of us do right and sometimes when we are going over topics within our semester some of them are easier for us whether they're inherently easy or it's just because you had background knowledge on it or it's more relevant to you those are your strengths and it's important that you recognize that and then you focus more on your time on the weaknesses because when you're trying to dig yourself out of this hole why waste all that time in areas that you're already good at right it might feel comfortable to stay in there and be able to do those practice problems that we're good at solving but in this period when we are behind we want to recognize where our weaknesses are and spend most of our time there so spend a little bit of time recognizing where your weaknesses reside and that's why it's so important that we do stage three of the four stage Learning System and stage three was were those post class immediate reviews and you would do those for Reflections to identify your strengths and weaknesses if you haven't done that up to this point that's fine just take a little bit of time here to really understand what it is that you're weak on so you can check your syllabi you can look at what topics are going to be involved within your exams and then figure out okay here's some areas that I feel pretty good at and here's some areas that I'm weak at and if you need to go quickly through those PowerPoints to refresh your brain to say yeah these are things that I really do recognize I'm good with them and these things I have no clue about then you do that but just have that foundational piece of this is where our weaknesses reside and our attention is going to be spent more there another element to this in terms of prioritizing your material is going to be asking your trusted classmates what they think about where your time should be most spent where are the most challenging Concepts right and I say trusted classmates very specifically right you want to be utilizing your friends that are very very up to date they are people that take their academic seriously they go to class Etc and if they have an ability to tell you hey we have gone through this in class and I know that you missed a few but these are the areas in which the professor really emphasized and it feels like this is going to be a huge part of the exams hey June this this area was an area in which the professor spoke about for a few classes because a lot of people had struggle with them I feel like this is going to be tested on the exam again great an opportunity for you to quickly message them hop on a quick haul with them and get that information from them and then the third part about prioritizing your study material just quickly go through past exams we're not going to actually go and start practicing with them we're not going to go and actually utilize the practice test for our active recall application but simply go there and look at content emphasis right of course your past exams aren't going to be the exact same ones that you're going to have to take but there are going to be great indications for you in terms of where are certain areas in which the professor is likely to emphasize you can take all this information you can take information in terms of what you've perceived as your strength and your weakness what your what classmates have told you and also what those past papers are telling you and you can utilize that to really prioritize your material and finish up step one step two this is what I call the traffic light document and this is one that I've been using for quite a while and I think it's really helpful to utilize whenever you're trying to dig yourself out of this hole and it's simply going to utilize a Google doc or it's going to utilize an Excel sheet or simply on a piece of paper it's totally fine too but in that First Column what you'll do is write out all those topics that you had just identified in Step One and then when you write those down you're going to also color coat them based on how comfortable you feel recalling that information so you're going to have the color green for you can do this proficiently and then number two it's going to be your yellow color and that's adequately and then your red is going to be very poorly right and so what you'll have is this Mirage of green Reds and yellows that have a good indication to you visually these are areas that are really need to work on and then here's some areas that I'm feeling a little bit better on but that's going to be a great great sit signal to you to always reflect back on you'll update this as you go along with your study but what you'll also do is that you'll leave columns available to the right side of it and what you'll do in those columns is input information as you go through your revision things that you find are really important things that you really struggle with or areas that are really weak for you that you want to make sure that you write down and can be able to refresh your mind on you'll put it on that sheet you'll put it on this traffic light document and what this becomes for you the day of your exams are going to to be the perfect cheat sheet for you right when you open up that document immediately you're greeted with all the things that you needed to study up to this point you hav't a good indication of where your strengths and your weaknesses reside all the way up to your exams and you can immediately look next to it to find specific points in which you wanted to highlight for yourself and you can refresh upon it feel a little bit more comfortable on exam day step three create a study schedule and again I think that these first three steps you might come to me and say hey I just want to get right into it I want to get right into the material and I get that feeling of wanting to just immediately jump into the material especially when you're feeling behind but this is much more effective approach because one you're going to ensure that every little bit of time that you use from this point forward will be utilized efficiently in ways that you know that you need it but two especially when you're feeling extremely overwhelmed and you can't get yourself to do anything because you feel paralyzed in that moment it's a really good thing for you to start with easier tasks in steps one through three are you studying that foundation for yourself it's not going to require a ton of brain power here but you actually getting these things done building a structure for you building that foundation for you to move forward with is actually going to build you that positive momentum moving forward and give you a sense of you know what like I can actually do this and so I think that although steps 1 through three seem trivial it's really important that you do that so with creating a study schedule usually how I'll allocate my time is 45 minutes per weakness and then 5 minute breaks obviously this is going to heavily depend on which topics we're looking at which subjects we're looking at but the idea is a version of the Pomodoro Technique right where we're not spending an entire 6 hours straight just trying to do our revision why because it's highly ineffective we want to break them up into blocks of time where we can be productive very effectively very efficiently but also utilize those brakes to recuperate right to restore our mental capacity to be able to do the next session so 45 minutes works well for me because I'm able to stay focused for that long but if you find that that's too long try 25 minutes try 30 minutes but the idea is when you allocate time in your schedule make it that way block times like that and then you'll have those brakes integrated ensure that you're also making use of the fact that you're going to have to wash up in the morning that you're going to want to probably still go to the gym Etc and put that as breaks in your schedule and so maybe you do three sessions where you have 45 minute blocks with 5 minute in between breaks and you want to do a longer break great go wash up and put that 20 minute 30 minute break into your schedule and then come back to stunning or perhaps that 30 minutes is going to be you going out for a walk integrate those types of braks and always have them chunked into little sessions for yourself so you can actually stay consistent and efficient throughout that entire process another thing that I want to talk about is space repetition in leaving we've talked about both of those techniques a whole lot and so ensure that you're integrating both of those in your revision Tim taes and you're not just doing one topic for one whole day and then moving to a completely different topic the next day and then never revisiting the first topic because that's going to be inefficient knowing the forgetting curve knowing how much you're going to forget by the time it comes to your exam so ensure that you're integrating those optimal breaks of those 5 minutes 10- minute breaks and then if you're going to go to the gym or going to go watch up integrate that as breaks and then also ensure that you're integrating space repetition and inner leaving step four work with trusted classmates we've already spoken to these classmates and try to G an understanding of what they believe the content emphasis will be but utilize your friends here and help them and then have them help you you see your weaknesses might be their strengths and their weaknesses might be your strengths this is a great opportunity for both of you to utilize each other and help each other why because when you know a topic really well and hopefully you've been using the F technique up to this point you're going to be able to simplify to its crucial components you don't need that extra fluff and so when you go and read a textbook yeah you're going to be hit with a lot of fluff right there's going to be a lot of irrelevant material and if you are in a time crunch and you're trying to dig yourself out of that hole it might be much more efficient for that friend to just explain it to you or to teach you the way without all that right and without all that fluff and it might be a lot more effective for you to be able to ask the questions immediately and ask for clarification points but also get them to try to fix their explanations that will help them too so you guys are utilizing your fing techniques together and this is just a great opportunity because I have two really great friends that I utilize them and anytime that I do feel like I'm in a hole and they'll utilize me the same way because we are all students that stay on top of the material for the most part but when we do have weaknesses usually we can ask the other person and the other person is able to clarify or at least build a strong foundation so that when we go and do other the research about it and do topical reading about it it becomes a lot more relevant cuz we have that type of foundation so utilize your trusted classmates again trusted don't just utilize any of your classmates if you have classmates that are going to be lack of day school here there's no point in asking them for help cuz you're just wasting your time step five find your focus space this is critical there are so many distractions around us our phones are one example of them but just in general especially when I was growing up I lived in a very loud household and that was hard for me because every area that I was going to was loud as filled with people talking and even during the day or at night I couldn't find any place that I could do my work and I could stay focused throughout the period of it and so what I've done over the past several years now is always find what my focus space is going to be for my first few years in college it was the library and I found those little rooms that you could rent out beforehand nobody was coming in there and I could stay locked in sometimes it was within my own apartment but again my apartment was sometimes loud with friends over and so that wasn't always the best situation but I also found that it's great when you can utilize noise cancelling headphones or noise cancelling earbuds and put white noise on this I to if you're living in a very loud situation so that's what I would do growing up I would have my noise cancelling earbuds I would put on white noise on the side cuz obviously there would be some leakages with the earbuds and I could still hear noise but then it would be muffled by the white noise outside of it and I would buy myself like a $5 divider from Amazon and that would put my focus exactly where I need to was which was all my work I I wasn't tempted to look around because mental focus is going to follow visual Focus if you're visually distracted you're going to be mentally distracted as well and same thing with sounds if you're going to be distracted with sounds around you it's going to be hard for you to focus on your work and so when I have that when I have the um earbuds and I have the white noise I'm good with my hearing and then when I'm talking about looking I'm good with my divider cuz I can't look at any type of external distraction around me and then I would always carry a little timer around with me and I would always look at that if I needed a break I would look at that timer and think to myself okay here's the time that I have left for it but also watching that timer would get boring really quickly so I would immediately go back into my work etc but it would just give me something to look at that was still going to be effective instead of distracting me and so that Focus space is going to be important not just so that you can lock in but also contextually your environment matters in other words that's why it's not a good idea for you to study in your bed or study in the same exact room as your bed all the time because contextually you have Associated your bed with sleep with rest and when you get to that point in which you're trying to pull out your study material and you're on your bed all of those contextual environmental cues are still going to be there so you're going to feel really tired and really fatigued but if you go to the library where you're not supposed to sleep and you know that and you see other people studying too you're going to be much more awake and so having contextual cues around you is really really important even for example I have this lamp on my desk and I really don't ever use it because I don't need it I have the lights above me to to do my work but I put that light on specifically when I'm doing my deep work sessions because contextually it just gives me a cue that hey it's time to lock in so find your focus space utilize your contextual cues to ensure that every time that you sit down and do work in that position that you're going to be able to be productive step number six Active recall applications knowing that we are in a time crunch knowing that we have to make the most out of all the time that is available to us moving forward we want to ensure that we're using techniques that have high utility what are techniques that have low utility it's ones that are passive it's ones don't require meaningful effort if you are just rewriting or if you are just rereading a textbook or highlighting passively that's not going to actually provide you the depth of learning required for you to perform well on your exams when you get into higher education especially you'll never be tested on regurgitation questions it'll always be questions that require you to synthesize new knowledge or perhaps compare and contrast or to contextualize or to provide examples with and and that can be very difficult and if you don't have the type of techniques that's going require you to have that depth of knowledge in what world are you going to be able to perform well on your exams right and so you want to ensure that those techniques are actually going to be applicable and help you for your exams and that's where active recall applications are going to come into play so you have your learning method you have your fing technique you have your practice exams and diagrams here are another great tool for you to utilize we just talked about how those exams are going to require you to synthesize new knowledge compar and contrast contextualized and when you are revising in a manner in which you're constantly L seeking for those deeper linkages between those topics and those Concepts it's going to allow you to perform much better when it comes down to those questions right and so having an ability for you to always restructure the material is really critical in your learning if you are constantly just looking at Material the way that it's handed to you whether it's in a textbook or the way that your professor put their slides together or if you're just taking notes from another student learning isn't happening because you're not taking that additional step to reorganize it in a manner that's relevant to you and that's the actual important part right to actually break it down to reorganize to group to compare and contrast to link information together to to identify why something is important and so that's why we have you doing these types of active recall applications the burning method the F technique the practice test along with these diagrams and if you do that you'll be actually making the most out of your time and you'll actually get the type of learning outcomes that you want that allow you to perform well on the upcoming exams but also allow you to keep that information in your brain after the exams are over because we know that information tends to build upon each other in education okay I would love to make more videos about each of those applications and I've done a lot of that before but I'm more than happy to talk about that but I feel that if I just talk about each of them again for another 10 20 minutes it might be a really long video so if you can utilize those six steps the next time you find yourself in a hole I really do believe you'll have a lot of success again life happens it's going to occur that we find ourselves behind on material but having an actual plan for us to follow when we're in those situations can be really beneficial can alleviate a lot of mental stress too and that's what I want to do for you guys I hope that you enjoyed this video if you have any questions at all about any of the steps or if you have anything that I might have missed that you want to help another person within this community leave that in the comments too give this video a thumbs up and of course subscribe until next time please take care and I'll see you all at the 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