Revision in its literal translation is inaccurate for the first part of the task that lies ahead. This is because revision means re-visiting the stuff you have already looked at. Much of the stuff you will be looking at will be for the first time because you were absent/dozing/comatose during that lecture or you simply need to flesh out the skeleton it provided.
Thus, the first stage of your revision is research. This should not just be the blind copying out of material. It should be active, involving lots of thinking about the material at hand. I think I'll do a post on note taking soon.
In the meantime, you'll need to get yourself sorted with a good timetable. This is absolutely vital. It should block off time for researching, then thinking, then learning. For example, you might say that by the end of the first week of the summer term you will have all the research completed. This then leaves you lots of time to organise your thoughts, write essay plans and start learning the material. That's what I did.
I had a look around for my old timetables but it wasn't to be: I must have binned them after exams. Instead, here are my Tables of Contents from Level 2 and Level 3. (I'll show you how to make a Table of Contents in the next few days). It might help you organise your time more effectively. Each subsection (e.g. L3: Psychosis –Auditory and Visual Hallucinations; L2: Philosophy of Science) probably took anything from half a day to two days to complete. Remember, before you freak out, this was a combined effort.
Make sure you leave some padding for overflow and that you give yourself plenty of time to relax and do other stuff. Pencil in your exam dates too, if they have been published yet. This will help you get a sense of how to allocate your time later on. It should also show you how there isn't a luxurious amount of time ahead that visions of May/June conjure up ('oh, it's in the summer - that's way off' kind of attitude).
For those of you who like to do it the digital way, Google Calendar works a treat and is out there in the 'cloud', so you can access it wherever you are and there's internet. Handy if you're roaming about.
Thus, the first stage of your revision is research. This should not just be the blind copying out of material. It should be active, involving lots of thinking about the material at hand. I think I'll do a post on note taking soon.
In the meantime, you'll need to get yourself sorted with a good timetable. This is absolutely vital. It should block off time for researching, then thinking, then learning. For example, you might say that by the end of the first week of the summer term you will have all the research completed. This then leaves you lots of time to organise your thoughts, write essay plans and start learning the material. That's what I did.
I had a look around for my old timetables but it wasn't to be: I must have binned them after exams. Instead, here are my Tables of Contents from Level 2 and Level 3. (I'll show you how to make a Table of Contents in the next few days). It might help you organise your time more effectively. Each subsection (e.g. L3: Psychosis –Auditory and Visual Hallucinations; L2: Philosophy of Science) probably took anything from half a day to two days to complete. Remember, before you freak out, this was a combined effort.
Make sure you leave some padding for overflow and that you give yourself plenty of time to relax and do other stuff. Pencil in your exam dates too, if they have been published yet. This will help you get a sense of how to allocate your time later on. It should also show you how there isn't a luxurious amount of time ahead that visions of May/June conjure up ('oh, it's in the summer - that's way off' kind of attitude).
For those of you who like to do it the digital way, Google Calendar works a treat and is out there in the 'cloud', so you can access it wherever you are and there's internet. Handy if you're roaming about.
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