The day will come

Sooner or later, once all they studying and research has been done, you will eventually find yourself face to face with an exam paper. Even at this stage it is possible to take control and tame the exam. Students often make the mistake of confronting an exam in a passive way, as if they had no control over it at all. This is not true.

It is remarkable how many students see the start of an exam as if it were a race where they have been revving up, with the break on, ready for a quick dash off the starting line and this is a mistake. As with many things an exam is often won or lost during the preparation stage. Selecting the first question on an exam paper with a word in it you recognise and then writing, at speed, everything you know about that word might produce quantity but it is unlikely to produce quality.

• Make sure you read through the entire paper so you are aware of all the questions available to you. The most obvious questions may not necessarily be the best ones for you. Some questions might look straightforward but may actually be asking you to do 3 or 4 quite complicated things. Other questions may simply require you to carefully compare two things. There may be questions on themes that really interest you and that would make good dissertation or essay topics but that might not suit you as an exam question. Always make smart choices, pick the questions that you understand clearly and that you can tackle well under exam conditions.
• Always pay attention to what you are being asked to do – you will never get a question asking you to tell the examiner everything you know about a topic. Most question will ask you to compare or evaluate or critically analyse or apply theory to practice or argue from relevant evidence. As with any job, if you don’t do what is actually asked of you then you are likely to fail. If the question asks you to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a particular theory or approach and you simply provide information on the theory then you will get a low grade no matter how detailed your information and how well you have written. In the same way, if your boss asks you to produce a report on the value of bringing your cat to work and you simply write an essay on “What is a Cat?” you will probably get fired for not doing your job properly…….