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Number 86's guide to preparing for final exams:

Disclaimer: I hold absolutely no responsability if none of these so-called methods for studying. So please don't complain to me if you fail your exams after trying all of these suggestions because I don't know what I'm doing either.


The Hypnotherapy Method: Record yourself reading aloud from your notes and/or your textbook, then play your tape or CD just as you're falling asleep. Try using short statements and repeat several times. Some say that you remember the last thing that you see/hear before going to bed the most clearly in the morning. Works best if you're a character in Brave New World.

Subtype: Commence your studying starting around 10 at night and continue to study and mutter to yourself until you're dead tired. Works for some, but not optimal; this is probably the most commonly employed method of studying that I've observed...

The Sleep Osmosis Method: Put your textbook/notebook underneath your pillow before you go to sleep. The information imbedded within your textbook/notes should flow into your empty brain, albeit slowly. Unfortunately, a fair amount of knowledge will also flow out of your brain back into the book/notes as the level of knowledge on each side of the pillow reaches equilibrium, so you won't learn too much that's new. This might work best for biology and/or chemisry, but I haven't tried this method for either subject.

The Mnemonic/Story/Song Method: For remembering sequences of facts, come up with a mnemonic to remember; the funnier ones work the best. Kids Playing Chess On Freeways Get Smashed is a morbid way for remembering the categories within the Linneaus classification system, from broad to specific: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. Try associating simple key phrases to dates: the 14th and 15th Amdendments to the American Constitution are very simply summed up as freedom, citizenship, and the vote. Some people have come up with songs for remembering technicalities with the French subjunctive tense, but unfortunately I can't remember them at the moment.

The Group Study Method: Find a group of friends who all want to study the same subject and lock yourselves in some room in your local library. I particularly suggest the library because in a quiet, intellectual environment you will feel more obligated to get work done. This sort of study group tends to work best for social sciences, science, and math, especially math as it's much easier to figure out what's going on when you can all look at the same problems, graphs, and diagrams. If it's not possible to get everyone to meet at the same time and place, try a conference call at home. The drawback is that you might be distracted into going off-topic with said group of friends instead of studying. Try not to have a group of more than six people to avoid the temptations of distraction.

The Classical Music Method: Listen to classical music, preferably Mozart, non stop as you study. It's tremendously relaxing unless you're listening to a particularly angry sounding requiem or Beethoven's 5th. I personally have found that instrumental music is much less distracting than music with vocals and lyrics as I tend to focus too much on the words and not on my notes. I vaguely remember hearing somewhere that there might actually be scientific backing on this one. This is the only one that I will actually swear by; for my science finals up to second semester of last year I did well on all of my midterms and whatnot when listening to my magical Mozart CD. I haven't done so well ever since I lost it, so there you go.

Please feel free to add your own suggestions!