As many of the people in my environment know, I have specialised on learning as much as I can in as few time as possible. That means while others revise frequently in order not to lose the connection to topics that have been dealt with a while ago, I prefer to start learning about a week ahead of the exams. Well, okay, let me be honest: I should start a week ahead, but I usually end up having only a few days left when I realise just how close the exams really are. So, let me explain to you how I try to get as many facts into my head as possible during just a few days.
Warning: this is not going to work for everyone. People are unique and the way they learn things best is as unique as they are themselves. These are just my tips that I can give you from my own experience.
Before we start: Do NOT make a tutorial while you should be learning. Yeah, I'm basically doing exactly that right now. Anyway, let's get started!
First of all, I personally find it quite helpful to use a binder for my learning purposes. I'm currently studying tax law and we have to be prepared to know everything we ever did at this course of studies for all of the exams in the future. That is why I think it is incredibly important to stay organised from the very beginning. So I have a binder for my summaries and I will divide it for each subject and keep adding my future summaries to it so that I will have everything in one place. Bonus tip: take photos of the summaries so you can learn anytime on the go as well.
Speaking about summaries, summarising what I have to learn is an essential step for me and it does make up most of my learning in the end. I need to get an overview of how much it is that I really have to learn and by going through my notes and thinking about what is important and what isn't, I already revise everything. That is why I actually prefer to do this close to the actual exam instead of frequently doing a little at a time. Well, procrastination probably tells me to do so anyway.
So, now that you grabbed a binder and you've summarised your subject, what's next? Try to use as many senses as possible while learning! Don't only read it in your mind; get creative! When I find myself learning early enough, I sometimes draw a little picture besides some facts that I just can't seem to remember which has something to do with the words. Like some puns in drawn form. That way, when I try to remember these facts, I'll think about that picture and this will take me to the actual facts that I wanted to remember. Sarcastic comments are frequently found in my summaries as well. Those summaries are for you, no one will judge.
If you're short on time, make a voice record while reading it out. You can listen to it later while doing other stuff.
If you happen to have the exam of last year, now is the time to check if you can answer all of the questions and if you can't, you'll know what you have to take a look at again. If you aren't as short on time, take your summaries, try to solve a problem without looking at it, check with your summaries and jot down what you've forgotten about. Repeat with a different problem until there are no points left.
Buy a scented candle that has a somewhat unique or unusual smell and put it on your desk while learning (don't light it though, just smell on it while reading through your summary). Each subject should have a different candle. It works like the well-known chewing gum method, except that it is usually not forbidden to place an unlit candle on the desk at school as long as there are no words written on it or something. The human memory largely developed from what was used for identifying scents in the past, so connecting memories with scents happens a lot. We can use that to our advantage! Just make sure your candle scent doesn't bring back other memories.
I hope some of these tips were helpful. If you aren't as prone to procrastination as I am, please do not start that..! It's always better to keep repeating so that the contents of your subjects get into your long term memory - my method is just trying to make the best out of my bad habit to only think about tests when they are imminent.
