Revision

Why do most people find revision boring? Is it because of the fact that it relates to work or effort? Or is it the word itself, maybe 'rev' links to 'reverse' or 'revisit'. Maybe it’s because the word homework sounds bad because we associate home with a pleasant place to relax and work being something we wouldn't like to do. This is perhaps a stereotype which people become aware of when they go through education. It’s only until you get to choosing options and deciding on your career that the words revision and homework become more meaningful. 

How do you or how would you go about revising? Imagine you have just bought some science revision guides because of constant pressure from teachers or parents to get revising. How would you start? Most people would open it to the first page and begin reading it. While there is nothing wrong with this it can be very boring and not the most efficient way of going about it. 

Revision guides are good because they list all of the topics that are in the syllabus and also give you all of the information you require for the exam. Teachers say that you should start revising a month or maybe more before the exam. This is not a good claim because you are likely to forget the information you read on day one and will have to rush over it nearer the exam. A lot of pupils start to revise a few days before (or even a few minutes before!) the exam. This is also not a great idea because you might not cover all the information but may also forget most of it due to cramming everything into your head. 

The whole point of revision is to 'go over' the information that you already know. During class time you take in a lot of the information first time. Of course not everything that is mentioned but you will have gained a lot first time. The next day you will probably have forgotten some of the information as it makes its way into your long term memory. Soon after many weeks and months you will remember very little if any of it at all. The only way you will remember it is if you go over it in your mind. You will remember previous events that could have happened years ago 'as if they were yesterday'. This is because you had many thoughts attached to that event and you thought about it a lot during and after it. I doubt many of us would think of the chemistry lesson that day unless something exciting happened. 

It makes sense then that to recall information clearly after an event is to attach something that we can emotionally attach with. Whether it is hate, excitement, happiness, love anything! The weird thing is that these things don't have to actually have happened. So if you were studying about hydrogen in chemistry that day it would be fairly unlikely that you blew a big hole out of the school field when testing hydrogen. But if the image is striking enough it will make a more permanent connection in your mind. Adding more connections to your central image can allow you to remember everything you need to know about the topic you are studying. Maybe one day you go to the tennis courts to find a massive bacterium sitting there. It then divides every few minutes before the whole tennis court is stuffed full of bacteria! Maybe a virus comes out of the sky like an Apollo Lander and sits on to the cells. Before you know it a large white blood cell comes rolling along to engulf them all up!

This method of 'story making' is a very good way to create a mental movie or memory of something which you would find laborious to go over. If you can do this well you should be able to get lost in your virtual world creating vast images which will stick in your memory. You will find the pages of your revision guide fly through your hands as you memorise all of the information. The real revision is when you go back through your story in your mind which can be done at any time, on the bus, in the car when you’re bored? If you create strong images in your mind then they will stick. If you struggle to remember then your images probably weren’t strong enough. Try to make things unusual and interesting to your mind. Enlarging the image in your mind can also help. Explore with your mind and see how much you can remember. Happy revision!