As an undergraduate, I always get angry after most exam days, not because of the complexity of the exam questions, but for my inability to finish writing even the relatively easy ones I know before time is up. Would I end up write this?

Have you also after examination take the question paper and scan through it just to see the ones you know very well but could not write it due to perhaps time factor? If it has not happened to you in your life time, then you have not participated in much examination or you usually don’t go home with the question paper.

If you have progressed in education to the level of a university undergraduate, then you would have experience the above ordeal, but worry not, the last time you experienced such would be the last time you will.

It not goanna happen again after I give you my exam tactics I use to resolve my inability to finish writing everything I know in an examination. For my pattern to work for you, your mind and hand must work in togetherness.

1.Plan/Mark Your Work

Can an Engineer build a house without first mapping out the plan?

Anytime they give you question paper and on permission to start, the first thing you do would determine whether you would finish writing everything you know in that exam or not. With respect to this, there are two category of people in exam hall:

• People that would read few/one question and start writing immediately and
• People that would read all the questions and strategize before writing

The first category always complain and get angry after exams while the second category feel relaxed after exams. In all the exams I wrote as a member of the first category , I could not finish writing even everything I know.

There is a saying that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Read all the questions in the question paper, asterisks the ones you know, then after asterisking everything you know, inspect.

Assuming in question #1 you know everything in it(there is a significant number of asterisks you put there), mark it good. If you are meant to answer 5 out of 7 questions, after asterisking, choose the question numbers in which you know almost everything in it. If question #3 has five sub-questions and you know(asterisked) the five sub-questions, then mark it good.

Do so till you choose the whole five questions you know much about.

2.Start From The Difficult to Easy

Would you use a sharp knife to cut grasses, then use blunt knife to cut a mango tree? If you were given a very sharp cutlass to deforest an area, it would be better to start from trees then to grasses. Reason is that it is easier to cut grasses with blunt knife than cut trees with it.

Similarly, exam just started, your brain is still sharp, full of energy and not stressed, so I can liken it to a sharp knife. As exam time goes on, it tends to become stressed and depreciating in brain power(now blunt knife). Then at a time, the difficult question would take you longer time than usual. Meaning, if you had answered that difficult question at the start of exam, it might take 20 minutes, but answering it deep into the exam time, might make the same question take you 35 minutes.

Another reason you should start from difficult to easy is this: human brains are more effective in a cool environment than in a noisy environment, In the first 30 minutes of exam, everywhere is cool, you know how it could be as exam time surpasses one hour and even worst as time draws closer to the stop time.

You can easily solve simple addition in a very noisy environment, but you may find it hard to solve calculus at the same noisy environment. Additionally, under pressure you might forget the things you know, especially the complex one. Hearing “30 minutes more” is enough pressure to make you forget complex equations.

Sometime ago, I used to start from easy ones to difficult ones, but finishing writing everything I know was a challenge. When I change tactics, I became a testimony

Please note that there is a difference between something difficult and something you do not know. If you do not know it, never start with it.

3.Time Yourself

Timing yourself is not enough, you have to rightly time yourself. In an exam of 3hours, set your own time as 2hours 30mins. These would help your subconscious mind, brain and conscious mind to communicate quicker/smoothly. Never forget to come to the exam hall with a wrist watch, very important. It is like going to war without a shield, your pen is the knife while your wrist watch is your shield.

4.Speed Up Your Writing Technique

It is not enought to know much, you must also write fast enough to finish writing everything you know in an exam hall. Have it in your mind that examination is not only a test of your knowledge but also a test of how fast you can write. Some people you are more intelligent than could be making a better result because they can write very fast.

You can pass an exam in your mind but fail to pass it actually, because you are slow in writing. To finish everything you know in an exam hall, your hand should be able to document the coinciding information in your brain in a very short time possible.

5.Reinforced study

You might read just once and think you have understood it, but your mind deceived you. To get something well sinked in the brain, you have to study over and over again. The reason you can still recite ABC-Z is that you read it over and over again in your elementary class.

The more the degree to which you know something, the faster you write it. If it is not well understood by you, you would end up thinking and perhaps cancelling/correcting your works. That alone is time consuming, even two minutes matters in examination hall

I hope you have learnt here how to finish writing everything you know in an exam hall, it is not enough to know, you must practice it too. Is there any other recommendation? Please publish it in the comment box