Hello lovely readers! I’ve got my first (of three) exam tomorrow (Archaeology 2A!!) and I’m feeling confident about it but still slightly stressed.  The next on is on Monday and the last is on Wednesday.  It’s busy but I’m glad to get them over with so I can go back to Kansas and hang out with my cat.

I’ve been deep in revision the past week by reading over my notes and catching up on a few lectures I missed because I was sick and didn’t want to infect everyone else with a terrible awful cold.

Just because I thought you all would be interested and not because I don’t have anything else to write about… I figured I’d share with you how I revise for exams…

Generally speaking, I try to avoid attempting to learn new things during revision.  I’ve sort of accepted that if I didn’t learn it over the semester I’m not going to learn it now… which I’m not really sure is a good view to have but this forces me to spend my time synthesizing and better understanding the topics I read about and do understand.  Because, honestly, I’ve learned it’s better to understand 4-5 topics really well than mediocrity understand a whole bunch. Example: my archaeology class covered from the Mesolithic to the Roman Iron Age in Scotland, I focused my time on the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman Iron Age, and ‘Archaeology and the Public.’  I only have to answer two out of six questions and I know there should be two out of those topics.

I’m also a huge fan of documentaries and podcasts.  Reading all the time gets really boring and after a while I tend to lose focus so by switching up my tactics I tend to get more done.  And while, yes, documentaries and podcasts are going to be more general than the specifics from reading and my notes they offer a good contextual overview that truthfully in history is really nice to have.  For my Modern Scottish History class, I’ve been watching the BBC Scotland series.  It’s a little broad but again, it’s a really nice way of condensing the information into something easily understood by a wide audience.

I’m also a big fan of breaking out the markers and colouring some spiffy charts or drawing my notes.  I’m made quite a few for my archaeology and osteology classes.  You can check those out below.

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But, lastly, and arguably most importantly I go do other things.  I’ve gone to the NMS, running, and climbing this week.  I’ve also hit up the pub quite a few times when 18c Scottish politics just gets a bit too annoying.  I take the time I need to study but then realise when I’ve hit the study limit and put the books away for a while… and play Tomb Raider… I mean Lara Croft is an archaeologist so it does relate… I actually just got back from seeing the new Disney film, Moana. It was so good and the animation was beautiful.

So that’s what I’ve been doing this week.  A lot of studying but also making sure to take some time to go to the gym or go for a run to get some fresh air before exams drive me crazy… enjoy this nice video instead of a weekly vlog.