The GCSEs will likely set the trajectory for the rest of my life, and I have not started studying yet.
This post is a letter to myself, telling me exactly how to get my act together, and ace my GCSEs.
Clear Your Mind and Stop Catastrophising
When your mind is a mess, how can your decisions not be?
If your mind is a jumble of thoughts, anxiety, and generally panicky feelings: stop, and do something that will turn your mood around in the smallest time possible.
- Listen to or dance to a song
- Do 30 jumping jacks
- Pray for two minutes
After that, do all of these in order:
- Drink some water
- Wash your face
- Take deep breaths
Now think about your situation clearly.
It will not be the end of the world if you don’t do well on your GCSEs, but some opportunities will be lost to you. Maybe you won’t be get into the college that you want, maybe you won’t be able to take the A level subjects that you like, maybe the past three years would feel like a waste. All of these are bad things, but they are not the end of the world, and you can rebuild from them.
However, what can you do to avoid them?
What do you need to get done?
My main advice is to bang out any and all past papers you can for any particular topic.
You haven’t studied and don’t know the content? Try the past paper anyway, and see what you can do. After that you can Freesciencelessons it. Or GSCEmathsTutor it. And so on and so forth for any other subject.
Make flash cards from the mark schemes and the videos that you watch - you can review these to make sure that the past papers you did are sticking. (Flash cards need not be too complex, you can simply take a screenshot, and put it in a PowerPoint. You don’t need to write everything out. Work smarter not harder.)
Once you have done all the past papers for a subject, you are pretty much solid for it. You know what you are getting into.
However, there still may be a small minority of topics that weren’t covered in the past papers. This is particularly true for subjects such as History, Psychology, and Business Studies. — For them, go through the textbook, and make sure you know what all of the topics are on about. Make flash cards for them as well.
When do you need the things done by? + Simply tick off the boxes.
Once you have figured out what you need to get done, figure out when you need to get them done by. For example:
“I need all Biology Paper 1 past papers done by the 5th of May” (Which is five days before the Biology Paper 1 exam.)
Do the same for every subject you have, or at least for every exam you have before the half term break in between GCSEs.
Once you have done that, you simply have to work through it. You have a plan. You just need to execute it.
How to focus:
At this point, it’s either execute the plan, or be executed. You need to focus and you need to work.
At this point, not many focus life hacks would work, because they can either be hit or miss. You have no time to miss now.
When you wake up, look at your plan, and think about GCSE results day. Tick off a couple of boxes on the plan. Then take a break.
Then look at your plan again, think about GCSE results day, tick off some boxes, take a break.
Look at your plan multiple times throughout the day, remind yourself that you still have chance, and don’t throw that chance away.
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