It’s always good to be philosophical in the face of challenges; that’s why we’ve put together a list of some of our favourite quotes relating to the various facets of revising for your A Levels.
Stress
“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” – Jim Goodwin
It’s a scene many students know all too well. Sat in front of books all hours of the night, with red eyes and surrounded by empty cans of energy drinks, desperately trying to cram before an exam. It needn’t be like this! You absorb information far more effectively if you are relaxed, so it’s a much better plan to sleep properly, avoid caffeine and plan enough time throughout the revision period for relaxation and activities that you enjoy. Keep your mind calm and focus in short bursts and you will probably find that you take a lot more information in.
“For fast acting relief, slow down” – Lily Tomlin
It’s so important, when keeping calm and stress-free, to slow down your internal thought processes. It’s all too easy when under pressure to let your thoughts run away with you, reaching conclusions without properly thinking everything through. To prevent this from happening there is a really easy exercise that anyone can do: consciously introduce a one second gap in between each word in your head. This will force you to slow everything down, giving you the time to consider properly and to free yourself from becoming distracted so easily. You will find yourself in a much more relaxed state, which is where you want to be to get the most out of your revision.
“We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares.They fatigued only the muscles, we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves.”- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
Exams are, in part, so stressful because it is a way of directly judging your work. Instead of getting anything concrete out of the exams as you may do in a job, your performance is just that – a performance. You are doing nothing more or less than showing what you can do, and that thought can be quite a daunting one. But it can also help you to put everything into perspective and see A levels as they really are, which can be liberating in the face of all that stress and anxiety. At the end of the day, you must simply play the game and learn from the experience – which will enable you to grow and learn in the long run.
“A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.”- Aesop
It’s really important that you have somewhere quiet and calm where you can revise in peace. If home doesn’t cut it then head to your local library – or even your school library – until you have somewhere that enables you to concentrate and focus properly. By avouching all of the anger and stress that seems to be so inextricably linked to revision, you’ll have a much easier time.
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