Is it better to stay up late on the night before an exam, learning those last-minute facts, or to get up early and revise in the morning before the exam?
• For 40 years, I have told my students that, the day before their exam they should pack some sandwiches and a can of drink, and go for walk in a high and windy place, with a friend. Forget all the exam tension, ensure that they are fit, and give all the knowledge they have acquired time to sort itself out.
Yet when I come in on an exam morning about 7am to check on everything, I invariably find all the students sprawled over the stairs, red-eyed and yawning, in a cloud of (illegal) cigarette smoke, poring over their notebooks. Some of them have been there almost all night. I can’t think of a better way to reduce your efficiency, and indeed some fall asleep during the exam.
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If you must revise at the last minute, the evening before would be better, so that you will be fresh in the morning.
John Anderson, Warsaw, Poland
• Neither. It’s too late by then. If you don’t know it by the night before the exam, there’s nothing you can do apart from try to relax a bit and rely on all the hard work you’ve done before. (You have done all the work before, I hope)
Gail Volans, Brean, Somerset, UK