Greetings readers, let’s go back to school! The waves of people going back to school have finally started to roll in, and especially for Year 11 and Year 12 students, it might feel like you’re headed into the deep end without much to hold on to. In this article, I’m going to outline three main tips for keeping on top of your content without overworking yourself. Remember, work smart, not just hard!

These tips will hopefully be useful for students of all ages, so let’s get into it:

Know Your Subject

Sun Tzu once said, “He who knows his enemy and himself need not fear the result of a thousand battles”. These tips are going to focus on that idea, and we’ll start by knowing the enemy, which in this case is what you’re actually studying. You might be tackling a variety of subjects across disciplines, or you could be tackling a bunch of humanities or a bunch of sciences and maths – either way, it’s essential that you know what style of studying works best for the subject at hand. To give you some ideas, for a subject like Biology, which has a bunch of content you need to know, you might want to make flashcards with broad questions on them – like “What are the main differences between animal and plant cells”, with a table comparing them on the other side. Or, for a subject like English, making a list of practice paragraphs on different themes, with the quotes you’d use for them included. Or for Maths, practice past papers! Many subjects come in between, but if you can work out what studying methods suit the subject you’re studying for, that’s an excellent place to start.

Know Your Style

What’s equally important to knowing the subject is knowing what style of study works best for you. If you learn best by listening and speaking, try recording yourself speaking your notes and listen to them on the way to school. If you learn well by practicing, then try write practice questions into a mini-quiz and swap them with a friend. There are so many different types of learners, so working out what types of study work best for you is really important if you want to keep your study engaging throughout the long slog of a school year.

Know Your Limits

And finally, what might be the most important tip of all is to know your own limits. Study is not your whole life, and you’re not doing anyone a favour (least of all yourself) by studying so hard that you burn out. The first thing to work out when planning your study schedule is how much study can you do per day without feeling down or sick or tired of it, and mixing in time for your hobbies and friends and relaxing throughout it all. Give yourself breaks, enjoy your holidays, and don’t let the HSC take away from the fact that you have a life! In the case of Year 11 students, don’t study so hard that you won’t be able to focus in Year 12 – focus on building your skills and practicing exam technique, not on memorising all the Prelim content. Overall, remember that we’re humans first and study machines last, and give yourself a break when you feel you need them.

Hopefully these have been some helpful tips for you all as you go back to school – if you spend the time thinking about how you study, you can save yourself a bunch of time and stop overworking yourself. Good luck to you all, and stay aware of your own mental state as you go through the school year – look after yourselves!