Purple Squirrel Eduventures (PSQ) is an edu-tech start-up that conducts industrial visits and educational tours for students across the country. They provide an industry-based experiential learning program, enabling students to make informed career choices, backed by a comprehensive industry mix of Engineering, Media, Startups and social enterprises with big companies most relevant to the curriculum. The company that was incorporated on Sep 24, 2013, has been incubated by SINE, IIT Bombay and has already delivered 8000+ unique experiences in experiential learning, associating with 350+ campuses and corporates, across 8+ destinations within just 1 year of its operations.
PSQ understands the pressure students can be exposed to during exams and how it also forms as an important entry point for many vocations. With a large number of aspirants for top positions, exams are the only means to choose between candidates. So here are some tips by the experts at PSQ to see through and generally do your best this exam season:
- Perspective: A lot of students consider exams as an obstacle in their path; something to be feared. If this perception changes to students viewing exams as a knowledge building exercise rather than a hurdle, they will start enjoying the process, reducing the stress automatically. We at PSQ believe exams can be a stepping stone to progress and schools/colleges should encourage students to evolve through this process without instilling fear.
- Goal Setting: Lay out a yearly goal for career and academics, then break it down into immediate goals that you want to achieve in the near future.
This will motivate students and push them to work harder. Ideally, goals should be challenging, flexible, time-bound and achievable. Challenging to create some excitement; flexible so that students are not disheartened – for example, if a student does not secure a seat in IIT he should look at other options for engineering instead of giving up engineering all together. Achievability makes a student set realistic goals and time bound helps measure the output to take relevant action.
- Instilling the Reading Habit: Glance at the newspapers or pick up a novel of purpose and interest and make a habit of reading every day for at least 20-30 minutes. PSQ believes this will help enhance the grasping power of students and hence, text book material for exams even while studying at the last minute, will be absorbed faster. The student’s comprehension of the subject along with speed will increase by up to 50% according to a research, if they take an interest in reading different topics regularly.
- Study Schedule: It’s important to have a time table and stick to it so as to streamline your prep and not get overwhelmed with the tasks ahead. Keep ticking every topic of every subject that you have finished studying and treat yourself to an incentive at the completion of every task. For example, for every two chapters completed you could give yourself permission to watch 10 minutes of television.
- 5. Evaluate Patterns: Go through the question papers of previous year’s examinations to look for a pattern. More often than not, there will be certain set of questions that have been repeated every year. The idea here is not to restrict yourself and study only what has been asked earlier but to prioritize topics that are more important than the others and master them to secure a certain basic percentage of the overall askance.
- 6. Study Groups: Understand and exchange knowledge from one another so everyone is mutually benefited; that’s the primary purpose of study groups. To avoid wasting time, this exercise should only be carried out for fixed periods and for specific purposes. You should have a study group of 3-4 other people to
discuss things like specific concepts some of you’ll didn’t understand in class, your answers to practice papers just before finals or concepts that might not be in the text books but requires practical solutions like case studies.
- 7. Meditation and Outdoor Activities: Probably one of the most under-rated, yet most effective tools for success, is meditation. The greatest source of motivation for students is when they are at peace with themselves. PSQ thinks a fair balance of work, pleasure and relaxation is needed for youngsters to excel in their chosen field of study. Even listening to your favorite music or just a walk in the park really helps the mind function better.
