Are you looking for a new studying method? That may not be necessary. Instead, you should practice and use stoicism for exam prep.
If you’re the type of person who overthinks or gets nervous around exam season, you should practice stoicism.
Stoicism is a western philosophy that encourages its practitioners to use logic to combat anxieties (you can read more about it here).
How Can Stoicism Help You With Exam Prep?
So, how can this help you do well on your exams?
This philosophy will help you focus on the task at hand.
Instead of thinking about what may happen if you can’t solve something, or what can happen if you fail it, you’ll learn how to re-focus your mind on figuring out how to solve the problem.
Or, you may be pondering about how your lack of understanding caused you to do poorly.
Stoicism will get you to put the past behind you (and the future in the future) so that you can focus on what you can control in the present moment, which is figuring out how to solve the damn problem.
The past already happened. You can’t do anything about it.
The future is to be determined.
You also can’t do anything about it. You can alter it with certain actions, but there’s no guarantee of a specific outcome.
So you shouldn’t waste time and energy on those thoughts.
What you should do is put all your focus into the things that you can control right now.
Don’t worry about anything else.
How Stoicism Could Have Helped Me
In secondary school, chemistry was the most difficult class for me. I don’t know why, but I just had difficulty understanding it.
So every time I tried to solve problems for homework, I would freak out at least once.
I would slam my hand on my desk, occasionally throw my textbook against the wall, and give up.
My mind would tell me that I was going to fail the course and wouldn’t get into college because I couldn’t solve a certain question.
From here, I would stress out about my future and my past failures. I would obsess over things I couldn’t control.
What I should’ve done instead was be proactive about it.
I should’ve gone out to look for a tutor. Or I should’ve gotten a study buddy. I could’ve also learned and tried a better studying method, such as active recall.
Moreover, I could’ve also asked the teacher for more help.
Or I should’ve accepted that I wasn’t good at chemistry and just tried the best I could have instead of having unachievable expectations.
I should’ve also been more positive with what I did achieve.
And this was my biggest flaw as a student. I didn’t focus enough (or at all) on what I could have controlled.
I had to re-take the class a couple of times before I got a good enough grade for my college application.
It took many temper tantrums, but I eventually met my goal.
Conclusion
Don’t make the same mistake I did.
Focus on the now (or task at hand) and ignore the rest because the rest is already determined or is to be determined. You can’t control those events.