During the time writing this, I am in my exam phase. I have to write 5 exams in 4 weeks, with the most scaring exam right in front of me. Math will be written in 5 days at the beginning phase of the learning. Talking to fellow students made me realize everyone has a different approach on preparing for an exam and that is crazy.

I hate flashcards

Some people are learning with flashcards, others just scroll through the scripts and slides, and others just write summaries. Every of the before mentioned methods work for me, except for flashcards. I can't tell why, but the whole concept makes me so unproductive. Don't get me wrong, I am still technically learning with them, it's just the least pleasing method and I feel like forgetting everything after the exam, so the knowledge is not sustainable. Of course, I forget most of the content too when I prepare with different methods, but I feel like getting faster back in to the topic if I need it ever again.

For anyone who still loves his flashcards, I strongly recommend RemNote. It proved to be by far the best learning tool out there, especially for people who love learning with spaced repetition or flashcards in general. If you're not into flashcards like me, it's still worth a shot because it has an awesome system for managing and creating notes. (not sponsored)

How I prepare for exams

For the most part, I just read through the provided slides and try to practice the tasks that can occur. If there is something that you just need to know by rote, I am learning it directly from the slides. But I feel like that's only half of the truth.

During the learning phase, I actually just learn and repeat what was taught during the lectures. I know that is obvious but, I will guarantee you, it's not. Courses like math and engineering stuff requires you to understand the topic profound, and I feel like a lot of people start to understand the topic at the moment they try to prepare for the exam. Revealing that it is more effective to fully commit to your lectures and work them over to understand the taught topic during your lecture phase. This makes it easier to follow your lectures generally but takes you the need to understand concept's during your preparation time because you already know them.

This makes the exam phase actually far more chill than the lecture phase, which doesn't apply for most of the students. At least I feel that way.