The start of every semester brings a new set of projects and deadlines. Here are some tips to help you take charge so you can ace whatever comes your way!

• Get into the thrill of the syllabus. Okay. So syllabi don’t exactly qualify as beach reading. BUT, they are one of the best ways to know EXACTLY what sort of assignments and deadlines you are up against. They indicate precisely what your professor wants from you and when.

• Tame the time management Cyclops. Syllabi are a helpful first step to time management. Not only is it helpful to read your syllabi, but it’s also a good idea take critical deadlines from them and enter them into a daily planner (you do have one, right?). When you do this for all of your classes, all of your deadlines are in one centralized place. Once you can see where your deadlines fall in relation to one another, you’ll get a sense of how much time you need to devote to each project.

• Adopt a Routine. While most of us have every intention of executing our to-do list, quite often, at the end of most days, we realize we haven’t made much progress at all. We often cannot control what happens in the middle of our day, but we have some say as to how we start and end our days. Try doing your most important tasks first thing in the morning or right before you go to bed. Once you make this a habit, you won’t have to decide whether to do a critical task first thing in the morning—you’ll just do it because it is part of your routine.

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We’ve all been guilty of pulling the all-nighter, but it’s actually one of the worst things you can do in terms of test performance.

If you can’t get the recommended eight hours of sleep the night before a test, try to get a minimum of three to five, so you’ll be rested enough to focus. And don’t forget to set two alarms the night before—one on your alarm clock and one on your phone.

Multiple choice exams may not seem so challenging when compared to essay tests, but sometimes they can stump even the most studious students. Here are a few tricks that can help you improve your chances of becoming a multiple choice champ:

• Read the ENTIRE question SLOWLY and try to come up with an answer yourself—BEFORE looking at the options. Then look down to see if your response is on the list of choices. Sometimes the answer options can plant crazy ideas in your head, if you are unsure. Go with your first gut response—that’s usually right.
• Cross out answers you know to be incorrect.
• For questions that have “All of the above” as an answer option, see if there are at least two correct statements. If so, “All of the above” will likely be the correct answer.
• A positive answer choice is more likely to be correct than a negative answer choice. So when in doubt, go with the positive!
• More often than not, the choice with the most information is the correct answer. So if you are completely unsure of an answer, choose the longest one.

For more information on multiple choice tests, take a workshop: http://www.loyola.edu/department/thestudy/studyskills/workshops.aspx.

As human beings, we understand our complex world much easier when we group things into categories. The same goes for studying complex material. Try to cluster similar terms and concepts together by making an outline or lists. Your grey matter will thank you for it!
For more tips, take a workshop: www.loyola.edu/department/thestudy/studyskills/workshops.

One of the best ways to absorb study material efficiently is to put the main formulas, concepts and key terms on one sheet.

Carry it with you and read it everywhere you go, from Starbucks to The Study. Look at the sheet until the professor tells you to put everything away and write down all of the formulas and lists you need immediately on the back of the exam. This way you won’t have to struggle to remember them during the test.

For more strategies on test prep tips, take a workshop: (www.loyola.edu/department/thestudy/studyskills/workshops).

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So you have a test today. You’ve studied,  you’ve been to office hours, you’ve met with a tutor, but you’re still freaking out. How do you just calm down, relax, and stay confident?

Try these basic guidelines:

1. Get a good night of sleep the night before and try to be in bed early. In other words, no cramming until 3:00am and no late-night TV or Internet. That way you can wake up a little early and not have to rush around because you slept through your alarm.
2. Eat something! Being tired and hungry will only stress you out more because you won’t be thinking clearly. Try to avoid fatty or sugary foods and don’t overdo it with caffeine. Too much caffeine will leave you jittery and unfocused. Instead, eat something healthy, walk to class energetically, and drink plenty of water.
3. Pack everything you need the night before. Then you won’t have to run around frantically in the morning looking for a pen or your calculator.
4. Breathe. Think Positive thoughts. Take three deep breaths, and let all of your hard work studying pay off.
5. If you start to get anxious during the test, take three deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, give yourself a moment to regain your thoughts, and then move on.
6. Check out the Counseling Center’s new website called “Relax Online,” which has some excellent relaxation and stress reduction strategies.

For more strategies on reducing test stress and anxiety, take a workshop: (www.loyola.edu/department/thestudy/studyskills/workshops).

If you have serious anxiety, you might also want to check out the Counseling Center’s services at:

www.loyola.edu/department/counselingcenter.

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You sit down at your laptop with every intention of prepping for your biology exam tomorrow. Hold on. OMG. You get a text from your BFF and you just have to respond because you forgot to update your Facebook status. Better change that ASAP! AND there’s the Grey’s Anatomy episode on Hulu that you still need to watch, so you can Skype with your friend from back home about it.  So…wait, where were we? Oh, right. Bio exam.

Let’s face it—while the online world can be an amazing source of information and entertainment, it can also be a titanic time-suck with no end in sight. Time that could be spent studying from “Gray’s Anatomy” gets squandered on the fun, but irrelevant, medical drama of the same name. But how do you get yourself to focus on membranes instead of Meredith? Fortunately, there are apps out there that can help you do just that by limiting the amount of time you spend on websites. The options are numerous; just do an online search using key phrases such as “internet time limit” or “internet time restrictions” or visit the itunes Store or Android Marketplace.

Here are some suggested products to try, based on student recommendations:

• RescueTime and Time Doctor: Apps designed to help you track your time to see where you are wasting it.
• Anti-Social, Self-Control, and Freedom: Apps which either block all of the known online time wasters (like Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or block all online activity for a set period of time.
• StayFocused: A free app on Google Chrome, which restricts the amount of time you can spend on time wasting activities.

For more study strategies, take a workshop at The Study: (www.loyola.edu/department/thestudy/studyskills/workshops)

When it comes to recalling information, it’s all about attention. In order for your thoughts on Theology to flow from short-term to long-term memory, you need to focus on the material with a minimum number of disruptions.

This means turning off your i-phone, email, and any other distractions. If you can’t live without them, reward yourself by checking them after you’ve studied for half hour (or after however long it takes for you to start squirming in pain). A little concentration will go a long way!

For more information, take a workshop at The Study:

(www.loyola.edu/department/thestudy/studyskills/workshops)

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We’ve all done it. We’ve all taken that big assignment, turned it into a multi-headed hydra, and convinced ourselves that the whole thing is hopeless— even before we’ve started.

The trick is to just start, even if it’s just to work on it for 10 minutes a day. Oftentimes, when you actually begin a task, you realize that it’s not as bad as you thought.  And if it is as bad as you thought (hey, it happens), don’t hesitate to contact your professor to get more direction. That’s what they’re there for!

For more time management tips, take a workshop at The Study.(www.loyola.edu/department/thestudy/studyskills/workshops)

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There probably isn’t a student on the planet who hasn’t crammed the night before (or right before) a major exam. You would think that more recently viewed information would somehow stick better. However, research shows that when information is learned over a number of sessions, students perform significantly better on tests.

So instead of suffering a four-hour math marathon immediately before the exam, try studying in chunks. Depending on your class, an hour a day starting a week to several days before the big test should increase your chances of acing it.

For more Exam Preparation Tips, take a Workshop at The Study: (www.loyola.edu/department/thestudy/studyskills/workshops)

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