okay so you may prolly be scared for your a levels paper tmr, trust me, I’ve been there and done that. I would say I did generally quite well for prelims, yet i still feel a bit nervous when i walked into the exam halls.
But I guess if you’re reading this you need help calming your nerves and I guess I can split this into a few segments.
firstly, to do good you need to feel good. The night before make sure you get plenty of sleep. I slept at 10.30pm? for all my papers and woke up at 5.30 am for my morning papers and 11pm-8am for my afternoon papers which was most of them. A good sleep is very very important. Oh but I know you’re wondering, ” what if i cant sleep”. well time to panic and cry. jk lol the reasons why you cant sleep is cause your brain is so occupied. I would say just sit up on your bed, relax and just calm down like really, I would look through funny videos to just chill and all. Okay now that you and nice and tucked into bed go sleep.
Now that you’ve woken up, I think showering is very important. You feel better and more awake I guess after a shower? (If you don’t shower normally when going school you’re weird) Now go make some breakfast, I like to eat oats with nutella and blueberry and yogurt and tea. Yum yum in my tum tum mmmm. Okay now go to school
On your way to school idk what you wear ? your lucky socks ? (I actually have one and I do wear them for the harder papers lmao) Carry your notes to get the school kid aesthetics. I would only read the important parts ( turns out its everything in the syllabus) but srsly, I would ve been roughly quite well versed in certain topics already. But I would read up more on certain parts that I don’t feel as confident about first, then read those that I’m confident about, then re read those I’m not confident again. Repeat until you reach school. I would scroll through my phone once in awhile and look through insta or tiktok to see my boy magic john and his 28 deg privacy protection.
Now you’re in school. Walk in like a boss, knowing you are gonna do well in every paper dab. Make sure you left early lmao or you gonna start running 2.4 in 1 min to your class. ( I was actually late for 1 paper HAHAHAHHAHAHA) Find somewhere quiet and read your notes, think about what your teachers told you and the strategies that you maybe developed for the paper. My strat for tackling the qns can be found in one of my posts go find it. But in summary, GP: choose 3 qns I am confident, and then plan out and see which points are better and do that one. Paper 2 just annotate and make sure I read the question types correctly, if no time for AQ just whack ah. Econs: I love macro econs so I always do that first. Chem: I like to do organic so i did those first then ill do those regurgitate type of qns you know like periodic table then ill do those calc qns then do those impossible to do noble prize typa qns. Bio: I usually do from the back HAHAHAHAHHAHA then i do the front then to the centre, generally i found that’s how the difficulty of qns are spread, paper 3 I always do the front part first then the essays. Math: Paper 1 I just do the back then the front same thing yea, paper 2 I do stats first before doing pure math.
Okay next now you’re in the classroom, take out your pens and stuff and lay out in front of you. Put your entry proof with your ez linlk/IC on the top right hand to facilitate checking of your ID. When you get the paper, check everyth and you know sneakily look out the qns and see where the easy ones are and rmb them so you can get to them straight, so you know you don’t waste time. Also don’t be a dick and set alarms of when the paper ends, you just gonna cause panic to yourself and others.
Okay so now you’re doing the paper. If you dk how to do, skip lol. Lose 5 marks better than 30 marks. Forgive but don’t forget about the betrayal Cambridge just gave you and just like my ex- they are always cunning and always hurt you in ways you least expect it. Once you do finish everyth (hopefully) continue with the questions you dk. Personally I like to go toilet in exams AHAHHAHAH, its to send a msg to others and tell them “Yea Im so good at this I don’t need extra time to do this mhm, and yes I have small bladder mhm” jkjk I go toilet to just take small mental breaks and refresh myself esp during aftnoon papers you maybe sleepy and make some careless mistakes. Once you’re done with the paper, check and check and check again. You can never be too safe. Dont sleep in the paper pls thanks, check until the time runs out.
Now you’re done with one paper, but what if you F up? Dont worry. If you F up, chances are everyone else F up. Unless the only blank you can fill in is your name and register number then yea you’re pretty F-ed. But don’t worry, just be sad for awhile and stop thinking about it already. Dont let it keep affecting you and your future with other papers. Just like my ex, they always scar you for life and make you scared of another rs and make you overthink about whether you are worthy and what went wrong, Cambridge does the same thing. (Gee taking exams is like breaking up, no wonder no one likes exams) But yes just focus on the next paper, ask around what type of qns came out, and focus your energy and what hasn’t came out yet.
Alright repeat these steps until you finish your paper and you should be good to go. But before that here’s some motivation.
You have already done your best in this preparation. A lvls is no doubt an important exam, but don’t think that if you F up, this will be the end of you and your life. There are many opportunities to do better one. Rmb all the papers you’ve done and just focus up. The papers may be hard but you got this! jys and atb