Normally, when it comes to the Christmas holidays, students are desperately counting down the days till they can have two or three weeks of festive fun. I have discovered, however, as I travel around speaking to all you IB students out there, that many of you, especially second year diploma students with mocks coming up, aren’t as excited as one would imagine.
There is definitely a pressurised edge to this particular Christmas holiday. For one, it’s the last Christmas some of you will ever be a school student for, but more importantly, IB mocks generally take straight after in January. This can lead you to think you should be spending every waking hour revising manically for your mocks. But equally, Christmas is a busy time in its. What with all the shopping, parties and family events where you have to make small talk with your distant relatives, it doesn’t exactly lend itself to calm and productive revision…
In today’s blog, I thought I’d share of couple of things I found particularly useful in managing this Christmas period as an IB student. I hope it’s useful, and that you all have a lovely Christmas (or whatever holiday event you are celebrating)!
Be targeted
As I said earlier, you normally have about 3 weeks over Christmas. That may sound like a lot of time, but with the mix of general festivities, that time goes pretty quickly. Don’t think you’re going to have time to cover your entire diploma program. Instead, work out what you’re struggling with. For me, I was quite behind with Biology HL at this point. I decided, therefore, to focus a lot of my effort on straightening out my biology notes and practicing past questions. I didn’t neglect my other subjects, but rather did smaller amounts as I knew I was relatively confident in most of them. This definitely paid off for my final exams when I could use the work I did for my mocks for my actual exams!
Make a timetable
Your time can literally fly by at Christmas! This means that while you may have the best intentions when it comes to work and revision, things just don’t seem to get done. I found the best way to combat this was to have a realistic timetable to follow. Timetables are also the easiest (and often most satisfying thing to do!). My personal favourite website for helping construct them are GetRevising and RevisionWorld. By making a timetable, you can make time for both work and fun things!
If you want some more tips on making a timetable, check out our blog post on how to here.
Take some time out!
Some of you might not have to heed this advice so much… But it is super important you take a break this holiday! I’m sure you will all agree with me in saying the last term was a pretty tough one. With IAs flying in from all directions, and EEs demanding attention, it was probably quite intense. Because it was so intense, it’s good to give you brain a little break—you definitely don’t need to be revising on Christmas day for example. When making your timetable, make sure you put in some time for watching Netflix, hanging out with your friends and just generally enjoying yourself!
Come on a Lanterna Course!
If you want a little bit of extra help Christmas, why not come join us on one of our Winter Revision courses? They are an amazing way to go over the syllabus of an entire subject in just two days of intensive teaching, and will definitely put you in a great position for your mocks in January. They are booking up fast but we still have a few spaces left, so make sure you secure you place today!
