Studying for your exams requires hard work and dedication both inside and outside the classroom. When exams are looming and the stress is building, it can become incredibly easy to be distracted from the task at hand. So start the year as you mean to go on by creating a study sanctuary in the comfort of your own home. Here are our top tips which we hope you find useful:

Begin by setting up a dedicated study space - your sanctuary for the next few months. Having a dedicated space for revising will help to keep you ‘in the zone’ and focused on the task at hand. There are a few key elements to the perfect location which include:

• Privacy: Make sure this isn’t somewhere where you know people are going to be in and out of

• Comfort: It’s important to make sure you have a comfy seat with great back support if you intend to be there for a few hours

• Natural light and fresh air: Bright and breezy are the best combo for staying awake and engaged

Get creative - If you find it hard to get yourself to sit down and study, make your space somewhere you wouldn’t mind sitting. Take the time to create some insightful mind maps, or write your revision notes out in different colours and stick these on the wall. Why not grab some colourful post-it notes and make some interesting revision notes to stick up on the wall in front of you. Who says revision has to be boring!

Make the most of your time in the College

Unfortunately you will have to allocate time at home to study, but why not make sure that you are starting off on the right foot. The College aims to offer a calm and purposeful environment to help you reach your full potential. Whether it is in the quiet space of your Supervised Study Sessions, or gaining access to the more informal atmosphere of the Reading Room through consistently excellent work, we encourage you to make the most of your time here so that you can focus on reinforcing your learning at home.

Here comes the most obvious but the most important…

Remove distractions - tidy desk, tidy mind
Revision requires your full concentration, so understand the benefit of locking your phone away, you really won’t miss as much from the Whatsapp group chat as you think! Distractions can come in all sorts of forms, don’t just consider what's right in front of you. You may need to use the internet for researching a topic, but don’t succumb to the pitfalls of YouTube and social media. Plan your revision, prioritise tasks, and display this plan somewhere in your study space. This will help you to focus and reduce the risk of falling off track.