Facing An Exam? You Can Roar!

Image from blog.ideas4all.com

It was like the epic David Vs. Goliath battle. Eventually, Kenyan teachers won the fight for better pay – after three weeks of neither lifting their chalks to write on black boards, nor striking their red strokes on our children’s books.

Only the public school-going children bore the brunt of the strike, their private school counterparts continued with learning uninterrupted. The worst hit are the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education/ Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCPE/KCSE) candidates who have toiled and moiled all year long preparing for the monumental exams.

Although the education minister has pushed the exam dates by three weeks, students are nonetheless nervous and asking themselves such questions as: Am I adequately prepared? Which topics have I not studied enough? Will I make the grade? Valid concerns, aren’t they?

In his book, Journey to Academic Success and Beyond, Paul Bundi writes that academic success beginnings with small steps like doing homework, studying one topic at a time, holding discussions groups and so on. “The fabric of success can never be complete if you ignore even a single thread.”

In this book, Paul, the top student in the country in the 2002 KCSE, shares tips to excel in exams:

• Create a good studying environment – the actual physical area of study and friends
• Embrace the right attitude – a positive attitude will present the best levels of success
• Have goals and commit to them
• Cultivate self-discipline
• Study right – deepen understanding with reviews, meditation and group discussions
• Manage time –  ‘now’ is the most important resource and procrastination shows  lack of courage
• Overcome fear – Paul writes that a small measure fear points to what its important, but it should not colour the mind

“Academic victory is sweet, but it cannot be reached by dreaming alone. It can only be achieved through hard work applied in the correct manner.” – Paul Bundi’s Journey to Academic Success and Beyond.