Exams are approaching. You don’t feel prepared. You want to feel prepared. You NEED to feel prepared. First of all, here’s some good news: you still have time to learn a shit ton of stuff. You have more than a month.

Here’s the first thing you need to do:

BUY A FUCKING CALENDAR

And I mean a real, physical calendar (none of that Google Calendars bs)! What you’re going to do is check off everyday till your exams. You’re going to visualize how close you’re getting, and how unprepared (or hopefully, prepared) you feel.

This is hopefully going to create a sense of urgency, and honestly, if it doesn’t, you deserve to fuck up your exams.

There I said it: if you don’t have the motivation or willpower to work your butt off this final month, then you deserve to do badly.

This is the final stretch, and the most important one.

You need to get in the mindset of a fucking warrior. You need to control your urge to get distracted. You need to hold yourself accountable. You need to study. Now, when you actually study, and listen up because this is important, you’re going to want to use a Timer. Here, I’ll repeat that:

USE A TIMER

I don’t really care if it’s a physical timer or one you have on the Internet, but just time yourself working.b And every time you feel like procrastinating, and then you subsequently give in, you’re going to also time how long you spent procrastinating. Record all of this in an excel spreadsheet.

Btw I know this sounds like a shit load of steps but honestly it’s remarkably easy: just time yourself working and time yourself being distracted. What you’re going to see is that holy Jesus poop, you THOUGHT had sat down for 6 hours on your desk doing math, but only 2-2.5 of those hours were you actually working.

Hopefully this makes you feel like shit.

Just remember that there is someone out there that spent almost 5 hours working in that 6-hour period. And that person is going to kick your ass.

Wait, what’s that? You’re calling that person a nerd? If being a nerd means going after what you want and working on it so hard that you’re going to get it, then please, I want to be a nerd!

Alright, so far you have a timer to actually see how long you’re working and you’ve bought a physical calendar to create a sense of urgency day by day. Now, you need to realize that the IB can only be fought if you work smarter, and not harder. In fact, that’s the motto of our website. If you spend 5 hours simply reading the Math Textbook instead of actually writing out solutions, congratulations:

YOU’RE STUPID!!!

Here’s what you should do instead (or something like it whatever). Let’s say this is your first day of proper revision for Math:

Spend 1 hour identifying what you’re good at and what you’re bad at. Literally open up a Google Doc, make a table, and jot down your strengths + weaknesses for Math. Something like this: