Final high school (sixth from college: i'm in the uk) exams in a few weeks.

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Basically I'm not revising, and I want to be revising. Over the last 4 weeks I've done three 1hr sessions total. It's not like I've been particularly busy either. The best way I can think of putting it is that I can't seem to muster up enough care to work. My ability to push myself to do thngs is really low. I can see the potential consequences of not studying but I don't seem to be assigning the psychological importance to them to make me focus on them. I think my problem with pushing myself to focus is ADD. Whether I do or not is, the times I've studied I've been physically tired from the mental effort of shifting focus. I tell you this partially so I look less pathetic and partially to stave off the responses telling me to just fucking do it you lazy piece of shit, though to be honest I think that type of response might actually be helpful, so yeah, I tell you that so I look less pathetic. The solution as I see it is to shift what my default focus towards the exams, to attatch some emotional importance to them rather than simply having to push myself really hard.

What I'm looking for is help psychologically recognising the exams as a big deal. I'm coming to you because as an intp community you're ostensibly similiar to me, so your reasoning is more likely to get through to me, and the plain old bias of me identifying with you should help me get over my "I don't want your fucking help" response. Also the added pressure of telling people might embarass me into doing something.

Possible problems off the top of my head:

I might be too secure in my evaluation of my intelligence. OK, having written that I think this might actually be false confidence: maybe I'm reluctant to admit i'm insecure about my intelligence, or perhaps my ability to succeed in general, so I refuse to become attatched to be externally measured..maybe I'm making myself out to be insecure so i can seem like less of a cocky asshole. I don't fucking know.

I know (I don't literally know, I mean I'm much surer of the following than I usually am about things) I resent the whole fucking stupid system that seems to have been (feels like it's?) designed to fuck me over and okay I'm just ranting.

Another worry is that I haven't got the mark back for my english coursework and I left it (three weeks) late to the point I may have totally fucked it up, and getting the grades I need for the universities I have offers from may actualy be impossible at this point. I may be able to wrangle my way in anyway because I got diagnosed with scheurmann's disease around that time and could tell the university I finally got x-rays done because I was in serious pain and that pain impaired my ability etc.





On a sideish note, I'm a bit of an insomniac atm to the point where unless I'm really tired (stay up all night tired, I have to masturbate to get to sleep even well after midnight (endorphins, relaxation etc.) Sorry if you didn't want to know that. Either way any tips on restoring a normal sleeping pattern, getting to sleep etc? Or better yet establishing one skewed the other way, so I can get up early in the morning and go to bed in the afternoon (so I can have time to wake up before exams.) Would it be effective to stay up stay up all night, then wait till, say 5pm to go to sleep? I've tried this before but I seemed to get a second wind after the period where I had to struggle not to fall asleep, though this may be because I just played computer games the whole time rather than simply keeping myself awake through willpower, or what I would do if I tried it again and go to the gym to tire myself out. Would sleeping pills be worth looking into?



p.s. my GPA is irrelevant . In england GPA is not sent to universities, or even calculated as far as I'm aware. I have offers from two universities that boil down to, if you get three (out of three) A grades welcome so this really is the deciding factor.

I'm sure there's a lot more I could post but I can't think of it at the moment, and (as i've said) I'm not sure if this will be useful anyway.

I've done a little proofreading but I seem to have just covered things up in doing so so I'll leave it as it is. Man I explain myself too much.

 

[digital angel]

I'm not in the UK and have not studied there so please take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. Would it help to keep in mind what your education will lead you to? In other words, look at your goals. What do you want to achieve with your education?

With respect to studying, would having a study buddy help?

I hope this helps. I'm a tax attorney in the U.S.

 

[digital angel]

With respect to sleeping, I recommend developing a sleep schedule or pattern, and keep it. Your body should adjust to it. Worrying or anxiety can keep you from sleeping. Before you resort to sleeping pills, you should try drinking a warm glass of milk a few minutes before you go to bed. If that doesn't work, you could try a calming tea.

I know someone who works out a couple hours before going to bed. It helps him.

Another option could be melatonin. You should probably talk to your family about this too.

 

[EditorOne]

You might want to throttle back on the self confidence. I have no idea what your exam process is like over there, but as an INTP you'll probably have little difficulty where all the elements of the problem are included in the context. Where you will run aground is in any math portion where you neglected to firmly commit to long-term memory any details needed to solve a problem, like pi, the formula for determining acceleration, the process used for quadratic equations -- all the stuff you mastered as it crawled on by in class but will not know what to do with because you have, in typical INTP fashion, forgotten all "the small stuff." You'll be sitting there trying to put together a mathematical space ship and constantly struggling to remember where you put the wrenches. There's no place on most tests to put down "I know how to do this, I was just too bored to remember it after I mastered it."
Maybe this will at least let you know where to focus your limited interest in studying: Collect and assemble details.
It's not ADD. It's INTP.

 

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just checking in. I haven't jumped ship. Thanks for the replies.

Now so I can pressure myself into doing this shit I'm gonna write a load of stuff here for all to see:

I'll go to bed at 10 tonight, 9 the next night, 8 the next, possibly etc. No computer for an hour before bed. (is an hour enough?)

probably won't make a glass of warm milk as I've tried it before and it didn't seem to help.

Will do some skipping at 7.

Will keep in mind my goal of going to university to get away from my parents, figure out what I'm going to do with a philosophy degree. (uni over here is cheap btw, don't mad at me.)

Will revise for an hour at 6 (wil move this to 5 once I start going to bed early), an hour before bed and an hour early in the morning even if I can't concentrate properly.

Will commit maths to long term memory in the next few weeks as well as short term memory before the exams.


Oh and because I have a massive hang up about breaking promises I promise I'll get three As. (too hung up promise I'll do everything on this list.)

 

[JoeJoe]

This... This thread... It's exactly what's currently going on in my life.

So yeah... I have 4 exams coming up, which cover the last 2 years of school (German Abitur) and my situation is almost identical to that of MrSmileyFace (or is that supposed to be an eye patch?).

Now about your last post:
1) I don't think making promises to strangers on the Internet will make much of a difference. It won't have any consequences whether you keep your promises or not. It's not as if any of us will ring you up and ask, whether you've spent an hour revising.

2) I don't think it's absolutely necessary to go to bed at 8. If you're an "owl" and for teenagers in general, it's better to follow your natural sleep rhythm and go to bed late. It results in both better health and learning success. As long as your total sleep is around 9 hours it's OK if you go to bed at 12.


I also have a math exam and what EditorOne said reflects really well how I feel about it. It's interesting to see how a solution is achieved, but I'm not interested in being able to solve every problem quickly and perfectly without having to look something up.

I think another problem is success. A couple of weeks ago I passed my driver's license test after I had failed it once (which is not uncommon in Germany, ca. 1/4th of all tests fail). After the test I realized, that I barely ever have a sensation of success. The problem is, that I am relatively successful (I suspect, that I'm in the top 3rd of most classes I'm in), but I didn't do anything to earn this success; Thus it doesn't feel like a success when I get a B+ for an exam I spent no more than half an hour learning for...

EDIT: So yeah... What do?

 

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re: 1
Dude you're ruining my placebo. Anyway it can't be worse than not promising a bunch of strangers on the internet.

re:2
Iunno. First exam is at 9 on some days which means I have to be in at 8:45 and I want to be able to revise in the mornings.

the smiley is the same as this one which I think of as anime eyes ^_^ but with hair covering one eye.

Re success. Iunno man. Maybe think about how shit failing would be?

 

[JoeJoe]

ReRe success: Problem is, all I have to do is learn the 3 days before the exam, and I can be pretty sure that I will not fail. I won't get a great result, but considering the effort I put into it I should be more than happy.

 

[slyspy]

I'm a freshman in college and if it makes you feel better, I have finals next week (first one is on Monday) and I haven't even thought about studying yet...until now. Damn. I always forget to study for some reason until the last minute and then I'm like 'oh shit that's tomorrow' but I guess these finals you are taking about are probably a lot more important. Oh and if you ever figure out how to stop being distracted and actually focus on your studies tell me because I was never able to accomplish that feat.

 

[JoeJoe]

OK, I've got the English exam behind me. I spent about 1 hour (or maybe less) reading some old work sheets. And it wasn't even relevant in the test. Test wasn't really hard. Wrote a nice text explaining how it's good to say that the earth belongs to us (srsly, when you think about it ).

So, Math, Chemistry and Geography to go. These won't be as easy...

 

[digital angel]

just checking in. I haven't jumped ship. Thanks for the replies.

Now so I can pressure myself into doing this shit I'm gonna write a load of stuff here for all to see:

I'll go to bed at 10 tonight, 9 the next night, 8 the next, possibly etc. No computer for an hour before bed. (is an hour enough?)

probably won't make a glass of warm milk as I've tried it before and it didn't seem to help.

Will do some skipping at 7.

Will keep in mind my goal of going to university to get away from my parents, figure out what I'm going to do with a philosophy degree. (uni over here is cheap btw, don't mad at me.)

Will revise for an hour at 6 (wil move this to 5 once I start going to bed early), an hour before bed and an hour early in the morning even if I can't concentrate properly.

Will commit maths to long term memory in the next few weeks as well as short term memory before the exams.


Oh and because I have a massive hang up about breaking promises I promise I'll get three As. (too hung up promise I'll do everything on this list.)

Sounds good. You can do a lot with degree in philosophy. My degree is in political science and philosophy. I went to law school afterwards and then pursued a tax law degree. I'm a tax attorney, now...and working towards being an adjunct law professor.

The only promise I want from you is that you'll do your best. By the way, I want you to know that nothing you do or say will disapoint me. I'm here to support you. This forum is a good place for people like us. You will succeed.