Name: Revision, exam and wellbeing tips for university applicants | Ep 1: Manchester Voices podcast
Uploaded: 2025-01-08T00:08:18.000Z
Duration: 22 min 21 s
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This is Manchester Voices, a podcast run by students at the University of Manchester.

We'll be talking all things unique, from how to research your options and choose where to go, to student life and study tips, and exploring the amazing city we live in.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Manchester Voices.

My name is Maddy, and I am a second year drama and film student, and my fun fact about Manchester is that The Atom was first split right here at the University of Manchester.

I'm Grace, and I'm a pharmacology student in first year, and my fun fact is that there are over 200 languages spoken in Manchester.

I'm a second year sociology student, and my fun fact is that Manchester has got one of the oldest libraries in the UK.

Today's topic is about revising, studying.

I think people underestimate the power of going with somebody and revising.

I like having somebody there to just bounce off.

We don't even need to talk, but it's having somebody there with me.

I set an hour timer, and I think, how much can I get done in this hour?

And then I keep on going and going, and by the time it's gone, four hours have already gone.

And I like to listen to music I don't always listen to.

So I dedicate an album of someone that I like, but I wouldn't really go out of my way, and I just sit and just listen to it on a low volume, because I find if I listen to music that I like, after a bit, I'll start bopping to it.

And then I'm a bit distracted, and I'm like, oh, I'm not really doing my work anymore.

So I think that helps me with actually getting my work out and revising and sitting down and getting the work done. 100%.

There's also, I've seen it, and I've tried it before, but listening to either movie because those are designed to make you focus in on what you're watching or doing.

Especially I think the Mario Kart soundtrack is supposed to be really good for people to just sit and study to, and I will not lie, I have tried it.

So that's just going to throw that in there on the topic of music.

I think, yeah, just not making it solely you sitting in your room and just doing hours and hours and hours in one go, and leaving it all to the last minute.

I do it with my friends that even if we're not talking in the hour, you just look up and you have a little laugh, and then you just get back to it.

And it's just making it not hell for you.

Setting some boundaries for yourself and knowing that, oh, after this, I'm going to go to the gym, or I'm going to go out, I'm going to cook a nice meal, something like that.

So you can look forward to something to break up your vision and things like that.

And I mean, I'm not the best example of this, because I definitely, I love to cram.

I love doing it in a very short amount of time.

And this is, again, I think I'm very much motivated by fear of wanting to get it out, wanting to do as much as possible.

And I don't know about you, but I have DAS, so it's the Disability Support Service here.

I haven't utilized those, but I And it's awesome.

The only issue is that if you do have DAS, you then, especially from the winter term, you don't have a break, which is something that I didn't realize.

All of my essays were due in the last week, and then I had two days before the term started up again.

So definitely keeping that discipline of having a schedule and then having to follow it, I think is one of the things that work best for me.

Even though it is very hard, I just have to continue to force myself to sit down and work.

If I finish writing a page, I'm like, great, I can have some chocolate now.

Yeah, I think that's generally kind of how I work.

Well, I have ADHD, which, you know, I think is a superpower, but it also is awful.

Because you don't have that like the motivation center in your brain.

So it takes a while for me to start revising or doing anything.

So I think kind of the biggest thing is just have you have to have discipline.

And I think that's for any student, you do just have to have a lot of discipline of getting up and going and doing things.

So I always just try and motivate myself in external factors.

I'll buy myself a little snack after studying.

So I kind of find that if I motivate myself with other people as well, so like my flatmates, sometimes even if we're at home, we would like FaceTime and do FaceTime studies so that we're both on our phone and we can hold each other accountable for doing the work for a certain amount of time, like an hour or something like that.

Or going to the library with someone and then saying we're going to do an hour and then we can have a break or go and get a snack or something like that just so I can have specific focus time, I guess.

No, I'm similar in the sense of like, I reward myself.

So if I do XYZ, I might buy myself clothes.

Or after this essay, I'll buy myself the jacket that I really wanted for ages.

I think life can get busy for uni students and anything can happen.

It's like you still have your personal life as much as you have to do uni.

I do like to write my to-do list and have your assessment dates and know what's coming to be organised.

I think that helps me a lot so I can oversee like, oh, I've got this essay during the week.

I need to buckle up and look at my notes now.

And I think in terms, I don't know how your programmes work, but ours are pretty like, you kind of know what's going to come up on each week.

Like each week you have a test topic, essentially an essay topic.

So I think very early on in the semester, I'll go through and pick, this is a life hack, I pick like the week that I know I'm going to be interested in and then I make sure to go to everything and do like all the extra work for that and keep really good notes.

So like when revising period does start, I have like really strict kind of notes already set up, which helps I think, especially with like ADHD, because doing everything in one weekend is not always the best way to do it.

And it kind of is just like that built up over time that I think professors are looking for in essays at least.

And what you were saying like about the body doubling of the other person there with you.

Okay, I guess in general, do you have any revision or study tips that have really benefited you guys?

Kind of flowing into the next question is this, how do you motivate yourself, especially after maybe possibly a long semester?

I think I recently started this semester because I did have my first uni exams.

After that, I was like, okay, for this one, I'm going to try and do something a bit different where I'm going to start doing a bit more work throughout the semester.

So I don't leave it all to the last minute because I did do a bit of that.

So I kind of gave myself goals if I did this amount of revision and like started going to the gym and doing all of these things that would make it easier for me in the long run to revise that I would give myself a reward.

So me and my friend were going to go out and go for brunch at these places.

And like if we kept meeting the milestones, so we kind of had that between each other that we were motivating each other to do.

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Revision, exam and wellbeing tips for university applicants | Ep 1: Manchester Voices podcast

stuff

discipline

absolutely

awesome