The Board exams are round the corner. Naturally each of you, dear children, might find yourselves cracking under the pressure of tackling so many subjects all at once and doing full justice to each. The ultimate objective is to pass the exams with good marks. Naturally, at this juncture the best thing to do would be to chalk out a list of your priorities and then work accordingly.

Underlined below, are a few useful steps, which you could try out and see if they make any difference to your pattern of study and help you to assimilate things better.

• Study the most difficult subject first. For the X class students, who must study all subjects as compulsory ones, it is most likely to be either Mathematics, Physics or Chemistry, For class XII students (arts/science/commerce) the most commonly dreaded subjects happen to be Accountancy, Psychology, Economics etc.
  
  
• Alternate one heavy subject with a light one. For example immediately after physics do not study Mathematics or Geography or Economics.
  
  
• If you (let us focus only on class Xth for the moment) attempt to study one tough subject after another, you will end up very bored and retain nothing and your entire effort will be futile. For instance, check out this pattern: Maths —-Social studies—-Physics, one of the language (English/Hindi or Sanskrit) followed by Biology, another language and finally Chemistry.
  
  
• After the most difficult subject your priority should be the subject you are weakest in. For some students, the most difficult subject and their individual weak subject might coincide, while in other cases it just might not. You must work very hard to improve your grasp of the subject in order to improve your scores in the final exams.
  
  
• If you happen to be an average student, then you need not pay too much importance to the comparatively less complicated subjects like English, History, Civics/Political science, Hindi/other vernaculars etc. These involve a certain degree of memorizing and a little innovation, which, I am sure; most of you can comfortably manage.
  
  
• To secure good marks in subjects like geography, biology and even geometry, you must devote a lot of time to improving your drawing/sketching skills. In other words you need to practice a lot. It would do you no good to know the theory portions by heart, and yet produce abominable diagrams.
  
  
• Avoid cramming in whatever subject you take up for study. The ideal thing to do would be to understand and learn the fundamental points and then to reproduce them in your own words in a not too elaborate manner.
  
  
• You must bear in mind that filling pages after pages with irrelevant matter and little of substance will do you no good. In fact, a concise, to the point answer will fetch you more marks than a long convoluted one.
  
  
• In case of geography and /or history, you must improve upon your map pointing skills. Accuracy will go a long way in improving your scores in the subject and consequently in your grand total.
  
  
• As all of us are aware, certain portions of each lesson (irrespective of the subject) are easily understood, and the candidates can recall them automatically, as and when required. Hence one need not pay too much attention to things like these.
  
  
• In case of subjects like geography, statistics etc you must be well-versed with the graphs, bar charts, pie charts and all kinds of statistical data. Remember, the smallest error could play havoc with your performance.
  
  
• For mathematics and chemistry you would be required to understand and remember the important terms, basic formulae and equations, rather than learning by rote, the examples given in the text. You ought to be in a position where you are capable of tackling any/all problems presented to you.
  
  
• Do not depend too much on the 10-year question papers or the sample question papers. They are not the panacea to your woes. Their purpose is to merely demonstrate the trend/pattern of questions. Therefore the common beliefs e.g. X year’s questions will not be repeated next year, or than question Y is repeated every two years, so this year you can safely skip it, are all bunkum. If you are focusing on these papers, as the summum bonum of your preparations, well, then you are certainly in for a shock.
  
  
• Remember that quality counts more than quantity. Therefore you must ensure that your weekly quantum of study in each subject is maintained at the optimum level. Spending hours and hours over a particular subject or even burning the midnight oil will be of no use unless qualitative efforts are made.