Mistake #4: Failing to consolidate before the exam
The outline is finished. And now it's time to study and memorize as the exam gets closer. Most law students simply try to memorize their whole outline, or a condensed version of it, over and over. What most do not do, though, is consolidate it.
"Most law students simply try to memorize their whole outline, or a condensed version of it, over and over. What most do not do, though, is consolidate it."
The fix: First, you have to know what consolidation is, in order to put it into action and start seeing the results. Consolidation is a final phase of exam preparation, in which you have already encoded the information you want to have memorized—that is, you have written out the entire outline (in chunks, of course) perfectly from memory at least one time. Having done this, you have stored the information into your brain, and now you need to make it readily accessible for the exam. Consolidation, or fishing back, does just this. When you consolidate, you essentially are testing yourself on what you have already encoded. It is the additional step of attempted recall that fishes the information back and stores it in your working, active memory. Time just right, this technique (assuming you have done the proper encoding) is extremely effective at quick and efficient memorization.
Stay tuned for the final Part 5.
