How to spice up your revision

The sun is out, the sky is blue, there’s not a cloud to spoil the view, but it’s raining, raining in your heart.

Alcohol intake is down. Caffeine intake is up. The bar is as lively as a morgue. The library has assumed the popularity, temperature and smell of a lump of meat in an ant’s nest…

Sound familiar? Exam term has reached it’s pinnacle. Except that pinnacle has too many connotations.

Luckily, this highly useful and practical guide is here to spice up your revision schedule.

Yes mate, I’m talking to you

1. Making Notes

Revision can be much improved by relevant musical accompaniment. Blast out a spot of Handel at top volume and then explain politely to your neighbours that it is of critical importance in your efforts to gain an understanding of the politics of 18th century Britain.

A bit of Hard Rock is definitely going to help that geological sciences paper. Ditto Pharrell Williams’s ‘Happy’ (on repeat) and that Psychology.

The musical strategy has the twin advantage of furthering your own education through immersion, and ruining all other efforts to revise in the vicinity, thus taking out your competition.

Extending your immersive revision into visual-auditory exercises (i.e. watching films) at top volume also works.

Headphones: overrated

2. Up the Cam without a Paddle

A serene atmosphere is definitely the most conducive to revision, and what could be more serene that a punting trip?

Don’t forget that all important photo to splash all over Facebook and Instagram so your friends at home can see how absolutely normal and unpretentious Cambridge life is.

“Just another average day of revision… #cambridgepunt #campunt #cunt

3. The Bar Humbug

Take a book to the college bar. Preferably something really appropriate like a Biology textbook listing the ill effects of alcoholic consumption so you can make everyone else to feel guilty as they try and enjoy a calming drink on a Friday night.

Spread your revision into the wider bar environment too. Put up a dartboard of your most hated author/scientist/historical figure. William the Conqueror works nicely: 180 points for hitting his eye and giving the Norman bastard a taste of his own medicine. Alternatively, who needs a board when you can throw things at a prelimmer?

Next order a Bloody Mary, and then loudly explain that Mary was in fact very effective and arguably not at all bloodthirsty as a ruler. This is a historical myth which developed as a result of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs [insert 10 minute lecture on gory details of burnings. Watch friends slowly slip away to be sick in the toilet…].

“And then, when it gets really hot, their eyeballs pop…”

4. Revision High

Rather like sex, many people find revision more fun when done in a illicit location. (There may on occasion be other similarities… a lot of effort for an anticlimactic result perhaps… but let’s not depress ourselves.)

How about the college roof? Gratuitously breaking college rules will give you an excellent feeling of revenge on the college for putting you through this difficult time. And what’s the worst that can happen?

a) You get sent down… But, more importantly, you don’t have to take any exams.

b) You fall off and die… But, more importantly, you don’t have to take any exams.

Perfect.

5. Why stop here?

Spread your revision on. Show your agony to the world. Take a book to Sainsburys… Go sit in the Fitzwilliam museum to feel wise and cultured… Lounge in the Botanic Gardens (although this is not without dangers).

BEWARE: Smug picnicking gits

Alternatively, treat your self to a stress relieving abusive comment. We can call it ‘doing a mock’.