Have you ever had to cram a study session the night before a big test or exam? I feel like we all have, at some point. The night before that test or exam, we realized we were not prepared for our test, and tried to study for hours on end, hoping that we would remember what we’re studying, and feeling so stressed and under prepared. You walk into that test the next day, and you either remember what you studied the night before, or your mind just goes blank because that study session was a blur, and all you were thinking about during that time you were studying was, “I need to remember all of this so I don’t fail.” Well, maybe not that exact experience, but I know we all have trouble or had trouble preparing for a test, and the last option was cramming.
Cramming is not the best way to study for a test. “Success Tutorial Schools’’ says that “Cramming before a test involves trying to absorb and understand large amounts of information in a short period of time. This leads to an overload of information that your brain struggles to remember and retain.” Another problem is that if a student is cramming the night before and they have questions or need help, they can’t ask their teacher for help, as they could if they were studying throughout the week.
“Cramming all the learning into one night before the exam usually doesn’t work. You memorize things a lot better if you learn them repeatedly, over multiple sessions,” says Nikolay Kukushkin D. Phil, a neuroscientist and clinical associate professor at New York University. Their new study, “Nature Communications’’ shows that it’s not actually about the brain. “This property of memory, called the spacing effect, turns out to be built into the very fabric of our body. Even kidney cells learn better and create more lasting memories from spaced repetition.” The different cells in our body can help our memories from neurons shooting neurotransmitters through our body. Non-neurons can remember past events and adjust themselves. So, memory is not just in your brains, it’s throughout our body, known as “body memory.” An example of this theory is, “Insulin-secreting cells from the pancreas were shown to have a short-term memory of a past meal. Insulin is a hormone that’s released in response to sugar entering the bloodstream, causing this sugar to be absorbed by the body’s cells with sugar, as if a large pile of it entered the bloodstream all at once, the cells release all the insulin they can. Then you give them a 20 minute break and flood them with glucose again. Now the amount of insulin they release almost doubles.” Basically, Nikolay is comparing our pancreas and insulin with studying. If you eat too much food in a short period of time, your blood sugar will increase, and put you in a “food coma”, but if you eat a little at a time, and wait a bit before eating again, it will help you stay sustained and your blood sugar won’t spike. Cramming a day before the test will leave you tired from staying up late at night, stressed, anxious, and it’s overall not a sustainable way to review and relearn everything in a short period of time. But studying and reviewing throughout the week is sustainable. Looking over your test materials for 30 minutes to an hour everyday leading up to the test and having mini study sessions is sustainable because it lets your brain remember what you’re learning and it will stick in your brain better than cramming.
“Cramming just before an exam can (in theory) allow you to remember information in the short term and enable you to take in enough information for the exam. However, this may most likely mean that you’ll have no lasting connections to the knowledge, and you won’t develop any deep understanding of the information. You’ll also likely forget it the second you walk out of the exam,” Chloe Lane states. So realistically, if you cram before a test, you could remember most of the material going into the test, but it doesn’t allow you to remember that information for the long-term. When you study over a certain period of time, like a week, in that week you studied, it is more than likely you will remember the material you studied for, more than cramming in a singular night. Some things you learn and get tested on, you need to remember because it may be important, and you will remember it better when you efficiently study and manage your time.
Overall, cramming is not the way to study for a test. Sometimes you may need to cram in certain situations if you don’t have any time during the week to study. But when you manage your time well, be organized, have questions you need to ask, your materials to study for, and mini study sessions, you can really get that grade you want. You can make studying fun and can personalize how you study to help you be successful for your next test.
