Lesson of Life and Revision tips 1

A lesson of life from a story of a lion ,a python & a 2 mice

A story is told about a man who was strolling among the trees in a remote African jungle. He was enjoying nature's beauty and listening to exotic birds sing while enjoying the smell of the wild jungle flowers.Suddenly, he heard the unmistakable sound of an animal running with great speed. The sound grew louder and closer. As the man's heart jumped to his throat, he turned around to see a great and obviously very hungry lion running towards him.He ran with all his powers and the lion ran after him. Suddenly the man noticed an old well and quickly jumped into it. He clung to a rope that was hanging inside the well, which was used to fetch water.When the lion's roaring subsided and the man was finally able to catch his breath, he heard a sound underneath him. He looked down to see a giant snake (or python) ... its mouth wide open, waiting for the man to drop right into it...

His mind raced to find a solution to this inescapable situation. As if this wasn't enough,the man suddenly notices two mice: one black and one white and they were chewing on the rope above him! He started to shake the rope hoping to dislodge the mice and save him. In doing so, the rope started swinging and the man started bumping into the walls of the well. Then he felt something sticky on his arm (as he hit the wall) and upon tasting it (would you have done that if you were in such a predicament?) he found out that it was honey and sweet as could be.He tasted it again and again until he forgot the predicament he was in.The man suddenly woke up. It was a very bad dream!

He decided to seek an interpretation to his dream and rushed to a Scholar and Sheikh. The Scholar laughed and interpreted the dream for him. He said: "The lion was the Angel of Death; the Well with the python was your grave; the rope was your "life" (clinging to it) and the mice were the Day and the Night "eating away" from your life..."The man was shocked but then asked: "And what about the Honey?".The Scholar answered: "It's the sweetness of this life that made you forget your ultimate end and what awaits."

REVISION GUIDELINES Part 1

So you’ve got a few months left for your exams, or perhaps only a few weeks. This article aims to talk about how you can go about planning your revision and exam preparation. You may or may not agree with all or some of the things it says, this is ok, as you should use the method you feel comfortable with. If something different has worked for you then stick to that, and let me also know about it. (mail me on m335@hotm....com)

First off, check you have all the required notes to revise from.

If you have sheets and sheets of notes on a subject then you may want to consider trying Mind maps. www.mind-map.com/EN/mindmaps/how_to.html. Tony Buzans ‘Use Your Head’ is also a good book on the same subject.

Next you should draw up a calendar/ revision planner showing each day up from now until your exam/ exam week. Each day mark down what subject you have studied &/ or how many hours. This way when you have a lazy day you should be able to see it on paper and feel guilty for doing so.

If you start planning early enough, then those who tend to panic will have time to panic, calm down and then approach the task of revision in a logical and cohesive manner.

A great way to revise is by practising real past exam questions. The beauty of this is you can:
1. Learn what you need to know for a particular subject/ module and do away with some of the information you don’t need to know.
2. Teachers will normally be willing to take a look at any essays/ questions you have done and give you feedback on it, so use them!
3. Develop the unique skills needed for exam style questions. Learning a subject inside out does not mean you will breeze the exam.