The scholar’s challenge, the most dreaded and feared event in WSC for scholars
across the globe. The event which causes nightmares and sleepless nights. What
are the strategies? How do you study for it? How do you ace it? These are things
which will hopefully be covered in this guide
1. Don’t procrastinate: - Try setting aside a particular time each day for WSC,
even 1 hour will do. If you find it difficult due to restlessness or distractions, try
studying for half an hour then take 5-10 min break then study for another 30
mins. In the weekend you could study for 2 or 3 hours, by using the pomodoro
technique (WSC reference!!)
2. Don’t cram: - Cramming doesn’t help you in anyway, it only causes stress.
Often times you usually end up reading all the subjects with your school guide
or guides on the website, but when you take the challenge you don’t remember
anything and thus you flunk it, so it’s not a good thing to do
3. Set a study goal: - Often times scholars are part of a club from your school or
even outside, our team luckily happens to be a part of a club with great mentors.
So, what we do is set a goal each week to finish a portion of our curriculum and
we spend that week learning that part. This works really well since you will
attain great understanding of the concept. For scholars who aren’t part of a club,
you and your team could set a goal by yourselves
4. Do your own research :- Studies state the best way to understand something is
to research on your own, my team used great and resourceful websites such as
AAR, SOA, Joaquin Revello as a base to understand the context, then we built
upon from that by doing our own research from external links and links from
the WSC website. We personally find it difficult to understand and learn when
each of study 2 subjects and exchange notes since note taking differs and it
would never be the same like researching yourself, but discussions are helpful.
5. Take notes: - One of the best ways to remember something is by taking notes
of what you are studying. However often times scholars take too much notes by
noting down unnecessary details and thereby finding it hard to complete
studying. We ourselves have fallen prey to this when we first started out but
later, we started noting down only a few key points. Try asking yourself the
question, “could there be a prominent question framed from this point?”
6. Practice, Practice and Practice: - The only way to actually know if you
understand and remember what you studied is to test yourself. So, in my WSC
club, every week we have two types of tests for that week’s topics. One is like a
direct quiz with no MCQ, it composes of direct questions to test remembrance
and understandability of the topic. We also have a separate challenge which
mimics the actual challenge. At the end of each subject we have a complete
challenge. Even if you are not part of a club you could take the quizzes on
AAR’s website and you can also practice using kahoots
7. Constant Review and Revision: - One of the most important things is
remembering what you studied, research proves that the more times you
constantly learn something, the more you remember, so make sure you
constantly review. You could do that through multiple ways, how we do it we
have constant group discussions on subjects we finished so that we don’t forget
stuff. Also using quizlet has been instrumental. Even going through notes
properly and breaking it down could help you remember stuff.
8. Linking: - If you notice the WSC curriculum is so interconnected and related
across all six subjects. So, once you are done with curriculum try link to take
each important terms or phrases and connect it with the subject heading, then
the entire theme itself. Also linking that term/phrase to another will definitely
help you succeed. Eg: - Cloud buster [Device by Wilhelm Reich (Science)]
could be linked to Cloud busting by Kate bush [song (Art and Music)] since
both talk about that technology, usage of the device etc. (Tip suggested by one
of our mentors who went to Yale and champion scholar who won 5 gold in
Beijing Challenge
9. Order doesn’t matter: - You probably would have heard it a thousand times,
but we shall stress on it again, there is no specific order through which the
challenge has to be taken, so finish your strong subjects at the start such that
you will have a good amount of time for your not so strong subjects
Hopefully this helped you 😊 😊