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You Can Use A Cheat Sheet!

Imagine yourself sitting in Social Studies class on a Friday afternoon. You're daydreaming, staring out the window, thinking of playing soccer on the weekend. Suddenly you hear your teacher's voice, and what he is saying snaps you out of your daydream.

"Monday morning you will be having a quiz on Canada - geography, history, wildlife, everything that we've been studying. You can use a cheat sheet."

"Cool", you think. You've been daydreaming so much you barely even realized you'd been studying Canada, but with all the facts written out right in front of you, it will be a breeze.

Then you hear what else your teacher says. "You can write anything you want on your cheat sheet, but there are three rules. First, you can only write on one side of the paper. Second, your cheat sheet can be no bigger than a four inch square. Finally, I will be checking all cheat sheets before the test begins to make sure they comply with the first two rules. Understood?"

Groaning, you start to think about how your friends will have fun playing soccer this weekend while you study. What good is a cheat sheet with those kinds of rules? Don't worry, just follow these steps:
  1. Gather together all of the information you have on the topic. Try to arrange it in some sort of order, usually by topic, but sometimes chronologically.
  2. Write out the key points from all this information. If you have access to a computer and printer, use it. That way when it comes time to print out your cheat sheet, you can use the smallest font that you can read. At this point, however, you will have many pages of information.
  3. Go through the information again and take out any words you don't need. It should all be in point form, not in complete sentences. Make sure it is still understandable to you.
  4. Now go through it and replace as many words as you can with abbreviations.
  5. Combine any points that are similar. For example, if you are writing that Sir John A. Macdonald was Prime Minister of Canada from 1867 to 1891 and further on you say that he born in Scotland, you could instead write "Sir John A. Macdonald b. Scotland Pr. Min. 1867-91".
  6. Run through the last three steps a few more times until you have the information shrunk down to fit on one side of a four inch square piece of paper.
So there you have your cheat sheet. There's only one more thing, though. After going over and over these notes, you now know them so well you probably won't even need the cheat sheet. And do you think that might have been your teacher's objective in the first place?

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Created on ... October 22, 2008