From the course: Cert Prep: Adobe Certified Professional - Photoshop

Developing a study schedule - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Cert Prep: Adobe Certified Professional - Photoshop

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Developing a study schedule

“

- [Instructor] In this movie, we'll look at a few tips for developing your study schedule to get ready for the ACP exam. The first is setting priorities. Everyone is busy juggling some combination of work, time with family and friends, personal projects, and other responsibilities, so you need to figure out where the goal of passing the ACP exam fits into your personal priorities. Ask yourself, "How much do you really want to achieve this goal? How soon do you want to achieve it? And what else do you need to get done in the same timeframe?" It may help to actually make a list of the things you're doing to figure out where the ACP fits in terms of importance. Next, you need to figure out exactly where studying for the ACP fits into your schedule. For many people, this is a long-term effort, and if you have a lot of studying to do, consistency is key. Look at your weekly schedule and make a regular appointment with yourself to study for the exam. Put it in your calendar, set a reminder, and try to protect that time from other things that come up, especially things that you don't rate as high priorities. And if you have to skip a study time, make it up by rescheduling it as soon as you can. Then, take the list of objectives you need to study and decide in what order you want to work on them. You could keep things simple and just start at the beginning and work your way to the end, but you don't have to do it that way. On a day when you're feeling especially motivated and alert, try tackling one of the objectives where you're weakest. When you're feeling tired and unmotivated, give yourself a break and work on something easier, like strengthening an area where you're already pretty good. In general, try to stick with one objective during a study session. If you skip all around, especially early on, you might find that you'll remember very little of what you studied and your progress will be slow. During your study time, try to eliminate distractions. If you're constantly using a mobile device, set it to do not disturb or just turn it off. If you have a choice of where to study, pick a place that's quiet and clean. When you're studying, you're trying to build memories that you can recall during the exam, so the fewer distractions you have around you, the more you can focus on the topics that you're studying. If you have a friend who's also planning to take the exam, it can be a great thing for you to study together. Try to explain and demonstrate the tools and concepts to each other and share your notes and files. Having a study buddy who's going to meet you at a certain time and place can stop you from skipping a study session on a day when you're not feeling especially motivated. Just make sure that you're both committed to passing the exam and make a deal that study time is really just for studying, so you can stay on track and your meetings are productive. Also, when making a study schedule, try to avoid long cramming sessions. Your brain remembers information from the beginning and end of a study session a lot more than the stuff in the middle. You'll remember more from studying one hour a day for eight days than you will from a single eight hour study marathon. Routine and repetition are what creates strong memories. And be sure to get enough sleep. Studying after your normal bedtime is worse than studying at any other time of the day. When you're overtired, you're less motivated and more easily distracted, and it can take much longer to understand a new topic than if you've just gone to bed and tackled it the next day. And finally, don't forget to have some fun with all of this. Photoshop is an amazing application that allows you to create almost any image you can imagine, you should enjoy the time you spend using it. While you're studying, use fun, interesting examples, use photos you've taken, use your favorite fonts, your favorite colors, work with funny images. The study time will go by faster, and you just might retain more of what you've learned. When studying feels more like play and less like work, you know you're doing it right and you'll steadily build confidence and momentum to being ready to pass the ACP exam.

Contents