My first thoughts as I begin to study for the exam are “how am I ever going to get through this entire book and retain anything to take this test?”

I began studying two weeks ago by first going to the AFP website and reading the blogs to get advice on how I should tackle this enormous body of knowledge.  I found some great advice by reading the blogs. 

Obviously, the formulas are going to be a very important element of the exam.  One blog entry suggested that you shouldn’t stress over the formulas themselves.  Instead clear your mind and think about why the formulas are used and what they are used for.  I actually applied this approach to a midterm exam in one of my classes and I found it so much easier to remember the formula this way.    

Another blog entry suggested going through the table of contents in the book and picking the areas that you think will be the most difficult and concentrating on learning those subjects first.  This process will help to take the huge amount of information and break it down into smaller more manageable parts that will hopefully be easier to handle. 

One thing that concerned me in the blogs was that former candidates suggested that you should dedicate 3-4 hours a week to studying for 12 weeks.  I don’t have that amount of time to dedicate to studying right now.  My plan is to spend 1-2 hours a week until the first week of December.  Once I am finished with this semester of school I will increase my studying to 3-6 hours per week. 

My plan for now is to make a simple power point presentation for each chapter in the book and use the slides as flashcards.  I am going to use the focus questions at the end of the each chapter to develop the slides.  I hope that this will help me to take the information from the book and break it into smaller more manageable pieces.