A quiet spin before the exam

I remember staring at the same page of notes for what felt like an hour, the words blurring together. My brain felt full, but also strangely empty, like it couldn’t hold one more fact. I just needed a five-minute break, something to reset my focus without letting my mind wander too far.

When the material starts to feel heavy

That’s when I’d pull out my phone and open the random question wheel I’d made. It wasn’t a test. It was just a list of things I’d already covered, phrased in a slightly different way. The act of spinning it felt like a tiny release of pressure, a permission to engage with the material without the weight of ‘studying’.Sometimes the question would be easy, a quick confidence boost. Other times it would land on something I’d have to think about for a minute. Either way, it pulled me out of that passive, overwhelmed state. It was a conversation with the material, not a lecture from it.

A different kind of review

I’d use it during those short breaks between chapters, or while waiting for the kettle to boil. It kept the thread of learning alive without demanding a full, focused session. The questions weren’t meant to stump me; they were just little nudges, reminders of connections I’d already made.It felt less like drilling and more like checking in. ‘Oh right, that concept,’ I’d think, and the memory would surface more clearly. The wheel turned the monolithic task of ‘review everything’ into a series of small, manageable moments. It made the space between study sessions feel productive, not guilty.

The questions were just signposts

They didn’t need to be comprehensive. They just pointed my brain back to a topic, and my mind would do the rest, filling in the details around it almost automatically.