Stupid question time (CAP2)

When I did mine, I did most of the learning during study leave (bar the bare minimum needed for interims).

What's important at this stage is notes. Your CAP2 FR notes are going to see you through to FAE. Good notes now, especially in FR, are going to be a huge help down the line. Once you get close to the exams you're going to want to do as many questions as possible, so it's a huge help if you don't need to devote loads of time to notes.

That was just me though. I've never failed an exam but I've also never been a model student!

Sorry I should have realised with the 2 exams you probably don't have loads of study leave. It's great that you're trying to get a head start to make up for it.

My notes were a mix of my own writing and lecture materials. With CAP2 being open-book, most people have a lever-arch folder per subject that they put all their notes into for referencing during the exam. I was always one of the few people that liked to study with books but they're very impractical for referencing under exam conditions, it just takes way too long to find the info you need.

With notes, you can cut all the info down to exactly what you need to know when answering questions, and use that during the exam. Some people do really comprehensive notes, but I much preferred to keep them to exactly what I'd need in the exam. I had a mix of content in mine, even pages where I had hand-written notes with snips from lecture slides pritt-sticked on to the page. In some cases where I'd found certain practice questions hard, I'd include the actual question and answer in my notes to act as a template if I got thrown something similar in the exam.

If you're very short on study time, it might make more sense to start milling into questions now and take your notes as you go through the questions. Doing questions really is the best way to study, but so early on, it's hard to ensure the info you're absorbing is actually going into your long-term memory, so do try to note down anything you see in a question/answer that makes you go "Ahh!".