Study Wanker

- ̗̀ 08.02.2017 - 17:22 ̖́-

26/01/17 (January 26th, 2017)

Had a big break in between my classes so I went to Starbucks☕️

Worked on my assignments

🌿 [14 / 12 / 16] • Week One 🌿

This week has been going really well! I bought a leuchtturm to use as a bullet journal and it’s helped me a lot to know what to do and get it done. Now I just have to get through the rest of the week and keep trying to be productive.

Source: @yuliajgarcia

Hello, it’s #optomstudies here again with another Sunday Study Tip on catching up when you’ve fallen behind!

A masterful skill that not even the best studyblrs may have tackled. A lot of advice in the studyblr community regarding this seems a little airy-fairy (I almost question if they remember what they themselves went through), so hopefully my post will shine a different light on it (or so I hope anyway!)

1. Work out what’s essential and what isn’t. You’ve basically wasted time right to get to this point right? With limited time left, use an Eisenhower matrix of Important vs. Urgent to determine what you need to do left. 

Important and Urgent - any and all due assessment tasks

Important but Not Urgent - studying lectures for exams, compulsory readings

Not Important but Urgent - additional homework tasks that need to be handed in but aren’t worth much, like logbooks

Not Important and Not Urgent - additional readings (although it’d be great if you did this, sorry, you’re out of time)

Then cross out everything that you can afford to not do. Ironically, I find that when I use the Eisenhower matrix when I am not strapped for time, studying (in the Important but Not Urgent category) usually gets the short end of the stick. But when I’m already falling behind, all the additional readings and homework tasks get thrown out the window and I just work on studying instead. 

2. Do everything that will take you less than 10 minutes to complete. Get all those pesky emails out of the way, all the small team meeting notes, everything else you need to do for someone else. That will cross out a whole chunk of things from your list. You’ll be left with the meaty stuff like studying, completing assignments, etc. 

3. It’s a little damn late for you to regularly revise, so just binge everything. Honestly, this is the best way to get everything done. Don’t switch tasks or subjects. You don’t want to spend about 20 minutes just getting into the flow before switching subjects once the hour’s up. Plus, since you’re already panicking, turn that fear and panic into motivation for you to really focus for long chunks of time - just think about what you do the day before a final exam - because the threat of the exam is imminent, you basically study the whole day right? Trust me, if you’ve really screwed up your study schedule, you won’t have to worry about common procrastination (assuming you don’t want to fail). 

University is just one assignment done, moving onto the next before you even have time to breathe. It’s usually quite different to high school in that everything is quite closely packed together since it’s a 13 week semester. In high school I thought that 3 assessments in a week was the end of the world (lol pls kid). 

So just do whatever needs to be done first, and then if you finish before the day the assignment/exam is done, then great, you can study for the next assessment task. 

Still, I do recommend chucking your phone out the window just in case, since people usually all study last minute, meaning they’ll be asking you “hey do you know wtf Prof was talking about in lec 5?″

4. Break up your courses into hour-long chunks. Although we’re bingeing, it’s important that you make a list, even if it just says “Lecture 1, Lecture 2, Lecture 3″ so that you have a direction to go. Don’t allocate too much time for any one lecture, but at the same time, be realistic about how much you can cover in an hour. For example, if you’ve got 6 hours until an exam, you’re either going to study Lectures 1-3 really well, Lectures 1-6 so-so, and Lectures 1-10 superficially. 

So choose wisely based on what you know or don’t know. If there’s a topic you know quite poorly, consider if it’s worth the time to study and learn the concept, or just bank on the subject not showing up in your exam. I’m actually pretty poor at gambling what will be in the exam, so I always choose to just study everything at a basic level. 

A common pitfall I find in this area is skipping the basic stuff. You think you know it, but when you close your book and try writing it out on a blank piece of paper, you suddenly falter. This has happened to me repeatedly in an exam. I know all the really complex stuff like the back of my hand before I get into the examination room, and then I suddenly get a really simple question and I’m like wait, what was the answer again? I advise making lecture outlines that you just rote learn - this comes in useful for long response questions because you’ll often remember the small details, but will forget the next section, meaning you miss out on a massive chunk of information if you forget. 

5. Rinse and repeat. Usually after about 2 weeks(?) of catching up like this I finally see the light of day and I can return to my normal schedule. If need be, I usually cut back on sleep to about 6 hours vs. 7.5 hours, but never pull an all nighter. You cannot do this unless you have breathing room the next day (which you won’t because you screwed up in the first place). Unless it is the very last assessment task, there’s a massive risk of ruining your next exam. 

6. Try and never do that last minute ditch again. 

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana. 

Never again right? Remember that starting early and finishing early is the key to good grades. We’re all just young uni students at the end of the day though, so do remember to forgive yourself if you end up repeating the procrastination. I’ll be cheering you all on! 

The ‘What I Wish I’d Known Before University’ series

Part 1 Administration

Part 2 Getting to Class

Part 3 Studying

Part 4 Extra-Curriculars

Part 5 Exams

Part 6 Social Life

See also

Catching Up with Your Studies - what to do when you’ve fallen behind

Dealing with Bad Results - processing the news and turning it into information you can use

Sleeping and Waking Up Early i.e. classical conditioning of dogsstudents

My 2017 Planner and Bullet Journal

My new study space set-up for 2017! :)

Studying from a Textbook :: How to Get Started

Through trial and error across my academic career, I’ve developed a system of textbook studying that’s been very successful for me even in graduate school. This post outlines my basic procedure. Of course, different techniques work for different people, so be sure to pick and choose which ideas you add to your own strategies. Thanks in advance for reading!

Reading a textbook is a formidable task; after all, they contain a lot of information per page across a lot of pages. Therefore, it’s useful to divide the book into more manageable pieces. Most textbooks do a pretty good job of this by pre-dividing the material into sections (or even subsections). If there’s no pre-existing division (or if each division is fairly lengthy), I recommend focusing on about 10 pages at a time. However you choose to divide, my basic strategy amounts to this:

Tackle the textbook section-by-section, only moving onto a new section once you’re comfortable with the previous section.

If you’re under a time constraint, then I’d say make yourself as comfortable as you can within that constraint.

This begs the question: how do you become comfortable with a section? Well, you’ll need to read it more than once. Today I’m primarily discussing how to make your first reading as useful as possible, especially for future readings.

First off, I suggest reading through the section in its entirety on your first pass. There will be material you don’t understand, but that’s okay: spend a couple of minutes trying to understand it and then move on. During your first reading, you’re getting the lay of the land; you don’t have to understand everything perfectly (or even at all).

Along the way, I keep track of my understanding via sticky notes, flags, and index cards.

My Index Cards Strategy

I keep three types of index cards as I read, each with its own theme:

Questions: This index card lists questions I think of while reading, usually organized by the page number on which I have the question. Questions include things like “What’s [specific terminology] mean?”,  or “Is this related to [some other topic]?”, or even as generic as “What is [this subsection] talking about?”

Definitions: When a new word is introduced, I write it down on my definitions card. Beside each word I draw a bubble in one of three colors, with each color representing my current understanding of the word and related concepts: green means “fine as is”, orange means “could use attention”, and red means “absolutely needs attention.”

Notations: Some textbooks use abbreviations or symbols that I don’t recognize, so I keep an index card of these notations for quick reference.

You can easily replace this system’s index cards with notebook pages or similar media. Whatever works best for you!

My Sticky Notes and Flags Strategy

Using sticky notes placed within the textbook, I summarize challenging paragraphs and recap important ideas. This process forces me to grapple with the text, ultimately resulting in nice one-sentence summaries. These summaries help concepts stick in my brain and are extremely useful on subsequent reads of the text. I also use sticky notes to write questions that I couldn’t fit on my questions card. For the most difficult passages, I use flags: a quick, wordless way of saying “What in the world is this author talking about???”

Post-Reading Analysis and Subsequent Reading

I love this system because it not only lets me know how I feel about the material, but also generates specific concrete tasks to better my understanding. The vague task that is “learn this subject” becomes the more manageable tasks of “answer these questions”, “learn these words”, and “summarize these topics.”

I try to do the first reading in a single study session (although it’s not imperative to do so). Then, in a separate study session, I look up topics and words that I struggled with. The internet is particularly useful for this! Once I’ve improved my understanding some, I begin reading through the section again, this time with a fine-toothed comb. I use the notes I made the first time as guidelines for where I should spend my time and energy.

It’s very likely that during my second (and subsequent) reads I’ll think of new questions or come up with new ways of recapping material; in that case, I record them just as I did during the first reading.

In this way, I keep revisiting material I don’t understand until I feel like I understand it; again, external resources can be very useful for this! I only consider the section completed once I have a solid understanding of the section’s terminology and big ideas. Chances are I’ll still have questions at that point, but that’s okay:

I aim to be comfortable with the material, which is not the same as understanding 100% of what’s written in the textbook.

So, yeah! That’s my method in a nutshell. I hope you find parts of it useful in your own studies!