Writing a side post on studying efficiently – These are the things that I do, at least, to make sure I keep my GPA up and workload under control.
UChicago gives a ridiculous amount of homework per week (ie, fall quarter this year I was spending 15 hours on homework in an econ class, 20 hours on a CS class, 5 on math, and 2 on engineering = 42 hours of homework, in addition to going to class (12 hours), working for 10 hours a week, and orchestra rehearsal (4 hours)), and these habits absolutely SAVED me.
1) Read/skim last class’ notes before this class.
This one seems to surprise people but it is insanely effective in cementing material in your head and learning efficiently in the classroom. I started doing this because I would forget what we learned last class – and found that with two-three extra minutes (speed reading) I could follow lectures a whole lot better.
This allows me to retain notes better too – I normally don’t have to look at them again until when I’m studying for exams.
2) Take advantage of audiobooks and other online resources.
-Audiobooks:
Here, we take a sequence of humanities classes and a sequence of social science classes. This is around 100 pages of reading every class (~2 nights to read) very difficult stuff (Marx, Foucault, De Beauvoir, etc.). I’m not a fast reader so I only get time to read it around once (and then I always fall asleep reading so that doesn’t help). Listen to the audiobook version. Seriously. Why? Because then you can get readings done while you are brushing your teeth, eating, exercising, walking to class, riding the bus, etc. A lot of people don’t finish the readings but are really good at grasping the structure of the argument. If you can combine both, you will be good to go.
-Videos:
I learn math best through videos. Short concise walkthroughs help you condense important information.
-Other people’s flashcards
Chances are, the material you are studying or the textbook is not one of a kind. If you are lucky, someone else would have made study materials (on sites like quizlet) that you can borrow.
-Textbook website:
Sometimes textbooks have outlines and practice problems and visuals. Use them!
Every rendition of notes that you produce should be different from the last. Straight-copying is a huge time-waster. Unless you’re one of those people who remember exactly what they write down (I’m not and I’ve met very few people who are), this is so inefficient. You process information much faster than you write. Why are you burning excess brain functionality on writing something that you don’t need to turn in?
That’s not to say don’t write. I like to go through my notes and condense them into an outline using short key words to remind me of important ideas.
But, to the people who are making pretty, colorful, and comprehensive notes–where are you getting the time? I normally assume that you just write that beautifully or are doing it in class to keep awake (and even in class, shouldn’t you be paying attention?)– but if that is a study method…
4) Take advantage of office hours. Or if you don’t have them, make your own office hours by requesting them from your teacher (even if they decline, you will still look like a hard-worker).
Go in with questions to ask your teacher/TA. Saves you so much time going about a problem on your homework completely wrong.
If you are ill-prepared (been there, done that), here are good “questions” to get your teacher to divulge information:
- “Can you explain the intuition behind ….”
- “I’m a little stuck on this problem. Can you recommend a good approach to get me started?”
- “I didn’t quite understand the material that this problem is written on when we went over it in class. Do you have a textbook reference or a good resource for me to go over the material?” <– huge time saver, because flipping through a 300 page book not knowing what you are looking for is the absolute worst.
I like to block off specific hours to do specific things, but the most important part of that, is that you do not sit down without a clear idea of what you need to get done.
I prioritize by 1) how much brainpower a task requires (studying takes the most, then essaying brainstorming, then problem sets “solving”, then essay writing, then problem set write ups*, etc.) 2) Their deadline 3) When I am the most productive.
*I split homework into ‘solving’ and ‘writing up’. I know that I am sharpest during the morning/ early afternoon, so I save the most difficult/thinking intensive solving part then, and then actually type/write up my answers when I’m less functional.
Hope this helps! Let me know what works for you/ if you have any good ones to share.
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
2087
