“Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.”
Upperclassmen: · Intentionally decide how they are going to study · Improve how they study overtime A lot could be said about the best way to study for difficult classes, but here is one practical thing that you can do that I believe you will find very helpful. It is very simple, but like flashcards most of the best study aids are simple. Intentionally decide how you are going to study for each class. Don’t just take it one homework assignment or test at a time. This sounds really obvious, but fewer people do this than you would think. In easy classes many people just passively absorb material, and then the week of the test finally sit down and figure out how they are going to cram for the exam. Fortunately, this type of strategy can work just fine for classes such as RELI1001, but my encouragement to you is that if that is the strategy that you want take, then write it down and consciously decide that you will not think about that class until a week before the exam instead of just letting it passively happen[1]. In difficult classes this manifests itself differently. Instead of sitting down and making a plan before attacking a difficult class, many people just dive head first into their studies. They work problems, they read the book, they listen to recordings of lecture, they study in groups, and in short they try everything that they can think to do. The problem with this is that it is difficult to replicate or improve upon this approach. As you sit down to study for a class for the first time, make two lists. On the first list, write everything you want to do throughout the semester as new material is being presented (read the chapter before lecture, take notes in class, etc.), and on the second list write everything you want to do to review right before each exam. Putting your plan down in writing forces you to intentionally decide how you want to study, and it provides accountability to help you to finish the drill. Next, take that plan and go into office hours. Show your plan to your professor, and ask them for advice on how to improve it. Then follow it through until the first graded assignment. Each grade is a measure of how successful your plan was in meeting your goal. Use each grade as feedback to improve your plan. Use your latest test to identify where your study plan did a really great job, and then try to see where your study plan can be improved. Commit to continuously improving your study plan to be the best student you can be. This allows you to make the best use of your limited study time in order to get the best results you can achieve. I distinctly remember a conversation I overheard in my Genetics breakout session between a girl with a wearied, disappointed tone in her voice and my TA. She really wanted to do well in Genetics, and throughout the semester had worked really hard doing everything she could to learn the material. I had seen her at every single one of the optional breakout sessions, but then I heard her tell the TA that all of her hard work had just resulted in another frustrating grade. The problem was not at all with the amount of work that she had put in. The problem was her approach. She was reading every chapter before lecture, she recorded each lecture and listened to it a second time later, she was faithfully taking notes, and then she was using the small amount of time she had left to work a handful of problems from the book. She was doing everything she could think of as it popped into her mind to study for Genetics. Her issue unfortunately was the amount of problems that she was working. At the beginning of the semester I went to office hours with my plan, but when asked how to study for his course my professor just told me to do nothing but work as many problems as I could. He said that if I could just work problems, that I would do absolutely fine. In that break out session I shared the advice I had been given with my classmate, and by focusing on working problems she was able to do much better on the next exam. It was because she had not fully thought out and researched her study plan that she accidentally ended up wasting many long hours in the library doing things that yielded her very little return on test day. How terrible is that? Time is precious. Make the best use of yours by intentionally focusing on the tasks that give you the most bang for your buck. For the Future Intentionally creating study plans is also helpful because overtime you will begin to see patterns from class to class and semester to semester. Eventually you will know the best way for you to personally study, and then you will be able to study more efficiently and effectively. This is the reason that seniors are able to take upper level major courses that would leave freshmen quaking in their boots. The upperclassmen have not gotten smarter since they have been in college, but they have developed their skills as students and reached a new level of performance. Continue intentionally deciding how you want to study and continue to improve your approach, and you will become like a master craftsman who continues to hone his craft to be the best it can be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [1] Note that I am in no way trying to talk down on this way of studying. I do this exact thing for many of my classes. In fact, in an ideal semester I would try to take several lighter classes that I can study for like this along with one difficult class in order to create a balanced schedule.
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AuthorI am a premed senior at the University of Georgia, and I hope you find this blog helpful in your journey. Archives
January 2016
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