Study tips

[spn27695]

I'm dreading going back to uni in the New Year. I have so many big exams coming up. Any good tips for extreme impending study?😂

[oOMariusOo]

- If an activity takes too much time on a daily basis, delete it for a month to devote yourself to studies.
- Highlight the most important sentences from your lessons and read them out loud several times.
- Try to study with a friend, offer her to ask you questions so that you can answer them without having the answer in front of you.
- In math, find the math where you made a mistake, rewrite it on a blank sheet to start over.
- In English or foreign languages, rewrite the sentences several times and also read them aloud several times. Sing them too, it can help.
- Go over all your notes every night right before you go to sleep, right before you close your eyes, without watching TV, reading a book or playing a game.

Apart from all that, remember to relax, to take time for yourself despite everything. But don't put all your daily time into doing activities. Try to organize yourself, one full day of relaxation per week and only 2 hours of relaxation more per day. Of course everything also depends on your ability to concentrate, it is often difficult to change your habits. In any case, I wish you good luck. 

[iojo]

On 12/29/2022 at 7:16 PM, spn27695 said:

I'm dreading going back to uni in the New Year. I have so many big exams coming up. Any good tips for extreme impending study?😂

What do you study? 

[SleepingPhlox]

Train yourself to form the habit of regular study.  If you are used to, say, getting home and chilling out and doing whatever, your brain expects to keep doing things that way.  Decide when and where you will study, and for how long.  And then go to that place at that time, and do it for your decided duration.  At first, you might not get a lot done, because your brain wants to go back and keep doing what it's used to doing.  Even if you can't focus or it's not sinking in, keep going through the motions, to teach your brain that this is your new habit now.  But, after a while, your brain will start to accept that this is what you do in this place, at that time, and you will be able to increase your focus and productivity.  We are habit-driven creatures, and using that fact to our advantage is like the best life hack ever!

[bornandgrown]

honestly, the method of studying depends on the topic. for example, studying for math is going to be very different than studying for a foreign language, but might overlap with the method of studying for a physics course.

the best advice i can give is to simply test yourself on most topics. this is what studying actually looks like; reading over your notes and information from the textbook is just learning the material. if you're studying, you're actively recalling the information you need. rewriting your notes without looking at them is helpful, as well as preparing for an exam like you're allowed a single-page, one-sided cheat sheet. put all the important information on there, such as equations, concepts, or helpful drawings. 

in addition, practicing the material is helpful, such as completing practice problems for math. this is usually the way most people go for arithmetic studying, but rarely apply it to other subjects. when i was in ap bio in high school, my teacher told me about how to properly use the textbook. reading the textbook can be helpful, but there are also usually chapter checks with questions in the back of the book that did wonders for my studying. they're awesome for preparing for exams. 

as for more language-y courses, i can't say i've ever studied for english, so i wouldn't know how to help there. however, if you're taking a foreign language, i like to summarize all the information i've learned in preparation for the exam. for example, if i was taking a text on sequence of tenses in the subjunctive for spanish, i'd write down what tense in the indicative triggers which tense in the subjunctive, explain those tenses, and then how to form each subjunctive tense. it's a good way to solidify the rules in your mind. 

i wish you the best of luck! 

[EveP]

As @bornandgrown mentions, it depends on the subjects. Another aspect is knowing what type of learner you are. I, for example, learn best by reading and get disturbed by any background sounds, others learn best while listening to music or having the TV on in the background. My oldest son sees everything in pictures, while words don't stick at all, and my youngest needs to move around while studying, so he needs to walk around when reading. If you're studying languages a tip can be to create a character for each language - a way of acting and speaking for each one.

 

[Heathcliff]

I got really anxious about my final year university exams (I remember repeatedly having dreams where I was doing them before I actually did) so I can relate a bit.

As people have said, it depends on the subject. I studied math, so I don't know if the exact same things would work for you - but what I did was go through all my lecture notes for the year, and wrote them out again (summarizing a little but not too much). I don't know what your schedule is like, but in the final year we had the whole summer term to revise, so I had time to do it.

For me, reading it, then writing out the steps of the math really helped me to understand it - when first listening to it in lectures I was trying to take it in, but struggling to keep up sometimes so I would just copy the ideas down. But when I was given the time to go through it more at my own pace, much more of it started to go into my head.

Personally, I liked to revise in communal places, where there were other people around but it was quiet. The library was usually a good spot - sometimes though if I found the atmosphere of a lot of people studying a bit oppressive, and started to feel anxious, I went somewhere with a little more hubbub around.

The night before an exam, I think its best to try and relax - maybe have a quick look through your notes. But I would say, don't try to cram a lot on the night before - at least, that has never worked for me.

I know it's hard to think like this for you now, but I honestly look back and wish I hadn't gotten so worried. It's really not the end of the world. As long as you make an honest effort to revise, I'm sure you'll do fine. 🙂

[cameronsneeze]

I usually put on white noise and go to a quiet coffee shop

[RosieB]

I have been using a pomodoro to er recently and I find that helps