Posted: 11/1/2012 5:22:34 PM EDT
| Normally I just read the chapter and after every paragraph I paraphrase what I just read without looking at the book to make sure I understood it. I'm about to switch to note cards. Are note cards any better than reading the chapter? |
| This has nothing to do with the original question but I recommend some type of quality beer. I just started that this semester and have seen about 5% better on most tests and writing papers has gotten much easier. Just don't get smashed while doing it and it'll work. Or at least it has for me and it gives me an unneeded excuse to drink some beer. |
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I take notes from the book before the lecture, and then after the lecture I'll highlight the parts the professor talked about in the lecture.
When studying for tests I'll study the highlighted parts and any keywords that might be on the test. Luckily, most of my professors hand out study guides. |
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Repetition, and writing it down myself helps ingrain it for me.
So I always read it. Tried to understand what I recalled. Outline what I read. Tried to understand what I can and cannot recall. Go over it again. Make mnemonics. Try explaining it to someone else, or repeat it out loud. Again and again and again and again until I have mastered it. |
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Repetition, and writing it down myself helps ingrain it for me. So I always read it. Tried to understand what I recalled. Outline what I read. Tried to understand what I can and cannot recall. Go over it again. Make mnemonics. Try explaining it to someone else, or repeat it out loud. Again and again and again and again until I have mastered it. Sounds like a lot of work 
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For my hard classes (engineering), I practiced the homework problems till I got them right. The really brilliant guys practiced them till they couldn't get them wrong. For my easy classes (non engineering), I didn't study. I spent the extra time studying for the hard ones.
And I couldn't drink at all and do homework. Not even writing reports or something like that. I had to be completely dry or my work would turn out lousy. |
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Repetition, and writing it down myself helps ingrain it for me. So I always read it. Tried to understand what I recalled. Outline what I read. Tried to understand what I can and cannot recall. Go over it again. Make mnemonics. Try explaining it to someone else, or repeat it out loud. Again and again and again and again until I have mastered it. Sounds like a lot of work Only if you don't get the first time around. 
Besides, it got me through three degrees in eight years. |
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Repetition, and writing it down myself helps ingrain it for me. So I always read it. Tried to understand what I recalled. Outline what I read. Tried to understand what I can and cannot recall. Go over it again. Make mnemonics. Try explaining it to someone else, or repeat it out loud. Again and again and again and again until I have mastered it. Sounds like a lot of work Only if you don't get the first time around.
Besides, it got me through three degrees in eight years. Wow. I know a guy who's got 4 majors. That's crazy. What degrees do you have? |
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Quoted: Normally I just read the chapter and after every paragraph I paraphrase what I just read without looking at the book to make sure I understood it. I'm about to switch to note cards. Are note cards any better than reading the chapter? If they're better for you, yes; if not, no. There really isn't a generalizable 'best' study method, IMHO. Heck, I learn differently now than I did 10 years ago. Back then I could read something and learn it. 5-6 years later, and I learned best simply by taking practice tests and reading the answers to the questions. Now I learn best by hands-on experience. |
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I'm doing a new class, so for that one I read the book and explore outside resources on the internet to flesh it out more. I like to get to a level of detail well beyond the normal student so I can understand questions the really good students ask. I memorize most of the figures in the text to the point I could basically draw them.
Then after I give the lecture, I go home and get a whiskey and forget all about it until I have to give a review session or write an exam. How did I study when I was a student? It depends. For Physics the guy told us we could bring a note card with formulas written on it to the exam. I wrote out the notecards but never did any practice questions or reading, and never came to another lecture. That was my one B+. In most classes, I basically wrote down everything the professor said, did all the reading, then crammed from the notes the night before. My actual advice, on the other hand, would be: Study until you are confident. Confidence can be more important than knowledge sometimes. Don't give up easy points (definitions are easy to write questions for). Know the material well enough that you can use memory memory and have your mind free to think about the nuances of the questions. Use whatever resources you can to make some personal connection to the material. If you get into it you can learn like a child. If that doesn't work for some material, treat it as a job and get it all down. |
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I study best by discussing the material (even if that is an internal discussion) and making connections to other content. However, it really depends on what it is I'm studying. Lately, I really try to gain understanding through actually using the information.
Anatomy & Physiology sucked, I had to just sit down and memorize it.
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Repetition, and writing it down myself helps ingrain it for me. So I always read it. Tried to understand what I recalled. Outline what I read. Tried to understand what I can and cannot recall. Go over it again. Make mnemonics. Try explaining it to someone else, or repeat it out loud. Again and again and again and again until I have mastered it. Sounds like a lot of work Only if you don't get the first time around.
Besides, it got me through three degrees in eight years. Wow. I know a guy who's got 4 majors. That's crazy. What degrees do you have? A B.A., an M.T., and a J.D. ETA: The most important thing is to learn what works best for you. Simply reading the material, hearing the material read to you, writing it down, reading it aloud, teaching it to others, some combination thereof, or something else entirely, whatever works for you, works for you. |
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Quoted: For my hard classes (engineering), I practiced the homework problems till I got them right. The really brilliant guys practiced them till they couldn't get them wrong. For my easy classes (non engineering), I didn't study. I spent the extra time studying for the hard ones. And I couldn't drink at all and do homework. Not even writing reports or something like that. I had to be completely dry or my work would turn out lousy. This right here. Except the drinking part. Do the problems. My best work comes about two beers in  but tapers off rapidly. See here.
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I used to make outlines of whatever I was studying when I was in the police academy, but that was the only time I ever studied in my life and even then it was maybe two hours over a 10-month period. I studied about two hours the night before we took our state certification exam three weeks after graduation and passed it. I was probably the third or fourth one from my class out of the building, took me an hour and a half to answer 200 questions.
If I care about something, I will retain it, most likely forever. Repetition helps too.
In all honesty, having to explain things to my fellow classmates and/or friends helped strengthen my understanding, BIG TIME. If I can teach someone else a concept, then I have to know it pretty well. |
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Hopefully when I get in my course of study things will get a lot more interesting. Right now I'm having trouble being interested in Joseph Haydn and JC Bach. If this is some BS music class you may or may not be able to find the answers online. That's exactly what it is. It was either this or art. I have all the answers, I'm just trying to find the best way to study a class that I give 0 shits about. |
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I'm a mechanical eng. major with a minor in aerospace engineering(closest I could get to aerospace with a focus on astronautical eng), so my advice might not be applicable depending on what your studying.
I don't study, at least not what people would call studying. If your memorizing something in engineering, your probably not doing it right; you should actually understand the methods. If you do, the methods are largely obvious without requiring memorization. Oh you have lots of equations you might have to remember; but, the vast majority of my instructors don't give a flying fuck how well you can memorize the equations on the inside cover. For one of my finals a few semesters back, the professor gave us 8 pages of reference material for a 3 page exam; the instructors care about whether or not you can use the basic methods, and how well you can develop advanced methods from the basic methods to solve a problem. That second part is probably the most important aspect of an engineering education. |
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For my hard classes (engineering), I practiced the homework problems till I got them right. The really brilliant guys practiced them till they couldn't get them wrong. For my easy classes (non engineering), I didn't study. I spent the extra time studying for the hard ones.
And I couldn't drink at all and do homework. Not even writing reports or something like that. I had to be completely dry or my work would turn out lousy. This right here. Except the drinking part. Do the problems. My best work comes about two beers in but tapers off rapidly. See here.Dear god. Is that the key to Pandora's box? |
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Whatever works for you. I've used a mix of my own notation, reading different source material, sketches of the physics, and answering questions from other students in the 15 minutes before/after class or back in my office. Looking back, at the time I didn't realize how unusual it was for me to have my own office on campus as an undergrad. It's still my office several years later... |
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I have to write things down in my own words in a notebook. Having to write it out really makes me confront the fact that I either got something out of the reading or I did not. I prefer a bound notebook over notecards because it's easier to keep it all together.
Sometimes it's easy to think you read a page simply because your eyes ended up on the bottom right corner but if I can't commit to something in writing it pretty much means I didn't understand something along the way. Having gone through the mental process of breaking things down and distilling the text to my own notes, in the simplest terms I can put them, it then becomes easier to just go over the notes rather than reading the textbook again. Because isolated facts in themselves are rather useless, I try to fit every piece of knowledge into the framework of what I already know, trying to see how it all fits together and how a change in the one variable affects some other thing. Since the goal is understanding and application, I check my knowledge by doing practice questions and problems. Again, it avoids the trap of having done a perfunctory task of superficial reading and rote memorization. You can become familiar with "buzzword" terminology and concepts (and thus think you know the material) but giving a concrete answer to real world problems has a way of forcing you to realize that you can either think it through and answer correctly or not. Ideally, I like to do every practice question I can get my hands on, and then to go over the notes and explanations to see what I got wrong and why. I do this as often as necessary to make sure I got it, and of course, as the passage of time that persecutes me permits. 
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| When you study re-write all the notes you've taken thus far and put them into a more organized format. It's repetition, organization, and a badass study guide all in one! When I was in college I hand wrote all my notes, used the notes to supplement my readings, and then typed the notes up per chapter adding in all the new content. |
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For theories/abstract stuff, I try to be able to explain it to another person.
Dry erase marker & white board for graphs, chemical chains, etc. For a lot of stuff, I generally just remember the image of a portion of printed page that contained the info, sometimes with handwritten notes & hilighting. I'm rusty now, but used to be pretty good at retaining details from a few readings. At peak practice, it's almost like having a partial open-book test. Until you realize the info you need is on a neighboring page that you only skimmed. Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
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I speed read the chapters and write important stuff down.
I take notes in class. I do all of the practice problems at the end of the chapters. I break up my study time into sections. Usually 3 2 hour sessions a day with my current course load. You need to find what works for you. I am excellent at memorization, others suck at it and need more work. I need to do math problems a few times before I completely understand the concept. I love seeing formulas on paper, others need to see them worked out by other people. |
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drink speak to highly intelligent sorority girls repeat? shit What kinda school are you attending I don't pay attention to sorority girls. They're all the same. You can spot them from a mile away. Normally because they have at least 3 pieces of clothing on that advertise their sorority. |
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... What kind of study? In college: Reading, summation, modeling, hypothesis testing, statistical analysis, repetition and study groups (yes, I liked them) For work: I get paid to do studies in weapons science research for AMRDEC - Research, Development & Engineering, the US Army and my company Principles behind my engineering "study" projects are largely based on research techniques and skills matured in college. The difference, being provided resources needed to actually experiment, design-layout and model new weapon systems that eventually evolve into production-insertion or fleet retrofit. Often, if my CBAs demonstrate positive margins, financiers will extend my efforts for oversight on subsequent follow-on contracts to develop functional prototypes and testing |
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Normally I just read the chapter and after every paragraph I paraphrase what I just read without looking at the book to make sure I understood it. I'm about to switch to note cards. Are note cards any better than reading the chapter? Get both. Notecards are good for remembering things, but paraphrasing is good for ensuring you understand the topic. |