Studying: The Method [Draft]

Here’s a draft of a study guide I’m writing for my high school’s intergrade mentoring program.

Here are the key steps involved in successfully studying and mastering material without stressing and cramming. I offer brief explanations along with the steps, as well as skeptical questions that prompt the next step involved. Mindset-oriented and motivational tactics are not covered here, but I imagine writing them up and putting them in a preface would serve as a nice introduction to my method.

Pay Attention: Focusing in class guarantees you won’t miss any of the material. Many students don’t focus, and as a result, spend most of their time “studying,” where “studying” is really just a euphemism for learning the material. This is a waste of time, so save yourself the trouble and pay attention.

I pay attention, but I find concepts confusing and hard to grasp, so I tend to forget them.

Learn it Once: While you focus in class, you’ll inevitably not grasp something the first time it’s said. This happens to even the “smartest” of students. Do not hesitate to ask questions — ESPECIALLY “stupid” questions. These are the best kinds, because they usually focus on crucial elements of the material (for example, “why are we even doing this?”). In fact, you’ll find that the “smartest” students are often the ones who ask the most questions.

Asking questions and clarifying confusing concepts ASAP is so important, because it gives you an incredible edge when it comes to studying and mastering material: when it comes time to study, you won’t need to learn anything again, or “study,” like most students do. This is invaluable, so I urge you to spend a lot of time thinking about and practicing this.

I don’t have a problem learning the material in class, but I need to spend a lot of time cramming before tests re-learning it.

Small Steps: The best way to ACTUALLY study is to spread it out as much as possible after having Learned it Once. Unless you’re in an easy introductory or prerequisite class which covers material that you’ve studied in another course, it’s almost impossible to sidestep this unless you want to cram prior to the test and quickly forget what you’ve learned afterward.

The practical application of this involves any one or combination of the following: reviewing your notes every night; rewriting your notes every night; creating flashcards after learning new material and then reviewing them every night. I repeat “every night,” because making this into an easy-to-accomplish habit (reading over a page or two of notes doesn’t take more than three or four minutes) is essential. Here’s how I do it: every morning, I read over my notes from all of my classes, and I enter all of the new information into virtual flash-card decks that I store both on my computer and my phone. While I’m on the subway, I simply open up the program on my phone and review the material. This ensures that I don’t quickly forget what I’ve just learned, which is vital in information-dense classes like history.

I can remember all of the information, but when I sit down to take the test, I can’t apply the knowledge to the more difficult problems.

Purposeful Practice: If you’ve been reviewing your material in Small Steps, you intuitively know what comes easily and what isn’t quite clicking or is still a bit unfamiliar. You may feel this way about concepts even if you’ve Learned the material Once. This is okay. You don’t need to practice the really easy problems, because they waste time. Students like to do this, however, because it reaffirms their beliefs that they understand the material and will be able to ace their tests — when you’re getting all the problems right, you should feel this way! But, like I mentioned, students do this for the wrong kinds of problems.

“Purposeful” implies that the problems you’re practicing are the difficult, synthetic questions — not the information-regurgitation or plug-and-chug ones. You need to be practicing the questions that are about concepts you feel uncomfortable with — this is how you learn! Don’t feel ashamed about getting practice questions wrong during your private study sessions. Doing this takes less time than tackling every kind of problem. On top of that, it’s not difficult to figure out what ideas are bugging you, as reviewing in Small Steps lets you easily pinpoint what doesn’t completely “click” for you. (See how all of the steps are beginning to work together? Neat, huh?)

When is the best time to practice?

Your homework is supposed to enforce practice. You probably shouldn’t need to practice every day in addition to doing your homework. However, a few days prior to a test, it’s good practice to set aside a bit of time to review the unit and the types of problems it covers, and then tackle a couple of the ones you don’t feel confident with.

I practice before I take my tests, but I still don’t feel confident. I get stressed and spend a lot of time reviewing all of my notes, practicing even more, etc. the night before.

Confident Coverage: For some of your classes, you may find that you’re not able to get the “big picture” of the unit you’ve been studying, so you may lack confidence and the ability to synthesize the bits and pieces you’ve picked up along the way. One way to combat this is to dedicate one of the nights before the test to simply taking out a sheet of paper and a pencil and writing down everything you’ve learned in that unit as if you’re teaching someone the material. This will force you to completely explain each concept in a way that makes natural sense for you. If you find that you can’t quite explain something, great! You’ve found a concept that you need to spend a bit more time thinking, asking the teacher clarifying questions, or doing Internet research about.
I find that this pre-test synthesis of all of the ideas helps to reinforce the important themes (i.e., the point of the topic), fit the unit into the subject as a whole (and thus make it more meaningful and more likely to stick to memory), and, very importantly, boost my confidence. Without doing this, I waste time reviewing my notes repeatedly, doing practice problems that I’ve already mastered, etc. This saves a ton of time.
Now that it’s all been laid out, you may realize that none of these steps are specifically called “studying.” Hopefully, this will convince you that conventional methods of doing so — namely, last minute cramming, re-learning, and stressing — are ineffective and don’t give pleasing results (test grades are sour, information is forgotten, etc.). Effective studying can be broken down into easy, tangible steps — focusing, learning and asking questions, reviewing on a regular basis, practicing only difficult problems, and synthesizing information — which you can adapt to your preferences and combine in various ways. Experiment with them!

What do you think? Maybe, along with all the other topics I plan to cover in this package, I could make a nice, little presentable eBook or pdf…