Study Smart Not Hard
Going from high school to university is a drastic change and causes a lot of stress due to the lifestyle changes and changes in workload as university requires a lot more effort. Don’t you sometimes feel that no matter how much work you put in, you are just still falling behind and time seems to be too short? Well I always felt I never had enough time to finish all my work for each course and pulled all nighters to study for tests. This was me in first year and first year for me was learning about my work habits and how I needed to change my schedule and the way I work as my study skills from high school did not work in university. Catching up with course work in high school was always easy but when I was behind with my work in university, it seemed impossible to catch up with all my work. Well from first year I learned some great studying skills that helped me with studying that I would like to share with you.
Have you ever written a test for which you studied really hard for but the end results were not as good as you hoped it to be? Always happened with me. I always wondered why this happened and then I learned that I have been studying passively and not actively. Studying hard would not help if studying is done passively. Study smart by active studying. Studying begins right when you step into your lecture room. When taking notes in class, always write them as that would be active studying. The reason being is that when you write notes, the speed of writing is slower than typing so when writing notes, you actively listen to the professor and listen for key points to write them as it would be impossible to write everything that is being said in class. Writing being a slow process also allows the brain to process and understand information and allows for the information to stay in the brain for a longer time of period than typing. Typing is a passive way of learning because typing is faster so less time for brain to process information and almost what the professor says would be typed resulting in less thought process as well as less understanding of topic being presented in class. Active note taking requires thought process by listening to the professor and writing a summary of the key points.
To be able to memorize the lecture information, it is important to review all class notes with 24 hours as that is when the information is fresh in your brain and the brain is more likely to remember the information when writing a test. Also, when studying your notes, it should be done actively not passively. Passive studying would be reading your notes repeatedly. This may be a hard way studying and not a good use of your time. A smart way of studying is active studying which would be a good use your time. An example of how to study actively is after reviewing your notes, present those notes as if you are the professor that is giving the lecture. You can present them in front of friends, family, or even just in front of mirror by yourself.
When studying for exams it is important you do practice tests before you start reviewing your notes. Many choose to do practice tests after reviewing their notes; however, that would not be a good use of your time. Doing practice tests first allows you to see which questions you got wrong and that would give you a good idea of what topics to focus most on and which topics you need to spend little time on. Focusing on topics that you struggle most with would be a smart way of studying as this way you would not waste your time on topics that you are already comfortable with. However, not doing practice tests first would result in studying everything, which would be studying hard but would not be an effective use of your time as you would put in more than needed time in topics that you are already comfortable with.
Written by: Simran Singh
