Study Smart...Longer

UC Riverside:  Note cards in a Vending Machine??

Studying unimportant information is a waste of valuable time.

I teach an AP class to high school freshmen.  Let that sink in...  

There is active debate out there as to whether high school freshmen are educationally mature enough to handle to rigors of a college course.   I'm seeing kids succeed, but it is a difficult struggle for them.  It is not for the faint of heart.  

The two major hurdles I see are  writing and reading levels.  Absent these two skills, the class becomes a suicide mission.  Even my top students struggle with studying, so much of the class becomes a primer on how to study.

Note cards are a tried and true method for memorization.  I use a system called “Shrink the Pile.” In this system the point is to limit how much you study. It begins with telling the difference between what is and is not important.  It makes no sense studying unimportant information because that represents a waste of valuable time.  You identify the facts that are important, eliminate all that you already know, and study what is left.   

 This is where you must trust yourself.  If you know it now, the information is in long term memory and will be there come test time.  Now that you have your list, make the note cards and start memorizing.  Here is where the magic happens, go to sleep!  In his article "Sleep sorts the memory wheat from the chaff"  Ferris Jabr explains how sleep throws out useless information, so that what remains in the morning is long term memories.  That’s right, go to sleep and let the brain do its job of throwing out useless information.   

The problem is that some of that useless information is important and are terms you will need for the test, so don’t let your subconscious mind determine what information is best for the test.  You are just checking for what information has survived the night.  When you wake up, before looking at the cards, hand the pile to someone to quiz you.   

It doesn’t matter if you wait awhile; the important part is that you don’t look before someone quizzes you.  When you hand the pile to them, get a trash can, better yet a paper shredder and place it below the person who will quiz you.  Then you will utter these magical words.  “You are going to quiz me, and every card I get right you will throw away.”  These words have no magic if you don’t believe them.  As you watch cards fall into the trash, resist the urge to mix your hand with the remains of breakfast in order to retrieve your cards.  You will now have a smaller pile to study all day.  The next morning repeat the trashcan drill with your partner, resisting the urge to be a trash diver.   

What has happened is that when a concept makes it through the night and you are able to get it right, the information has moved from that portion of your brain that stores temporary information to that glorious place where information stays with you.  Long-term memory will be there for you come test day.  Don’t worry that the process of pushing new information into memory will force you to forget something you already know.  The brain doesn’t work that way, because according to J.R. Anderson in his book Learning and Memory: An Integrated Approach long-term memory capacity is limitless.  You aren’t going to start forgetting your phone number.   

Remember the play dough factory from when you were a kid?  You crammed the play dough in the top, pushed down on the plunger and watched dough squirt out in whatever shape you had selected.  The brain is not like a play dough factory where something going in has to come out on the other end.  In fact the brain is like a net that grows larger the more it is used and new memories and learning can be acquired more rapidly because they have older memories and learning to build upon.   
As you learn new things, you will be able to collect new information more efficiently.  This is why the “smart kids” seem to know it all.  The truth is that they don’t need to study as much as you, but you will get to where they are through hard work.

Shrink the pile and you will be seeing the most difficult terms over and over.  If you leave the note card pile too large it will take too long to get around to the terms you really need to work on.  You are allowing information you already know to keep you from learning new things.  Trust yourself.  The good students don’t study it all; they only study what is new AND important.

Visiting a Professor During Office Hours

Office hours represent an amazing opportunity to get to know your professors, and to get one-on-one help from the person who creates the tests.  Don’t screw this up by wasting their time by asking things that are clearly spelled out in the book.  When you arrive with relevant, challenging questions you send the message that you are for real.  

Professors hold a lot of power, and you will need a couple of them in your corner.  They make great references for jobs and graduate school.  They often have an inside line on research positions, internships, as well as jobs.  Many adjunct professors run businesses and the class is their sideline gig.  What this means is that they often troll their classes for hard working, brilliant employees who won’t cost them that much money.  

A final note about study groups is that while you are socializing to some extent it isn’t the sole purpose of the group.  Many groups get carried away and do nothing but socialize.  Don’t let socialization get carried away by respectfully redirecting the group back to work.  There is a balance that you need to be aware of and groups do need a certain amount of socialization in order to work effectively.  Practice getting the work done before you kick back and chat.  Not all study is quality study time, so if you are getting nowhere, be willing to call it a day.   There are many college tasks such as writing or reading that you cannot do in groups, so if there is no reason to meet then don’t. 

Some classes are easy and don’t require much study, so there is no need for a study group.  Use your best sense and after awhile you will know when they are needed.  You may occasionally get one of those “show up and argue” classes, and for these classes, you need to read the material and be ready to share your point of view.   Not much study beyond reading and preparing statements are needed, so put the time into your more difficult classes.

Study Skills

The transition into new life phases can be startling.   Each phase requires new things out of you and you must adapt to the new phase by transforming yourself.  You will not have success in college if you go about it in the same way you did high school.  There is much less hand holding in college and there are fewer margins for error.  You will need to produce challenging work much faster.  You will be utilizing critical thinking skills more often, where you will need to more often explain why and how as opposed to what.  Later you will find a similar transformational change required of you once you embark upon your career.    You can do this, I’m just asking you to mentally brace yourself for the onslaught.  When it comes, work at it furiously (James 5:11) (2 Timothy 1:7).

Reading is different than study, but I find it amazing how people try to pass classes in college without reading much less studying. Notice how I separated reading from study because they are different activities.  Don’t waste time studying useless information.  Study in the specific sense is the intense work to get the right information into your brain.  In college, you are expected to arrive with your reading complete BEFORE the professor does the lecture on the topic.  You need to actually do this.  The idea is that you essentially teach yourself the material so that you can focus on the more challenging aspects of the material to be presented by the professor.  The Cornell Note system works well here.  Read the material, make your notes and write out preliminary questions you need answered during the lecture.  Some professors respond well to questions in class while some don’t.  If the class is done in a lecture hall, then questions tend to be less appropriate.  If you find it impractical to get your questions answered immediately, then do some book research to fill in holes.  Study groups are excellent in filling holes also.  All professors hold office hours and work with students one on one, just check your syllabus to find their office hours, otherwise ask. 

Loneliness: The Silent Stalker of College Students

Photo by Scott Meltzer

Have you ever felt lonely?  This matters to this topic, because loneliness is one of the major factors for people dropping out.  Just as we are created for a relationship with God, we are also created for relationships with other people (Genesis 2:18). If you have difficulty fitting in where you go to school, it will make doing school difficult.  If you were to place the schedule of a young adult alongside an older adult you would notice differences. 

The one area young people devote more time is in socializing with friends.  As you get older, this tends to fade as other responsibilities increase.  This is ok because young adults have a greater need to figure out who they are apart from their families, so friends fill this role.   It is common for people to have high school friendships that extend back to very early years.  These friendships have always just been there.  Army brats tend to do very well in making friends because they are used to moving constantly, but if you never had to go make new friends it can be challenging.  

In college, it is rare to see people you know and friends who go to the same college may find it difficult to meet up if their schedules do not match.  All of this leads to a lot of loneliness. Do not neglect yourself in this phase of life; you need to be connected to people.  I would encourage you to plug into your local church to establish a bond with like minded people. 

You can make friends at school also, and fortunately there are two needs that can be met at the same time.  Group study counts as social time.  I repeat, group study time counts as social time.  If you do this you will find yourself feeling much better.  The task is to find group members who work hard and are also enjoyable to be with.  Here’s a tip:  Control the process of membership at the outset.  Schedule a study room on days that would work for you.

On the first day of class, you show up having read the text prior to the first lecture.  You will have created your Cornell Note with facts and preliminary “high level” questions about things that didn’t make sense. As the lecture proceeds take your notes, ask your questions and watch the others and note who is taking notes, asking goods questions and seems like they may be a good group member.    As the class ends, move in and introduce yourself, “Hi I’m Mike, this looks like a tough class.  You seem like a hard worker, I have reserved a study room in the library would you like to join us?  We will meet in room 14 Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30-3:30.  We need to make sure we get a lot done and we can’t mess around, so go over your notes before we meet and write down questions for things you think will be on the exam.  Whatever we can’t figure out I’ll go ask the professor during her office hours.”   

Did you catch what was going on?  You have set the tone for a successful group and established the group norms.  You have just helped this person and yourself.  Shoot for 4-6 people because a small group of hard working students usually has perfect knowledge, but if the fact is important and the group can’t figure it out, you have a perfect question to bring to a professor.  Next Time: Office Hours

Productivity: A Student's Best Friend

Have you noticed that some people are able to balance many responsibilities?  Their secret is something called productivity. Productivity is a business concept that measures efficiency. Increased productivity leads to more getting done with the same amount of time or resources. Productivity is the reason American businesses continue to thrive despite all the horror stories, but the real cool thing is that productivity also applies to individuals.  You have periods of the day when you are more efficient and times when you just can’t think straight, and there are ways to make the time you have more productive.  If you block off a single chunk of time for study, you may find that there comes a point when you are no longer thinking straight because you are mentally fatigued.  It may be better to break up your studies into multiple bursts of hard study.

One secret to unlocking more of your productivity is the concept of trash time.  Have you ever had to wait for somebody, a bus, a class?  You can redeem (repurchase) that time by studying when you wouldn’t normally study.  Redeeming time is a way to force purpose into your life.  This adds to the overall amount of time that you study.  The idea is to utilize all those moments in our weekly schedule when we are waiting.  The trouble is that we often do not have the spider sense ability to detect when we are in trash time.  If you find yourself saying, “I’m so bored” that is your cue to get back to work.  You are building purpose in your day, when you disengage from idleness (Proverbs 6:19) (Eph 5:16).  Side note:  there are times when you must be still, reflect and talk to God, this is an active thing and not idleness.  It takes great faith and mental work to stop and depend on the Lord. 

Waiting is uncomfortable, because we feel silly doing nothing. That is why many people instinctively pop out their cell phone.  As a student, you need to convert that urge to text to an urge to study.  In fact applications are available to do note cards right on your cell phone. 

Be aware of when you are most productive and use those times for study and less productive times can be used for work or entertainment, or socializing.  Just don’t label all of your time as unproductive.  Do you remember the distance equation from algebra?  Distance equals rate times time.  (D=R*T) The same applies to memorization and study.  The more intensely you study (Rate) and the more time (Time) you study will increase the overall amount you learn (Distance).  The intensity of study is the key factor.  When you are setting down to study, be ready to hate it, because we hate to struggle mentally.  When the urge hits to get distracted, fight it.  Daniel Coyle has done some amazing research as to the nature of talent.  His premise is that talent has nothing to do with genetics, but rather practicing deeply many hours.  This deep practice is striving intensely to master something and this state of thought is exhausting. The best athletes, students, artists, dancers, musicians work intensely at the edge of their abilities, spending their practice time working to acquire higher and higher levels of talent.  With regard to studying you need to purposefully be looking at information you know will be on the test, but not wasting your time by working on things you already know.  You should be pushing yourself to your outer limits of your ability, and when you reach a plateau you have been gunning for recalibrate a higher plateau to work intensely at.