Write down all study appointments. For example: Lectures, work groups, seminars, deadlines for essays and exams.
Write down the already planned and important social appointments. For example: Working hours for a (voluntary) job, sports, important parties, dinner appointments.
Write down necessary time to relax. We recommend keeping at least one day free of study of study tasks, for example in the weekend. Also, take into consideration: Mornings after a late-night activity, and evenings after a long day of work.
Write down self-study time. When will you be able to study? Study appointments + self-study should comprise about a full-time job (40 hours per week). What will you do during this study time? When will you have breaks?
Now write down some buffer time. Life is full of surpries. In all lives unexpected events will occur. So, it’s absolutely necessary to plan in buffer time. In the time you plan in ‘in reserve’ you can complete tasks that have been delayed. If there is no (study) delay, buffer times becomes free time.
Think about the time-slots that are still empty. Are there specific things you would like to do in this time? If not, name them: ‘free time’. Especially if you’re a perfectionistic person, it’s good to also make your ‘free time’ SMART so you know when you are NOT going to worry about your studies.
When you have to deal with definitions, learn them all by heart
Make a summary that you read at least once every day
During the lecture
Arrive early, so you can sit in one of the front rows in the lecture hall
Make notes, using the Topic-Comment Method. It helps processing the information that you acquire, and you also create revision material for your exams
Engage! Teaching is not a one way process, so respond to the lecturer and bring on your own questions
After the lecture
Study in an active manner. Try to study examples, think of counter examples, create and solve your own problems, revise your notes and/or discuss them with classmates
Look online, also look for non-academic sources. So busying yourself with the lecture topic
okay friends here’s a quick Guide to Doing the Finals w/Mental Illness (feel free to add)
first of all, before finals, as much as you can: get cozy with teachers. go to office hours. have 3 questions written down that might actually help you, ask them. if you have anxiety about this stuff, rehearse beforehand, and keep the door open (it will feel less confrontational).
assume you will go into Bad Mode at some point. when you can, beforehand, start early. if it’s 2 sentences, a thought on what your thesis could be, whatever - get it started. it’s much easier from a start than from a blank page.
in assumption of Bad Mode, have your basic needs taken care of. if you know getting food is going to be difficult, stock up on snacks so that you force yourself to eat during the day. i don’t care if they’re oreos. you need to eat. if you can mix in some healthy stuff - nuts, carrots, apples, etc - go for it. but eat. buy dry shampoo for the days you can’t shower, or use corn starch. set out the clothes you will wear for the week.
if you can skip caffeine, do so. most of us won’t but… it does help anxiety.
find out if you study better with friends or alone. most “study groups” are a waste of time if people aren’t focused, and focusing on people and school is almost impossible with The Mental Illness, which wants you to not do work.
bribe yourself if you have to. “if i pass with [this average] i can buy all the things already in my amazon cart.” don’t go shopping, though. you’ll find yourself looking at strange shit for a dollar and it’s 4 in the morning and the essay isn’t written.
figure out what learning style you are and study using that. remember that if you doodle, you’re probably a kinesthetic learner - learn by doing. visual learners? flashcards. auditory? tape the lectures. kinesthetic? write it down, buddy.
make lists. they reduce anxiety and help you see that what feels overwhelming is only like 3 things.
figure out where you focus best. libraries or your room?
protip: use the school’s computer. you know, the big embarrassing ones everyone can see? having your screen visible to others will help you stay on track - particularly because the people waiting to use the computers will be v annoyed with you if you’re not busy.
fire your inner critic. you’re on full Survive mode, pal. you don’t have to make everything perfect to your standards. i find myself pointlessly obsessing about colorcoding and pretty writing. no time for that anymore. it’s there, it’s legible? it’s good enough.
five page literary/research essay gotcha down? get your evidence all of it. write it in the document. then put your own words about it. a good method is “i’m gonna give you evidence. [evidence]. this is an analysis of the evidence”. then put a sentence before your first to transition into it. then put one after your last to transition out of it. suddenly you have a lot of words with what feels like very little work.
wait to write introductions until the essay is done
white noise - good for study, stim, and also sleep
when you need to, just fess up. admit you have a problem. tell your teachers, talk to them about it, try to set up something to help you make up missing work. I want to say 95% of the time… teachers will do their best to pass you. they just want to see you try.
if you have trouble focusing on 1 thing at a time - do multiple homeworks at once. if you go on tumblr not even bc you care about this rotten website but because you just need something else, this will probably help you. two sentences on essay 1, three math problems, three words on essay 2? before you know it, it adds up.
i hear a lot of “quit social media!” but tbh if you reward yourself with like… human interaction… dont quit it. i’m like “okay i want to message him back but i need to finish X amount of work and then i can”.
small rewards are the bomb.com
honestly dress for success. if you’re in full No mode, it can be easy to wear the same thing 8 times in a row. if you pick out an outfit you love, and spend the time getting ready in the morning - it does help. and if you need to be in pj’s to attend the final? at least you’re there tbh.
grades are not a reflection of how much you learned, how hard you tried, or anything like that. they are frequently subjective. remind yourself that you are not defined by someone’s subjective amount.
tell a buddy about what you’re dealing with. have someone who knows. who listens to you.
sleep helps you learn way better than cramming tbh
-Not my photo- I have found this infographic on the internet and I think it is fantastic! If you would like to get a study buddy I would recommend using this. I know that I will definitely show this to some of my friends.
First master-post. Thank you all so much for following me! Message me if any links are broken or if you want me to add more stuff. All the people I mentioned, thank you all for making those posts. They seriously help me so much. :D
Lots of apps and tips that help me a lot.
A. Get rest + take breaks. In order to be able to concentrate, you need to be properly rested. Let’s be realistic though, no one is gonna sleep at 9 with their finals round the corner. It’s obvious but it won’t help when you’re mind is wandering off and you’re tired. So take a power nap when you’re tired.
Even if you’re not tired, even if it’s 3:00 A.M, don’t think “What’s the point of sleeping now?” Just go to sleep, and trust me. It willhelp.
Take breaks too! Find out the ratio that works for you best (example: 45 minutes of studies + a 10 minute break). Don’t study on long stretches. Breaks help refresh your mind. Preferably don’t use your phone either. Take a walk, eat a fruit or something. Try rewarding yourself.
B. Environment. It’s sometimes too loud or too quiet and you can’t help it. Try listening to some nice classical music or instrumental music to help you concentrate. This is not for everyone but if you’re like me and need music to study, here are some awesome playlists:
C: Focus. Refrain from using social media. If you’re like me, then you would understand when I say that it’s like a black hole. Use an app to block websites like facebook, tumblr etc. when you need your electronic devices for studying.
Or just switch to airplane mode! I do this all the time. You won’t be distracted by texts, WiFi etc. You can even do this on your pc/ laptop.
D. Plan + Get organised. ik, that’s what everyone says but it’s solid advice. Spending a couple of minutes planning the day and it can save a lotof time.
Or Make a Bullet Journal: A nice way to stimulate your creativity. I feel that when you actually write stuff down, it gives them a tangible, solid form. So I find bullet journals perfect.
Doesn’t have to be fancy
All you artsy peeps can take advantage and have fun
Take action immediately. This is the habit that sets highly productive people apart.
Striving for perfection can be a help or a hindrance, depending on the stakes, so save the nit-picky attitude for when they’re especially high. Like your job application.
Do the task that you’re more likely to procrastinate on first . And that way you’ll know that it was the worst thing you had to do for the day.
E. Find Out what technique is most effective for you. Find out what works for you. If you’re a visual leaner, make mind maps etc. If you’re an auditory learner, try listening to Youtube videos, talk to yourself.
1. Write your notes in a way where you can test your retention and understanding.
Many people write notes that do a great job summarizing their materials but their notes are not designed to promote learning, retention or diagnosis of their weaknesses. But my notes can – and so can yours.
Simply put my notes can be used like flashcards because I write them in a form where I separate a “stimulus” from a “response.” The stimulus are cues or questions (think: front side of flashcard), while the response is the answer to the cue (think: back of flashcard). But the stimuli are to the left of a margin, while the responses are to the right. The key advantage of this is that just by putting a sheet of paper on top of your notes, you can hide the responses, while leaving the stimuli visible. You can have multiple margins and multiple levels of stimuli and response for greater information density. When you get good at this you can write notes in this form in real-time. To get some idea of what I’m talking about google for “Cornell Notetaking method”. My notetaking method is a variant of this. I usually use completely blank paper to do this because regular lined paper has too small a margin.
To give you an idea of how powerful this notetaking method can be, I learned several courses just hours before the exam and still got an “A” in all of them during a difficult semester where I had too many competing priorities to spend long hours studying. Had it not been for this notetaking method I don’t think that would be possible.
2. Develop the ability to become an active reader (this is the perhaps the most important advice I have to share).
Don’t just passively read material you are given. But pose questions, develop hypotheses and actively test them as you read through the material. I think the hypotheses are part of what another poster referred to when he advised that you should develop a “mental model” of whatever concept they are teaching you. But a mental model can be much more than simple hypotheses. Sometimes the model resembles a story. Other times it looks more like a diagram.
But what they all have in common is that the explain what is going on.
Having a mental model will give you the intuition and ability to answer a wider range of questions than would be otherwise possible if you lacked such a mental model.
Where do you get this model? You creatively develop one as you are reading to try to explain the facts as they are presented to you. It’s like guessing how the plot of a movie, before it unfolds.
Sometimes you have to guess the model based on scarce evidence. Sometimes it is handed to you. If your model is a good one it should at least be able to explain what you are reading.
Having a model also allows you to make predictions which can then be used to identify if your model is wrong. This allows you to be hypersensitive to disconfirming evidence that can quickly identify if your model is wrong.
Oftentimes you may have two or more models that can explain the evidence, so your task will be to quickly formulate questions that can prove one model while disconfirming the others. To save yourself time, I suggest focusing on raising questions that could confirm/disprove the mostly likely model while disproving the others (think: differential diagnoses in medicine).
But once you have such a model that (i) explains the evidence and (ii) passes all the disconfirming tests you can throw at it then you have something you can interpolate and extrapolate from to answer far more than was initially explained to you.
Such models also make retention easier because you only need to remember the model as opposed to the endless array of facts it explains. But perhaps more importantly, such models give you intuition.
Of course, your model could be wrong, but that is why you actively test it as you are reading, and adjust as necessary. Think of this process as the scientific method being applied by you, to try to discover the truth as best you can.
Sometimes you will still be left with contradictions that even your best models cannot explain. I often found speaking to the professor after class to be a time efficient of resolving these contradictions.
I discovered mental modelling as a survival mechanism to pass my studies at the University of Waterloo – where their teaching philosophy is misnomer because their teaching philosophy is to not teach as well as they could.
You can see this from their grading philosophy. Although they don’t use a bell curve or other statistical grade adjustment, they make their exams so hard that the class average is usually between 68 (C+) and 72 (B-) in spite of the fact that their minimum admission grades are among the highest in Canada (you need more than A+ to get into several of their engineering programs).
The only way they can achieve such low test averages from otherwise high performing students is by holding back some of what they know, and then testing what they didn’t explain well in lecture on their exams; or by not teaching to the best of their ability.
This forces students to develop the ability to teach themselves, often from materials that do not explain things well, or lack the introductory background knowledge needed to understand the material.
I realized I could defend against such tactics by reverse engineering the results into theories that would produce those same results; i.e. mental model induced from scarce facts.
Then when I got to MIT I found myself in a place with the opposite teaching philosophy. Unlike Waterloo, if the whole class got an “A” the MIT professors would be happy and proud (whereas at Waterloo an “A” class average would be the cause for a professor’s reprimand).
The mental modelling skills I developed at Waterloo definitely came in handy at graduate school because they enabled me to learn rapidly with scarce information.
3. Be of service to your fellow classmates.
I’ve personally observed and heard anecdotal stories that many students in highly competitive programs are reluctant to share what they know with their peers; a good example being the vast number of students in a top ranked science programs competing for the very few coveted spots in med school. I’ve seen people in such situations be afraid to share what they know because the fear it could lead to the other students “getting ahead” while leaving them behind. I would actually recommend doing the opposite: share liberally. You can’t expect help from others if you are unwilling to help others yourself.
I spent hours tutoring people in subjects I was strong in. But, conversely those same people were usually happy to help me with my weaknesses when I needed it. I also found it easier to get good teammates – which is essential to getting good grades in team-based classes. I found I learned a LOT from other people. And their questions helped me to prepare for questions I may not have thought of – some of which would appear on the exams.
4. Understand how the professor grades.
Like the real world, the academic world is not always fair. You need to understand who is grading you and what they are looking for. Oddly, if you actually answer questions as written, you won’t get full marks from some teachers. Some professors expected more than the answer. Some only accepted the answers taught in class as opposed to other factually correct answers – which coincidentally can easily happen if you rely heavily on mental models. Some expected you to not even evaluate whether the answers to their multiple choice answers were true or not; only to notice which answer choices aligned or did not align with the theories taught in class. Some highly value participation in which case you ought to have a mental model of what they are teaching based on their assigned readings. The sooner you know who you are dealing with, the sooner you can adjust to their way of grading. Thankfully I considered the vast majority of my professors to have graded in a fair manner.
5. Get involved in research while still in undergrad.
Academics is a means to an end. To me that end was “solving problems” and “building stuff” specifically systems and organizations. Depending on the school you apply for, your research may be just as important, if not more important, than your grades. In fact if all you have are good grades your chances of getting into a top ranked CS program with a research component (e.g. MIT, CMU) are slim to nil; though you might still be able to get into a top-ranked courseware-based Masters (such as Stanford where there is no masters thesis).
I did an Artificial Intelligence research project in undergrad and posted it on the internet. Not long after it was cited in three patents from IBM, AOL and another inventor. Then 40 other people cited my work. I feel this helped me get into MIT because they saw that I could come up with theories with practical applications. It also led to internships with top research teams whose work I am still in awe of. This research also helped my graduate application. None of this would have been possible if I didn’t do research in undergrad.
6. Attend classes.
I do not understand the students who claim they did well without attending class. Many professors will only say certain things in class. Many classes only present some of the material in class. If you don’t attend class you simply won’t get that material. You also won’t be able to ask immediate follow-up questions. I also found speaking to the professor after class was an efficient way to resolve contradictions I had found with my mental model.
7. Time management is key – especially in undergrad.
In my competitive undergrad program I once learned that a friend who achieved top 5% status actually timed how long he ate.
While I do not suggest going to such extremes I offer this modest advice. I suggest spending no more than 30 minutes trying to solve a problem you can’t solve by yourself before appealing to office hours or another knowledgeable student. I also suggest you ask questions of your professor during or after class as opposed to leaving the class confused. This reduces wasted time in an environment when time is a very precious commodity.
8. Going out and having fun is conducive to good grades.
In my early undergrad years I studied as hard as I could. And I thought this meant putting in as many studying hours as possible. But I later realized that going out and having fun refreshed the mind and increased grades. Unfortunately it took at least 2 years for me to understand this lesson.
9. Learn how to do advanced Google searches.
This is an essential skill that enables you to answer your own questions, quickly. At a minimum I suggest you learn how to use the following Google search operators ~, -,*, AND,OR, and numeric ranges via the double dot (“..”) operator. The “site:” operator is also often helpful. I also found adding the word “tutorial” to a Google search often yields great introductory materials.
10. Turn weaknesses into strengths.
While studying for standardized exams I learned the importance of addressing one’s weaknesses as opposed to ignoring them. If you make a mistake on a question, it is because of a weakness within you. If you do not address that weakness it will follow you to the exam.
I learned this lesson when studying for standardized exams. I was able to legally buy 30 old exams and thought the best approach to studying for the exam was to do as many old problems as possible. But as I completed each exam I kept getting the same score (+/- 5%) over and over. I had plateaued!
But then I made a tiny tweak and my scores kept going up. Specifically, after each old exam, I would identify my weaknesses that led to each wrong answer, prioritize the weaknesses according to the degree to which they affected my score, and would address them in that order. When I did that, my scores increased steadily all the way to the highest possible percentile (99%).
I later realized that such standardized tests are designed to provide consistent scores (if the student does not study in between the subsequent exams to address their weaknesses). In fact that is one of the statistical measures used to measure the quality of a standardized exam and it’s called “Reliability” (Google for “psychometric reliability” to see what I’m talking about).
The semester has been so busy! Sorry I’m so slow with posts! I got into the Advanced Honors College this week, and started making my schedule for next semester so there’s a light at the end of the tunnel at least.
Some of my favorite fashion history notes this semester :)
Sorry for being so inactive! I got elected to residence hall council this semester and joined the debate team so that’s all eating my time up. A lot of my class work is writing this semester so I’m really enjoying it.
I’ve finished the first four essays for my winter class! Now all I have is a presentation and I’m finished the 25th, then go back on campus the 30th! I’m super ready to go back, even though my campus is covered by two feet of snow right now.
Final semester marks! 4.0 babey. amen hallelujah. My winter class starts next week! It’s gonna be hard because I’m bad at economics, but I’m reducing my work hours to have time.
Good luck on your winter semesters if you have one, if not then just enjoy your break!
