How to Study: A Brief Guide

Introduction
Manage Your Time
Take Notes in Class and Rewrite Them at Home
Study Hard Subjects First and Study in a Quiet Place
Read Texts Actively and Slowly, Before and After Class
Do Your Homework
Study for Exams
Take Exams
Do Research and Write Essays
Do I Really Have to Do All This?
Are There Other Websites that Give Study Hints?

1 Introduction

Everyone has a different learning style. Consequently, everyone has a different studying style. But the way that you are studying right now might not be the best for you. How would you know? Easy: If your grades aren’t what you’d like them to be, then you probably need to change how you study! (Note: Or if you feel like you aren’t comprehending what you’re studying. -A)

I am going to give you some suggestions on how to study efficiently. They worked for me when I was in high school, college, and graduate school. Not only that, but they worked equally well for me in humanities courses (like philosophy and literature) and in science courses (like math and computer science). But, given that everyone’s learning style is different, some of my suggestions may not work for you, at least not without some modifications. Nevertheless, I urge you to try them. Most successful students use them (or some slight variation of them).

2 Manage Your Time

School is a full-time job, and managing your time is important.

Your education should come first!

How much time should you devote to studying? If you assume that your education is a full-time job, then you should spend about 40 hours/week on it. Figure that 1 academic credit equals about 1 hour. So, if you’re taking 15 credits, then you’re spending about 15 hours in class. Subtracting that from 40 gives you 25 hours that you should be spending at home (or in the library).

You should spread that out over the week. 5 hours of studying per night, Sunday through Thursday.

Set yourself a grade goal. If you don’t meet it, cut down on non-school activities.

For some websites on time management, take a look at:

3 Take Notes in Class and Rewrite Them at Home

Take Notes
Take Complete Notes
Use Abbreviations
Neatness Doesn’t Count
Ask Questions and Make Comments
Copy Your Notes at Home
Don’t Take Notes on a Computer
Don’t Rely on the Instructor’s Lecture Notes
Further Reading

3.1 Take Notes

Good studying at home begins with good notes taken in class. Just as everyone has a different learning style, different teachers have different teaching styles: Some teachers lecture, some lead discussions, some “facilitate” individual work (as in a lab), etc. Consequently, different classroom settings will require different note-taking techniques. But the suggestions here are general enough to work in most situations.

3.2 Take Complete Notes

The key idea of taking good notes in class is to write down as much as possible. There are several reasons to take notes that are as complete as possible:

It will force you to pay attention to what’s going on in class.
It will keep you awake (!)
There will be less that you’ll have to remember.

Should you concentrate on taking notes or should you concentrate on understanding what you are learning? Paradoxically, I’d err on the side of taking notes, not understanding! (Note: Brian Harvey disagrees. -A) Understanding can come later, when you review your notes. But if you have incomplete notes, it will be hard for you to learn what you didn’t take notes on.

3.3 Use Abbreviations

Taking complete notes will require you to write fairly quickly and, as a consequence, to use abbreviations. Here are some that I use (many of which I borrowed from other students and teachers), to give you an idea of how you can abbreviate.

Abbreviation – Meaning

betw – between

ccpt – concept

cd – could

compn – computation

compnl – computational

comp – complete

dn – description

fn – function

- human

…g – …ing

contg – continuing

…l – …al

compnl – computational

lg – language

mn – mean

mng – meaning

…n – …tion

abbrvn – abbreviation

NB: – note / note well / nota bene

pn – proposition

prop – property

re – about

reln – relation

qn – question

…r – …er

compr – computer

shd – should

s.t. – something / sometimes (context should make it clear)

stmt – statement

thot – thought

w/ – with

w/o – without

wd – would

wh – which

∧ – and

∨ – or

¬ – not

⋄ – possible / possibly

□ – must / necessary / necessarily

∀ – all / for all / every

∃ – some / there is / there are / there exists

(Note: Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_logic_symbols for more unicode logic symbols. -A)

3.4 Neatness Doesn’t Count

Yet another key idea of note-taking is that you don’t have to be neat; you only have to be legible enough to be able to read your notes a few hours (or at most, a few days) later.

3.5 Ask Questions and Make Comments

If you have a question or something comes to mind as you’re taking notes, you have two choices:

You can contribute to the class discussion by asking your question or making your comment.
You can jot your question or comment down in your notes.

I suggest always doing the latter, but also doing the former as often as possible. The latter, so you won’t forget it; you can always bring it up later. Another reason, of course, is that if you do bring it up in class, it should thereby become part of the day’s class notes! One technique I use to distinguish my own questions or comments from the rest of the notes is to put them in the margin and/or surround them with big, bold square brackets like so:

+--           --+
|               |
|   like this   |
|               |
+--           --+

By the way, if you have a question, especially if you need clarification of something the teacher said or wrote (possibly because it was inaudible or illegible), ask it! Do not be embarrassed about asking it!

3.6 Copy Your Notes at Home

Notice that this section is titled “Take Notes in Class and Rewrite Them at Home”; not “Take Notes in Class and Study Them at Home”. Of course you should study your notes at home; but just (re-)reading them is too passive. One of the themes of this guide is that studying must be active. It is all too easy when just reading passively to have your mind wander or even to fall asleep.

Moreover, notes are often incomplete or sketchy; just reading such notes won’t help. A few days or months afterwards, they may be illegible or incomprehensible. Finally, if you don’t do something active with your notes, you run the risks of having unorganized notes or misplacing them.

What I suggest is that you study your notes by re-writing them. For each class, buy a separate notebook from the one in which you take your notes. I recommend a “composition” or spiral notebook rather than a looseleaf notebook for your “permanent” (i.e., re-written) notes. Then, as soon as possible after class (preferably that evening or the next), copy your notes into your permanent notebook.

andrew.antlechrist.org/study/