Study tips

[Ikith]

Ok so first a little bit about my class. I'm taking network+ the teacher sit up and the front of the class and reads off of the slides for the chapter. It puts me to sleep. I bombed my midterm despite having a study sheet, studying, and reading my ass off. This book it so boring!

I have been studying as much as I can by reading the book answering the questions and specifying why my answer is right and it just doesn't seem to be sticking. I read the chapter and look up what I don't understand then after the chapter I read the next chapter and I cannot recall what they talked about in the previous chapter. Its important that I can so I can pass the network+ cert exam.

I could google how to study but I would like some opinions and some techniques other people use to make it stick. Please help. Thank you.

[Elesirdur]

Get banned from BG. Just ask Daahan, it's an approved technique.


Anyways, I personally find that explaining the course material to someone else extremely helpful. I tend to think of different concepts and develop new links between ideas when I speak compared to when I write and read so it's definitely helpful. Try writing up flash cards, doing lots of practise problems (check if your local library or the faculty office keeps copies of old exams for students to practise on), join a study group. Oh, here's a good tip when studying for exams; on the two days prior to your exam try and do some really specific exam-related studying like practise problems or essays during the same time of day as when your exam is scheduled. Your brain will "get used" to using the knowledge for that course, per se, at that time of day - it really worked for me during my university career.

However, study techniques are very personal and what works for one person may be totally ineffective for another. Good luck.

[Ganzar]

And if needed, get in contact with a GM and curse him out.

A nice 72 hours ban always frees up some study time.

[Mizango]

It helps to like what it is that you are studying, (not saying you don't, I am talking from personal experience) I took the Network + exam a few years and had no issue with it whatsoever. Try reading outdoors with natural light, it really does beat sitting in a dim room at a computer desk, with a Television, Game console, Telephone and a PC an arms length away.

Hope that helps a little. Just keep at it, you just have to find your comfort zone.

[Alleya]

Explaining the concepts in writing definitely helps. That's why teachers generally have you write papers about stuff. Ask questions in class, too. Even if you don't actually ask anything, the process of actively looking for something you don't understand in what's being said will keep your mind awake and cement the concepts that are coming through. Try to anticipate questions the professor might ask about the current subject and how you would answer them, etc.

[VZX]

Study/ do homework outside home/your room

[Bwelch]

Find a study group or create your own.

[Nirokun!]

all of the above are good

what i did for my anatomy and physiology classes worked for me. i had a dedicated study partner that would study with me for quizzes and exams. we would go over the material presented in class, and all the diagrams in the book. we'd anticipate questions, really specific stuff would be multiple choice, short answer would revolve around steps in a process, and essay questions would generally follow large concepts including figures. Idk how it goes in your class, but generally, the more they ask for in a question, the more general the concept. We'd do short quizzes on eachother, reciting answers and practicing regurgitating in the beginning, and towards the end, it was all recall.

Being able to orally recreate (specifically) steps in a process has been really beneficial to me. and no, i dont read textbooks too damn boring

[Natallon]

as stated above, I will often explain the material I am trying to learn verbally.
even if noone is there I will just talk out loud and this really helps me to learn it.. especially when memorization is concerned

[Pyree]

Ask questions in class, too. Even if you don't actually ask anything, the process of actively looking for something you don't understand in what's being said will keep your mind awake and cement the concepts that are coming through.

Don't ask too many, though, because if your classmates are anything like mine, it'll get a lot of people to hate you and give you nicknames. Well, maybe this wouldn't be the case of the person I have in mind if any of his questions were actually good questions, but I have yet to hear him ask something that isn't blatantly obvious or wasn't already explained explicitly and clearly by the professor.

So if you're gonna go with this approach, either be careful and make sure you aren't asking something that's obvious and just delaying the class or ask the professor outside of class.

[Alleya]

People who bitch about it are just whiney assholes who aren't really interested in learning. People paraphrasing the instructor's idea and asking if it's correct has help me understand something I was struggling with before, even though most "students" get pissy about that sort of thing.

Who gives a fuck what other people think.

[Pyree]

People who bitch about it are just whiney assholes who aren't really interested in learning. People paraphrasing the instructor's idea and asking if it's correct has help me understand something I was struggling with before, even though most "students" get pissy about that sort of thing.

Who gives a fuck what other people think.

I've yet to meet a single person that doesn't talk negatively about this guy. Asking those questions in moderation might be acceptable, but this guy raises his hand every 3-5 minutes, and it gets to the point where the rest of the class is delayed because of him. I pay tuition to be taught by a professor, not by a student that knows nothing.

[Correction]

I hated kids who always asked questions in class. Especially when the questions had very little to do with the content of the lesson. That's what office hours after lecture hours are there for.

The general study habit to get into is to find a place far from your 'comfort' areas (i.e. don't get anywhere near your TV, your music, your video games). The less temptation you have to take study breaks the more focused you can get to the task of actually studying the material. Don't eat while studying, either.

[Blabj]

Since you're aparently revising an answer, you could try anotating your answer, explaining to yourself why you're saying what you think is right, why you think it, and the thought process that went into your answer. Not only does this help with remembering it, you'll also find more things to write about and you'll generally grasp the concepts a lot better.

As stated, distractions don't help, and it takes a strong will power not to log on to FFXI/MSN/AIM/IRC/whatever, just to give yourself a "breather". What you're really doing is looking for an excuse to not do the work. The best way to take a breather when doing excessive amounts of work is to go excersize. Anything works, whether you take a stroll around the block, do a portion of your work out (if you have one) or bouncing around on a trampoline for 15 minutes, the point is that for a few minutes you're not thinking about anything related to your work, moving around and going out for some fresh air, a drink and maybe even a snack.

[Wtfiku]

Working gay porn for 5 min every hour.

And if you start feeling sleepy, stroke your penis gently.

[Krye]

As stated, distractions don't help, and it takes a strong will power not to log on to FFXI/MSN/AIM/IRC/whatever, just to give yourself a "breather".

My study habits are internet, video games, TV, phone, and tell yourself you'll do it later. Then when later comes, tell yourself you're too tired and set your alarm clock for a few hours earlier than you'd normally wake up. Then your alarm clock doesn't wake you up.



I don't suggest following that course of action. I'm just not the kind of person that has ever had a need to study in my entire life.

And when I actually do have something important, I wake up unexplainably without an alarm clock at about 3 in the morning. I wrote my research paper last year on the morning it was due this way.

[Keno]

http://www.bwgen.com

[Correction]

Krye's post reminds me of another salient point when trying to study for something: Ignore how much you see others studying. It's almost never a good thing to poison your mind with.

"omg that guy never studies this must be easy and I'm just a retard."

or

"omg that guy studies so much more than I do this must be much harder than I've been let on."

Study habits are individual things tailored to your brain's ability to absorb information. Find a spot free of distraction and temptation (turn off that goddamn cel phone) and get the job done is about as specific a plan as I can make for others.

I remember I used to drive others mad with my ability to study at any hour of the day. During high school I studied on the bus to/from school and did homework during the lunch hour. It drove kids crazy who couldn't do homework unless they were home at their desk and studied exclusively at the library. We got the same grades.

[Rellinger]

I find what works is applying your course work to real life. Kind of like in Road Trip where the guy learns ancient history by comparing it to professional wrestling.

I'm taking computer science, and in my C++ course, we're learning about Inheritance. For those that don't know (which I'm assuming is a lot of you), basically in C++ you create objects/classes where you have data types (i.e information), and data members (which are built in functions). Inheritance is where you take a type of class and you modify it without affecting the original. What our teacher used was:

Shape is the base class, it could have the data member side (the length of a side), and the member function show, which could print out the side value. Then you have the derived class, which could be something like, circle. Within circle, you already have the side from the shape data member. You could also have a function built in like area, which print out the value of 2 * pi * r, or pi * d, depending on what the value of side from the main function is supposed to represent. Most people in the class didn't understand the concept. So I showed them a way they could easily understand.

I used Resident Evil 4 as an example. The base class could be enemy. It could have the data members HP, xPOS, yPOS, zPOS, DIRECTION. It could have functions for things like movement, dying (would be a deconstructor), dropping items etc. Then you could have a derived class of different types. So you could have Granados (I think thats what they were called), and certain aspects of the granado class would overwrite or be added into the base class enemy. Later in the game, Granados start getting parasites that burst out of their neck when you kill them. In that case you'd have a derived class for granados(parasite). You'd modify the dying function in the new class to change their animation to the one with the parasite, and refill their HP, change their attack patterns, etc. The derived classes version of the different functions would overwrite the base classes function.

<_<

I find it helps me haha

[Chicomagiko]

I used to do all of my studying about 1-3 hours before i went to sleep. Helped me through out High school and college. Hell, there are studies out there that prove this. Though most of what everything posted above is great too. Especially the explaining what you've learned/learning to someone else.