Study tips

[Quixotic]

What works for me:
- I study at night before I go to sleep, and in the morning when I wake up (I wake up at like 6am everyday).
- For those classes where you have a chance of falling asleep in, either get some caffiene in your system 30 minutes beforehand, or carry a container of Visine with you. Whenever I felt like I was going to nod off, I'd put a couple drops in my eyes, and I'd be pretty awake again, and I wouldn't have the heavy eyelid feeling anymore.
- if its a test or quiz day, I always give myself 30min-1hr of relaxation time before the class (if possible). Cramming right up until test time puts you in a hectic mindset, and you end up forgetting shit.

[Nightbreed]

Probably not the best method but all through college I would get to sleep by like 7pm the day before a test and wake up around 3-4AM and study till it was time to go to class. Worked for me, but everyone has their own way of doing things.

[BRP]

I use books as a notebook. Not only read, but underline and write notes next to things I need to remember.

[halite]

Invest in a highlighter. I know alot of people say obsessively highlighting things while studying isn't nearly as effective as people think it is, but for whatever reason it really helps me--to the point that I can't really read a scholastic text without highlighting salient information even if I never go back and reread the text (I almost never ever do).

I can't study at home. It's extremely hard for me, as others have mentioned. Oddly enough, I tend to be an insomniac so a few days before the exam I'll just let my weird sleeping patterns take hold a bit more and go to a 24/hr place like iHop or Steak and Shake and study. Even if there's alot of people there at night sometimes (college town) for some reason I focus way better there than I do at home.

Mnemonics! I make up such weird little sentences and ways of thinking about things that last until I take the exam then quickly fade from my mind

Sometimes when none of the above work for me, I just sit down at the computer and type up outlines. Sometimes it's really all I can do with the veritable wealth of information my professors throw at me, lol. I'm a history major so sometimes it's really hard to study when most of our exams are pure essays, we have no real text books (just 5-7 books that we're expected to have read), and the only lectures we get are those in which the teacher spends an hour somehow saying nothing understandable (or maybe I'm just really bored and he talks way too fast).

[souleman]

Everyone has their own method to learn things. There are 2 methods that I personally use.

1> Teach someone else. I always volunteer to help other students in my class. Because no two people learn the same, you have to come up with ways to make the concept understandable by another person. In doing that, you also come up with another way to remember it yourself.

2> Website. When working on my masters, I created "cheat sheets" in html and posted them on my website. Other students and aquainteces (not in class, but professionals in the field), would download them also. Just writing a quick reference guide to SQL made it so that I had no problems remembering anything I needed. Same thing when working on the ISO/OSI model. As a side benefit, some of the professionals would give me tips/hints and I actually learned more then I needed to. After my first semester teaching, I have yet to have a student get any of the questions wrong about computer memory

Another trick that I have leaned as a teacher is comparing things that are completely different. If your ever in a room with a bunch of morons and tryign to explain the difference between cache memory, RAM, and hard drive (wut? its all memory), you will get what I am saying. Now try comparing a beer in your hand (cache), a small cooler on the floor (RAM), and a frdige full of drinks(hard drive), and everyone will understand what you are talking about.

[Daahan]

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

I'm surprised that people actually remember this lol.

When your professor sucks and just reads off of powerpoints while they don't teach, your book is pretty much your only hope.

To be honest, everyone has different studying habits that suits them only. It just depends on the person. We had a marketing test, and all I did was skim the chapters and and briefly read over the identifications we needed to know; I aced the test. There was this one fat girl that made like 200 flashcards for herself for the test and she got a C. So it really depends on the person. You need to experiment and work around to find what suits you.

When I have to study from a book, I read the chapters word for word (skipping over the sections I know that we don't have to know). I pull out my notebook while I'm reading, and whenever I come past a topic or subject that's important, I write down the page number in my notebook. After I have read all the chapters, I go back to my notebook and see what page numbers I have written down and reread only those sections. When you read the important sections again, read them sentence by sentence. Analyze each sentence in your head and be like "ohhhhh that's how they got to that."

When YOU sit there and try to figure out what the book is telling you instead of just being like "ok blah blah blah in perfect competition marginal price = marginal cost" things really stick in your head. Whatever conclusions the book gives you, you need to figure out how to get to those conclusions. Take it step by step and stuff should stick in your head.

Once again though, everyone has different study habits. What might work for other people most of the time won't really work for you.

[VZX]

Another trick that I have leaned as a teacher is comparing things that are completely different. If your ever in a room with a bunch of morons and tryign to explain the difference between cache memory, RAM, and hard drive (wut? its all memory), you will get what I am saying. Now try comparing a beer in your hand (cache), a small cooler on the floor (RAM), and a frdige full of drinks(hard drive), and everyone will understand what you are talking about.

http://www.vertexbuffer.com/optimizing_system_memory
HIVEMIND!