LEARNING HOW TO STUDY EFFECTIVELY

[Anonymous No.11213236]

>Background
Alright /sci/, I'm a pharmacy school drop out student who has decided to pursue a degree in computer science instead. I'm going to upload a series of information I was given by a counselor regarding "effective studying" for the following reasons:

1) For the sake of critique and discussion
2) For the sake of analysis and determining whether this shit is truly effective or not

I consider myself to be a decent specimen for testing this out because I am an exceptionally lazy and horrible student and because my years of adderall abuse seem to have annihilated my ability to study while sober (which is equitable to my ability to study at all). Not to say that I'll be conducting a controlled experiment in this particular thread, but at the very least I am hoping this will prove to push me (and maybe some other prospective STEM students) in the right direction. Also, I've been too much of an irresponsible, lazy shit to even read any of these documents so I figure posting them online and being berated by intellectuals oughtta set some type of fire under my ass.
-------------------------------------------------------
The documents won't be uploaded in any particular order aside from packets. I'll do my best to make sure there is no confusion about this.

Any anecdotal advice from fellow students, teachers, dabblers, etc. would be greatly and widely appreciated.

[Anonymous No.11213240]

01/05

[Anonymous No.11213243]

>>11213240
02/05

[Anonymous No.11213246]

>>11213243
03/05

[Anonymous No.11213251]

>>11213246
04/05

[Anonymous No.11213252]

>>11213251
05/05

[Anonymous No.11213256]

This is the calendar that they wanted us to utilize to map out our daily/weekly routines to determine whether or not we could organize a feasible amount of time to study for our courses.

[Anonymous No.11213258]

01/02

[Anonymous No.11213263]

>>11213258
02/02

[Anonymous No.11213265]

1/2

[Anonymous No.11213268]

>>11213265
2/2

[Anonymous No.11213274]

The Study Cycle, according to LSU's Academic Success Department

[Anonymous No.11213276]

01/04

[Anonymous No.11213280]

>>11213276
02/04

[Anonymous No.11213284]

>>11213280
03/04

[Anonymous No.11213288]

>>11213284
04/04

[Anonymous No.11213291]

A studying checklist to gauge your own progress, I suppose?

[Anonymous No.11213295]

Tips on ensuring that you don't burn yourself out permanently or otherwise.

[Anonymous No.11213301]

...and finally, some paper given to us at a mandatory workshop for failing students.

1/2

[Anonymous No.11213304]

>>11213301
2/2

Welp, that just about wraps up the extent of my contribution, /sci/. Although I'm glad this managed to motivate me to actually scan all the fucking documents, hopefully this thread doesn't get totally ignored and people actually have something of value to contribute to what I believe is the biggest problem plaguing prospective scholars.

[Anonymous No.11213342]

Due to the way memory works in the brain, the best way to learn something is to make yourself remember it without looking it up again.
This works not only for wrote tasks, but for any ability which can be learned. Practice is the most critical aspect of learning.
Why don't you remember those trig identities you studied in high school, but you remember the map layouts of your favorite videogames? Because you practiced the latter but not the former.
For STEM this is even more applicable because the theory you learn in textbooks is just a starting off point. They are basically standard tools that you need to practice using to actually be a mathematcian, engineer, or scientist.
Definitions are just that. Using them is what you need to focus on to be able to shape reality with them.

[Anonymous No.11213375]

I am literally an Academic Success Coach. My background is in mathematics and biology. I have degrees in both subjects.

What can I help you with?

[Anonymous No.11213381]

I'm gonna give you like five minutes to reply otherwise I am just gonna piss off. I got some chicken in the oven cooking and like fifteen minutes to burn (hopefully not burning the chicken in the process).

[Anonymous No.11213391]

>>11213381
Not OP, but how do you not get overwhelmed by the amount of rabbit holes you can go down when self studying Mathematics? I read every day but more and more of my time seems to be spent on researching things that I want to read.
I do have a clear goal of working in automated theorem proving, but there's so many tangentially related topics that I'm having a hard time developing adequate filters for relevance.

[Anonymous No.11213397]

>>11213375
>>11213381
If you have degrees in mathematics and biology why aren't you contributing anything meaningful to society? Shit your pants.

[Anonymous No.11213663]

>>11213240
>>11213251
This resource seems really outdated. Physical flashcards are vastly inferior to digital flashcards because the spaced repetition algorithms used by flashcard software optimize your learning by showing you the things you don't know more often while showing you the things you do know increasingly rarely. And the design of "concept cards" is just straight up bad. Ideally, the back of a flashcard should only contain one piece of information, and the front of the flashcard should tell you what kind of information you're looking for, because dealing with the overhead of first remembering what 5-7 pieces of information you should recall before actually recalling said 5-7 pieces of information is inefficient and frustrating. You're gonna look at the concept card, remember 50% of what's on the back, flip it over, think you also remembered the remaining 50% (you didn't, you're just confusing recognition with recall), and then do the same over and over again.

>>11213243
>>11213246
>>11213252
Concept maps/comparison charts/etc. can definitely help you build your understanding, but they are not enough for building long-term knowledge in and of themselves because retrieval practice >>>>>> re-reading.

[Anonymous No.11213721]

>>11213663
Based, thank you for the input anon.

>>11213375
I absolutely gave up on this thread before, anon, so do not be upset. I think my main issues are with knowing where to start and where to finish.

Back in middle school/high school, we had vert clear expected outcomes thanks to homework. We all knew where to start and where to finish our "assignments" for the given day, night evening, etc. But in college/university, no such things exist. There are no longer obvious, tangible expectations-- just vague instructions on what the professor expects us to know.

The fact that so many students manage to succeed at this is positively shocking to me, especially because it makes me realize that I am nowhere even close to achieving their level of discipline or resultant success.

How do I learn to get past this and become as successful as my peers??

[Anonymous No.11213791]

>>11213721
Summa Cum Laude grad here. Number 1, stop comparing yourself to "successful" peers. They are ALL cucks.
See http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html .
Next make sure YOU are getting something out of your classes. If you don't like the topic or proffesor, change your class. If there cost is prohibitive, you'll have to choose to
1. Get something out of your classes and get mediocre grades or
2. "Hack" the system by using review books to study, past exams, social engineering, etc to get a perfect GPA and regret it later, because you got used to hacking your way to success instead of actually absorbing the information.

[Anonymous No.11214505]

>>11213791
>http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html
Excellent contribution, thank you anon.

My main problem right now is that I am 28, my mom is sick and fucking tired of working and paying for my school, and so I'm constantly battling with trying to finish courses ASAP and retaining the knowledge necessary to succeed. I got my shit pushed in this semester because of rushing to get registered for courses I would undoubtedly struggle with, and lo and behold, the entire semester was essentially a wash.

I think I have to chill the fuck out and remind myself that doing things successfully is probably going to take a bit longer than I had initially anticipated.

[Anonymous No.11214518]

>>11214505
Teach yourself SEO, Online Marketing, and DropShipping over weekends if you have money problems. While the majority of the people teaching these skills are scam artists, a couple good ones exist, like wholesale Ted. If people are dumb enough to believe vaccines cause autism, and the world is flat, and Putin controls Trump, they are dumb enough to buy your shitty product online.

[Anonymous No.11214520]

>>11213791
i just read the book, then i make into an anki deck and concept map it, read the book again, then i take the course
i don't worry about my gpa because it's not hard to get a good grade in a class if you actually learn the material properly BEFORE taking it, lectures should just be to supplement your understanding of the material
gotta get that degree tho because you can't get into research without PhD

[Anonymous No.11214527]

>>11213236
hi i dont mean to be rude but im studying pharmacy as well and this isnt hard. I average some A some B for class grades. Anyways my secret is that I pay attention in lecture. Then I try to remember some of the things said in lecture after lecture is over and I go home and play video games and do homework. I don't write anything it's such a waste of time. They give us copies of the slides presentations - and i just read those the day before the test. our lectures are video taped too, but i dont even go back to those because its just a waste of time when u can read the slides on ur own at a faster speed. Do you know how I can do well on my tests with just one study session? While im reading i try to put the material into real life context: where have i seen this before, where will i see this, what situations can happen from drug X. I just create a story. And the story serves as a false memory, like a memory of the future that im creating now: because thats the best way to remember things to experience it. So create a false experience in ur head.

[Anonymous No.11214695]

>>11214527
I'm not really sure why I was unable to study like this when I was in pharmacy school. During undergrad I had no trouble doing exactly what you are talking about (with a lot of memorization as well, of course). My old methods of studying involved using Anki to basically turn every PowerPoint into a deck of flashcards.

During pharmacy school, though, we'd have something like 500 slides of information for each exam so trying to do this was fucking insane. By the time I was finished making the flash cards I'd already wish I was dead in a ditch somewhere. Going through and memorizing the information afterwards was basically out of the question. Actually, the vast majority of my peers were cheating their asses off to keep up.

I really just didn't have the grit for it. It was an extremely stressful time of my life for a series of related and unrelated reasons and frankly I'm glad I got the fuck out of there. The market for pharmacists is extremely oversaturated in my state anyway, so I honestly think I would've killed myself if I had to deal with that bullshit for 4 years only to get out and be jobless.

[Anonymous No.11214815]

>>11214695
It kinda sounds like you were trying to cram shit in the last minute. Surely the university didn't keep those 500 slides in a vault until one week before the exam.

[Anonymous No.11214828]

>>11214815
No, no they certainly did not. And yeah, you are correct about that. Cramming is a miserable study habit I've developed from many years of successfully cramming. Obviously the shit doesn't work in grad school, but by the time I got the message it was a bit too late.

Even then, studying on a regular basis is an extremely difficult habit to form. It's just as painful as routine exercise. There is a fear of having to do hard, mental work that seizes me by the throat when I have to study and I think that's because I'm so used to cramming that my mind associates even light studying with the same stress as having an exam the next day.

This has been an ongoing problem for some time now and it's driving me fucking insane.

[Anonymous No.11214957]

>>11213236
IIT: people too dumb to learn
>pic related
never gonna make it

[Anonymous No.11214962]

>>11214828
I had the same issue as you anon.
Anki is useless for cramming, it's really designed for learning over a long period of time.
The thing that works for me in med school is just going at the library, each saturday though I pop a modafinil and go on a study binge where I force myself to study and only study, no internet browsing, no social interactions, no nothing.

When I saturate I just go for a walk or sit and close my eyes for 15 minutes then I'm back at it.

Sunday I'm generally burnt out and just do the reviews and relax a bit.

There is no miracle though, you have to put the hours if you want to know the material, you have to do these 4-5-6 hours of study everyday, once your brain is adjusted to it then it's not that bad, even though it's objectively miserable.

What I can really say is that it gets better as you build the habit and on the contrary it gets worse as you procrastinate, momentum is everything when it comes to studying.

[Anonymous No.11214970]

>>11214962
Also I would add the root problem is the performance gap between school and college.
I cruised up to the last year of high school despite being a coombrain and a vidya addict, I never studied and got away with just listening a bit in class, this doesn't work when you have 15 times the material and much harder exams.

[Anonymous No.11215479]

>>11214962
Thanks, anon.

Now that this semester is over I'm gonna try to use the mental free space to make that habit into a reality. There is at least one text book I need to get through before the end of next month, so if I can commit to studying that many hours routinely then hopefully I can develop the habit before the start of next semester.

[Anonymous No.11215497]

>>11213236
The so-called Feynman Method is the only trick you need
https://youtu.be/q-16DPh_VWw

Time actually flies when you use it too, it's a great technique if you're lazy

[Anonymous No.11215574]

>>11215497
Christ, I used to do this all the time back when I was actually doing WELL in school.

It almost feels like I've completely forgotten how the fuck I ever managed to study in the first place.

[Anonymous No.11216308]

>>11213236
Thanks for the thread, but I can't help asking whether the most effective study method isn't simply forcing yourself to do it until you establish new habits. In my case I really want to go through with things, procrastinating makes me feel like shit, yet when I sit down to do things it's like my brain forbids me of getting it done. I'm firmly convinced rewiring my brain is the answer, but it'll be hard.

[Anonymous No.11216319]

>>11214957
My problem is growing up I never had to study to do well so I did absolutely nothing. The difference is when uni comes around the volume of material increases tenfold, not to mention you absolutely must practice it, knowing the definitions isn't enough. I'm tired of being a fuckup.

[Anonymous No.11216324]

>>11215497
I thought his method was supposed to be a meme

[Anonymous No.11217084]

>>11214962
>each saturday though I pop a modafinil and go on a study binge
Are you retarded?

[Anonymous No.11217087]

>>11214828
Except physical exercise is much, much easier to do

[Anonymous No.11217260]

>>11213236

Sometimes you just have to force yourself to learn it.

[Anonymous No.11217314]

>>11213397
>>11213375
Those who cant, teach.

[Anonymous No.11217448]

>>11213236
you will never be able to study again.

[Anonymous No.11217636]

>>11217087
This much I can definitely agree with. God knows the reward you get for a session of working out is significantly more tangible than the one you get for a session of studying.

Jesus, the discipline necessary for this shit is utterly mind fucking. I envy my peers who learned how to study effectively in high school. Having to do it as an adult feels so much more difficult.