[G] KazeHydra's Guide to Studying

      One of the most important things to studying is to be realistic. Optimism is great and all but not when it comes to this. You must be able to be realistic about your goals and plans and what you want to get done each day. It’s great to say “I’m going to study 8 hours today,” but that’s probably not going to happen. You need to stop being optimistic, if just for a moment, and think “what can I realistically accomplish today? Tomorrow? This week?” One of the biggest problems I see others have when trying to accomplish things is being too unrealistic and becoming disheartened when they fail to reach their goals or panic in frustration as reality sets in. Let’s be honest: who has actually ever managed to study 8 hours straight other than when cramming for an exam? Probably close to no one. If you have, I applaud you. Some people think it’s a good thing to set such unrealistic expectations for themselves because they just have so much work to get done, but the fact is if you can manage your time wisely from the very beginning, that work wouldn’t pile up in the first place. There’s also the psychological factor of getting all your desired work done. Even if it’s just a little amount, it gives you a positive feeling about successfully completing what you set out to do. There’s no reason to try and make huge amounts of progress in a short amount of time, especially if you’re already struggling with it on a small scale. So be realistic in whatever you want. Study for 2 hours across the day. Or maybe just figure out what in the world the professor said last lecture. Maybe you just want to review your class notes or maybe do a homework assignment a little early. It all depends on what you actually need to get accomplished in the time you have rather than what you want to get done. Now come final exams, I know there is a huge amount of pressure to get all the studying done in a few short days; however, if you follow this guide, you wouldn’t be in such a position to begin with. Furthermore, the problem with planning to study for 8 hours in a day is stuff tends not to go as planned.

      Of course you can’t plan for the unexpected, but we all know things never go as expected, and that by itself is good enough. Studying one topic may take longer than expected or maybe you’ll get stuck on a specific homework problem. There’s also the inevitable issue of being tempted to procrastinate and also the occasional (semi) emergency that may come up. By being realistic about unplanned, unexpected, or non-idealistic things, you can build a buffer around your plans; if nothing happens, you have extra time. If something does happen, then it’s okay because you already planned for it. The reality is this stuff happens a lot, especially in the form of procrastination but also in terms of studying and homework assignments. Maybe you have a tendency to fall asleep while reading that boring textbook – plan for it. Stuff happens and you will almost never go a full day without something giving you unexpected trouble or have time tick away faster than desired. But this is still okay. Let’s say you have 10 hours outside of class and sleep. Let’s give 5 hours to do fun stuff, whatever you want. Instead of planning the other 5 hours to study, plan for 3 hours. Now you have 2 hours “missing” from the day. What goes into those 2 hours is everything that you didn’t plan for. If you find extra time lying around, that’s great. Chances are something will happen though, whatever it may be. Chances are you won’t actually be able to pull off a perfectly efficient day. But by planning like this, you have 2 full hours that can just disappear via anything and it’ll still be fine. Of course, this is merely an example of why providing buffers for the unexpected occurrences is a necessity to good time management. Furthermore, this buffer can vary from day to day depending on what or how much you wish or need to get done. Some days you might not be able to have a buffer at all while other days you might be able to make a 6 hour buffer. It’s something that comes with experience and personal life, as most things do, but what you should take away from this is simply: plan for unexpected stuff to happen so you have a buffer in your study schedule.

      While I’ve been talking about being realistic about your expectations this entire time, I’m now specifically addressing your long term expectations and goals. Everyone wants a perfect 4.0 (or whatever perfect grades may be where you are) in college. The truth is that will not happen to you if you’re here, reading this to improve your study skills. A 3.0 on the other hand is much more likely. Of course, it will vary with your major/classes, but people tend to set too high standards for themselves leading to unnecessary stress which can actually cause you to perform worse than your best. The very first college term I had crushed my expectations of a 4.0; since then, I’ve greatly lowered my expectations which really help to take the burden off performing perfectly. For engineering specifically, I’ve come to learn a 3.0 is actually not bad and with a 3.5, I shouldn’t have any worries. Therefore, it is important to be able to judge how much you really need to learn for the class to get the grades you want. Now, it sounds like I’m implying only study what you need to get the grades and don’t both learning other stuff – and I sort of am – but this only is true when you’re in a rough spot as exams approach. Always try to get an estimate of how much information and knowledge is enough for an A, B, or C. Ultimately, you should of course always be aiming for that A; however, should you ever find yourself short on time and knowledge before a big exam, you can use this information, coupled with a more realistic goal involving your desired GPA, and realize you don’t need to cram EVERYTHING. If you’re pulling an all-nighter because you don’t know everything, chances are you won’t get an A (if you’re confident you can, then you don’t need to read this guide). This allows you to quite literally skip over material when studying, focus on the smallest amount of information that will net you the highest grade, and “finish” studying with a little less pressure. In the end, I of course don’t recommend this in the long run, and hopefully, if you follow this entire guide, you won’t ever find yourself in such a position.

      Before I go on, I want to briefly touch on the reality of your lifetime goals. It sounds harsh, but sometimes there are people who just can’t possibly understand the material and will fail. I can provide you as many tips and tricks and advice, but you may never pass your classes, and you need to be realistic about trying to continue on your path, even if it’s a lifelong dream. If you can pull passing grades and barely graduate and be satisfied, then by all means continue; don’t let me stop you. However, I have met people with largely unrealistic dreams that I know they will never achieve. If you want to program videogames but can’t pass the most basic introductory C class, then you might want to consider changing your goals. Where I am, the most common goals I hear wherever I go is “I’m going to med school.” No, you aren’t. This is probably the most ludicrous goal students can have and has no doubt resulted in my pessimism toward this topic. If you’re struggling to pass general chemistry and can’t seem to grasp the concepts, you aren’t going to succeed in med school; that’s the harsh truth. Of course, I don’t mean to say that if you’re struggling in a course, it’s your fault for being stupid and change your goals. However, there does come a point where no amount of studying and time management can help a person improve his grades, and it’s important to know when to quit (though I hope that never happens to anyone ).

      When planning out a study regime, it’s important to straighten out all your priorities. Your most difficult classes should come first. Obviously, things due earlier should be set ahead of things due later; however, things which will take longer should be started on earlier than things which will be completed quickly. It sounds simple, but people tend not to organize or act on what they know to be important. I’m not necessarily talking about procrastination, though that may be a reason, but rather a poor ranking of priorities and lacking a sense of urgency. You may know you have an exam in a week but you choose to do homework instead. Sure, that homework may be due earlier than the exam; however, the exam is probably more important to do well on than the homework. Additionally, you probably don’t feel like you need to start studying for the exam just yet. Lacking a sense of urgency is a little different than procrastination because you don’t feel like you necessarily screwed yourself. However, I’d argue you should always have some sense of urgency about anything that you see in the near future be it homework, projects, or exams. You should always be thinking ahead of what you can get done now, regardless of how far off it is in the future.
      I don’t really know how to explain setting your priorities should be done, so here is my personal outline of how I set my priorities so you can see my thought process. First and most obvious, things due the next day. While I usually do not procrastinate to the extent that I have to do everything the day before, this also includes everything such as finishing a project or paper, studying for a quiz or exam, or doing homework that I didn’t manage to get done earlier. Second, large projects or exams that are due within a week or so. However, when I say that these are placed highly on my list, I mean that working on them, not finishing them, is important. Aiming to finish these early is ridiculous, but getting something done is the goal. If it’s writing a paper, then write half a page, for example. Third, homework that’s not due the next day. I usually aim to finish homework ASAP, regardless of due date; however, this will vary from class to class and your own personal ability to complete it. With this, I can hopefully finish homework much earlier and I work on projects a little here and there. I get studying done throughout the term rather than focused on a single day. And the day before x is due is generally dedicated to whatever that x is. But now it gets a little more complicated once you factor in time.

      Priorities will and should change as your week progresses. The most obvious example would be that big project you never started on that is now due tomorrow. However, when I study, my priorities are usually changing every day. This is an effect of both being closer to a due date and also how much more work I’ve already completed; therefore, changing priorities can be either a good or bad thing. If you keep neglecting a project, it should keep moving up your list. However, if you somehow managed to finish a large portion of it faster than expected, it moves down your list. Of course, as the days pass, everything becomes more important but you are also adding new assignments while completing old ones. I used to rearrange my priorities on a daily basis, but now I’m at the point where I just look at my list and mentally determine which is more important at the time. I won’t say it’s imperative to constantly update your priority list, however, you should not make a list and stick with it. To draw a quick Starcraft parallel, you need to react to what you scout; likewise, you need to change your priorities to what you’ve completed, or failed to complete, and how much time you have left. Remember that this idea of changing priorities is almost completely dependent on your study habits and how much you are actually getting done. The rare exception would be when due dates change or a very problematic one: a sudden drop in understanding.
      The greatest factor in priorities is how easy or difficult a class is. This will of course take some time before you can judge how the class will be for you, but it’s important to always be aware of your current standing. If a class is very easy for you, priorities for that should be low and you can complete all the assignments quickly the day before they’re due. However, difficult classes require more time and you may need to do some studying before you can do the homework. As a result, a faraway homework assignment may be placed above an easy exam that’s the next day. I can’t specifically tell you how to rank stuff like this as it’ll come with personal experiences with the classes and your own knowledge of how long assignments will probably take. The worst thing is when an easy class suddenly becomes difficult. When this happens, and you’ll know it, you should not think it’s just one topic (unless the teacher specifically says that, which can happen) that is difficult but that the rest of the class will be this hard and worse. You need to react immediately to this and adjust your priorities accordingly. If not, you’ll get behind fast and get screwed by what you originally thought was an easy class.

       So now that you have a general idea of how to prioritize your schoolwork, you can make a schedule. For starters, you’ll want to put down the dates of all your big exams and projects. However, in addition to that, I actually put down every assignment I get into my schedule; furthermore, I break up any big project into sections that I aim to finish by some date. This allows you to just do work in a linear fashion while still keeping future assignments in mind. The most important part of this is the projects that get broken down into different parts (this includes studying for exams). These self-made due dates, as well as how to break apart your projects, are largely impacted by how you decide to prioritize them. Therefore, the kind of schedule I’m talking about is a lot more complicated than just a list of when everything is due. By self-imposing due dates of getting stuff done, you shouldn’t ever fall behind. At the same time, it allows you to fall behind on your schedule and not be in immediate trouble. The goal is to consistently complete everything in a linear-like fashion with the occasional hope of getting ahead of schedule. A similar but slightly different way that I sometimes employ is writing out a daily schedule of ranked goals. Every day, I’ll aim to complete at least one thing, though usually multiple things, and try to get through my entire list before the day ends. After I do, I’ll make a new list for the next day and repeat this. Sometimes I’ll do the same thing but for the week, usually when I only have a few but difficult things to worry about. In the end, the entire purpose of going through this process of priorities and scheduling is to keep a constant check on yourself and make sure you never fall behind in your studies. Choosing how to make the schedule is completely up to you, as long as it accomplishes this goal.

      Now we reach the main section of this entire guide. Everyone studies different ways and have their own personal methods. And if you’re doing well enough in school, then I have nothing to criticize you about. However, most people will end up doing this thing called cramming and others honestly study hard the entire term but still end up with poor grades. Regardless, chances are most people have lack of good study habits and skills, and here I will share my best tips and tricks to efficient studying. There is a difference between studying hard and studying efficiently, and most people don’t know how to do the latter.
       I will admit that efficient studying still requires hard work, but if you put your effort into the right places at the right times, you’ll learn a lot more in less time. The biggest thing about studying efficiently is the idea of studying the right concepts rather than specific examples or less important ideas. I’m sure you’ve heard it plenty of times, but what you want to learn are concepts, and if you master those, you’ll know everything you need to know to do well in your class. You should always be questioning whether you understand, not whether you know, what you’re learning in class.

      The most basic thing I tell everyone and something you should’ve heard countless times but no one ever does is constantly reviewing what you’ve been lectured on. People hate doing this because they’re lazy, yet it’s an incredibly basic and simple method to aid in studying. What I think a lot of people misunderstand is you aren’t aiming to understand what you’ve gone over in class; you’re simply aiming to review it. Terms, theories, ideas, etc. are easy to forget and reviewing allows them to stay somewhere fresh in your mind. I’m talking 5-10 minutes at the most per class a day. In fact, attempting to understand it is something you should not be doing, at least not yet. This is only for the sake of keeping overarching ideas in your head. However, this is something that you should never slack off on. You should review once for every lecture you get. On weekends, I try to review everything I’ve learned since the start of the term (again, this is only a very quick review with no attempt at trying to understand) but this isn’t completely necessary if you don’t have the time or you are feeling good enough about your classes.

      I think I mentioned it earlier but in my opinion, it’s more important to aim to study a certain amount of information rather than study a certain amount of time. If you successfully learn a topic, then your studying has definitely paid off. If you’ve studied for 8 hours, then that actually tells me nothing about how prepared you are for an exam. I don’t care how long you study; if you still fail to learn the material, it’s all meaningless. Instead of trying to study for a period of time, you should try to learn the material. The goal of your study sessions should be to learn very specific topics that you are having trouble with, need review, or even stuff you are completely lost on. The result of this can go both ways in terms of time: either you save a huge amount of time that you would’ve wasted trying to reach your goal of studying x hours or you end of studying even longer than you would’ve liked. However, regardless of how quickly or long it takes, forcing yourself to learn topics gives solid proof that you’re making progress. Of course, the real problem becomes how to learn the material before your exams, but my point here is only to set your studying goals to be an amount of material rather than an amount of time.

      The thing about studying is there are many different methods to do it, and these methods are all more or less effective depending on what kind of class you are taking. It is important to be able to distinguish your classes and know what approach you should take when studying each individual class. For example, some classes are all about memorization. You get a ton of info thrown at you and tested on a bunch of random facts. I hate these classes a lot but it’s about the most straightforward way to study. There isn’t much to say about it other than memorize everything. However, memorization is probably the worst way to study for any other class. Let’s look at basic calculus, something I think almost everyone takes if they go to college. Sure you can memorize everything there is to know about integration and all the rules with cylinders and trig substitutions and stuff (I am so rusty on this, I don’t really know what I’m saying lol). That’s probably enough to get you a B and maybe even an A; however, a better and more reliable way would be to actually learn what an integral is, what a double and triple integral are, and what these things are actually measuring. You should learn why substitution works the way it does and why trig identities are used. For calculus, I think there are two very important approaches. The first is to understand wtf you are actually doing. The second, as with any math class, is a ton of practice so that it becomes second nature to you. This second point is the best way to study when it comes to math but not for other classes. While repetition is good for any subject that involves performing steps, it is not necessarily the best way to study; however, for math, repetition is the best.
      Another example I’ll bring up is organic chemistry. This is pretty much the most common class taken for the sciences, and it is definitely a class that a large proportion of people have trouble with. The biggest mistake people make when studying for this class is trying to memorize. I’ll admit memorization might be able to get you an A. In fact, depending on what your tests are like, memorization may actually be one of the more effective ways to study. However, memorization is only going to hurt you later on and is not teaching you what you need to learn from the class. Compared to something like history, where memorization of facts is what you need to learn, ochem is not a class to teach you a plethora of facts. Learning the concepts and patterns that occur is far more useful and the correct way to study ochem. Things may look completely different, but if you actually understand what’s going on, you’d realize many things are actually the same. Therefore, learning the conceptual part of ochem and recognition of patterns is the best way to study it. It’s very possible to get through the class based on pure educational guesses even when you have no idea what’s going on but understand how certain functional groups react with each other.
      I can’t go on and explain every different kind of class with every different kind of studying method, so in part, you are on your own with this. However, it will definitely help you to at least be aware that different study methods are necessary to different classes and may sometimes be the major reason why you seem to be struggling. If you feel like the material is not hard yet you can’t seem to get the grades you think you can, then try different studying methods. Also, don’t be afraid to mix techniques together. Maybe you only need to understand the overarching concept and the rest is rote memorization; or maybe you need to stop caring so much about concepts and work on memorization. Just doing more of what you’re doing previously is not going to work unless you know you’re not doing enough to begin with.

      One of the best ways to measure how much you actually understand your material is teaching (or at least pretending to teach) other people. It is actually incredibly difficult to explain stuff in words even if you do know what’s going on. The act of teaching others requires you to be able to explain concepts and terms in simple words and break everything down into a step by step process, explaining the reasoning behind everything. It really tests your mastery over a subject and sometimes forces you to question your own logic and understanding when put under pressure. Even if you fail at doing this, it still helps in two ways. First, you learn which areas you are weakest in. You may be surprised at how easily you explain one thing yet how difficult another was. In cases like this, you will learn that you need to review and learn something that you originally thought you had no problems with or that you actually understand something really well but have trouble with it for a different reason. The second way this helps is that someone else is checking your reasoning and understanding. If the person understands less than you, then they will (should) question you and if you lack a very strong understanding, you might doubt what you originally thought to be true. If the person understands more than you, then he or she can correct you regarding anything you once thought to be true. This also can result in a back and forth argument in order to settle on a uniform and hopefully correct answer.
      The most important part when doing this is making sure the other person (or even people) is motivated as well. You don’t want a person who is not really interested in studying or learning because then you’re just wasting both of your times. It can definitely be hard to find classmates like this because you either need people who aren’t falling behind, who are rare, or people who actually want to learn, who probably don’t care to until it’s almost exam time. I have trouble with this too, and in the end, I use it almost solely as a way to confirm I’m ready for exams. It’s definitely not something you should try when you’re first starting but still an exercise that I recommend you try often. I think there are 3 general levels to measure how ready you are for an exam. When you can do what you need to, when you can understand what you are doing and then when you can teach what you are learning. It may be true that you only need to be at the first level to get an A but if you can teach the material, then you are getting far more out of the class than everyone else and this will only help you in future courses.

      Some people know what I mean, some people think they know what I mean, and others can only guess what I mean. You may never encounter this kind of class in your life or you may encounter it many times. There are classes that people dread taking and know from the beginning it’s going to be horrid. Nobody save the geniuses feel good about and the only reason anyone passes is thanks to the existence of curves. They’re the classes where you will not do well in and will not understand the material RELATIVE TO OTHER CLASSES. They’re where you don’t pray you do well but that everyone does worse than you (you probably do this all the time though). These kind of classes should be distinguished from the ones where you personally feel are impossible. Some classes are really difficult and seemingly impossible; however, there will be a small handful of students who succeed not because they are smarter than you but because they worked harder than you. This also goes back to what I talked about awhile ago regarding unrealistic goals and majors. If you feel like you’re taking a bunch of “impossible” classes at once then that’s a good indicator you might want to reconsider your major. An exception would be if you talk to upperclassmen who agree that a particular term or set of classes is uniquely horrible. So to sum this all up, I’m talking about the class that is infinitely more difficult than the majority of the classes you are used to. But I have developed a few tricks to help you survive these classes.
      First, you need to accept you will not understand everything. Once you give up hope on doing well, you can now aim to survive. The instinct to this situation is to cram as much knowledge in as possible and hope you remember enough, but that’s too much of a gamble and poor study skills. Worst of all, this only amplifies your stress that you really don’t want. By accepting you won’t get everything, you can release a lot of stress and this alone is already a good thing. Of course the problem now is you still need to survive the class. Normally, there should be material that you can at least sort of grasp – this is the stuff that would ordinarily get you most of your grade. Identify this information and master it. Don’t worry about the complicated stuff that went over your head, at least for now. Master as much information that requires the least time. This part is the core of what it means to study efficiently. If you can’t understand it after even a little while, just give up. A mastery over a small amount of material is better than jumbled thoughts of everything. This should be done throughout the course but chances are there will not be a significant amount of info to master that you can do easily.
      The next step comes with all the other material that you are utterly lost on. This will sound hypocritical, but don’t worry about understanding what’s going on, let alone being able to teach others. SCREW THAT. You do not have the time to deal with such a high level understanding of such a complex subject. I am not advocating this for any other class; your goal is survive and pass the class. After you survive, then you can go back and learn the material in detail if you so choose. The goal is only to be able to do what you need to do. Even if you’re asked to write an essay on quantum mechanics, just learn the terms and what the book and/or teacher says. You don’t need to understand what you’re writing, as long as you can write it. If you are unable to do even this, relative to other topics in this class, then ignore it. If you think this is bad, yeah I agree it is. But if your alternative is cramming random facts because you have no idea what’s going on, then this is the better choice. The worst question you can ask is “why?” If you find yourself able to answer that question on a regular basis, then you aren’t dealing with an impossible class. In a sense, this might mean a lot of memorization, but it will depend on what the class is and how you will be tested.
      So now you have a mastery of a small amount of material and are able to sort of do or say stuff with zero understanding. At this point, you should have an idea of what the more important topics of the class are and what aren’t. If not, you either need to pay attention in class more or this is one really impossible class. The answer is almost always correlated to how much time in class is spent on topics. Even though you have no idea what anything was said, you should be able to distinguish this much. The less important topics that you can’t understand: throw them away. Don’t deal with them at all. If you have time, read over your “notes” (as if you can understand your notes) but don’t even deal with trying to figure out anything else. If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m advocating skipping a lot of material. This is because there is not enough time to deal with everything; if there was, it wouldn’t be an impossible class. The longer topics are what you want to focus on. As for how to study them, I can only suggest all my previous points. These big, main topics are what you want to master as much as possible. You’ve already mastered what you could understand easily and have a basic ability to do most of the other stuff. The rest of your precious time should be focused on the biggest, toughest topics of the class because this is where most of your grade will be determined. Identify a small number of the biggest ones and cycle through them. If you struggle too much with one of them, ignore it. Less material to deal with means less unwanted stress. If you find yourself miraculously with time, then you can go back to the stuff you’ve been ignoring. For those thinking it’s bad to ignore material, the reason is because you’ve attempted to learn it and failed. As a result, the most basic information is already in your brain; information that would’ve increased only a small fraction if you had invested a disproportionate amount of time into it.
      Finally pre-final exam time, go back over everything you’ve ignored but briefly. If you’ve been studying well, some of the stuff that once seemed impossible should make a lot more sense. Learn it with your newfound knowledge of other topics. I seriously doubt you have the time to do anything more than this, but you should be a lot better off than most other students. There will most likely still be a bunch of stuff you ignored, but you will have a much stronger grasp of the other material compared to other students. When you take your exam, skip over any question involving the material you skipped and focus on getting all the points you should get. You’ll probably still fail, but at least you’ll do better than most others.
There is one kind of impossible class to which this may not apply: the class that completely builds on itself and requires mastery of previous topics to proceed to others. Honestly, I have yet to encounter a class like this, but I can imagine how bad that would be. I can only recommend going at your own pace as you learn the material and setting a huge amount of time aside every day for it.

      Taking breaks is actually a very important part of studying. You do not want to overwork yourself and sometimes you need to rest your mind so that you can come back refreshed. How often you take breaks is dependent on your own ability to stay focused and not get distracted, but I don’t recommend studying straight more than a couple hours. Needing breaks is probably the most overused excuse for procrastination, but it’s not like it’s a complete lie. The inability to recognize when you need a break can be very detrimental to your studying. If you’re stuck on something too long, set it aside for awhile. Furthermore, taking a break does not necessarily imply go off and do something unproductive. It can also mean taking a break from a particular subject or assignment and working on something else instead. For example, let’s say you have an assignment that’s relatively easy to do but you just absolutely hate it. Work on it for 10 minutes at a time and do something else productive as a break. This alleviates a lot of the temptation to procrastinate on something while still getting the work done when you need to.
      Sleeping is the most important break of all. You should never pull an all-nighter for the sake of schoolwork. Go to bed at a reasonable time as often as possible. Sleep is vital to maintaining a clear mind and ability to work at your best. Going all the way back to scheduling and daily goals, sleep should always be the first priority. This means if you should never opt to finish your daily goals in exchange for sleep, although it’s fine to work a little longer occasionally. As for the days you absolutely must pull all-nighters due to some large project due, it’s my personal opinion that this only results from poor planning on your own part, but in this case, it is reasonable to work all night. So get your sleep, get your rest, and take breaks as needed. Keeping your mind as calm and rested as possible is possibly the most important part of studying efficiently.

      In the end, people have their limitations. There is such a thing as smart people and dumb people and everything in between. If you really can’t learn something by yourself, swallow your pride and ask for help. If you didn’t need someone to explain stuff to you, you wouldn’t be in the class in the first place. It’s true not all teachers are helpful, but it’s better than staring at the textbook by yourself and hoping you’ll magically reach an epiphany. If you really think your teacher is useless, then ask your friends or someone you know who is doing well in the class. Go online and look for websites for different kinds of explanations; exhaust all your resources looking for the help you need. Don’t wait until right before exams to ask for help; you should seek help as soon as you feel you falling behind. If you aren’t reviewing like I said to, you won’t realize you are, and if you ask for help the day before an exam, it is too late. People tend to seek help as a last resort when they have given up; however, you should be seeking help as a second resort where the first one is your own brain. I know a lot of teachers dislike helping students who put in no effort, and I have to agree that I have no respect for people who seek help before trying by themselves. But, if you’ve really tried your hardest and still find yourself lost, then you should be looking for help.

      I personally have what I call the 1 week rule when it comes to exams. This is the rule that I begin studying for my tests a full week in advance. This will almost always get me the amount of time I require to study. Allowing a week to study allows you spread out the information you need to learn into daily sections and specific topics. Studying only a little bit each day is always better than studying everything in a small amount of time. Furthermore, if you’ve been keeping up with the homework and lectures in the ways I’ve described before, you should have a general idea of how everything works, depending on the difficulty of the class. Having prior knowledge like this makes it much easier to break down your study material into groups and focus on one group of topics a day, especially focusing on the material you are weakest on. Additionally, with this full week of preparation, I will usually aim to finish my studying as if the exam was 2 days before its actual date. So you end up with 5 full days to prepare. Usually, you will not need these 5 full days but they are there for when exams fall close to each other as well as spreading out your studying as much as possible. At the end of the 5 days, should you still not be prepared, you can spend the last 2 days focused on the material you find most difficult while quickly reviewing everything else.

      Knowing when to give up, at least temporarily, and move to a different topic is very important. If we could understand every topic in the class without much trouble, then we wouldn’t need to take the class. At least, you wouldn’t need to be reading this guide. Thus, it’s understandable that you will hit a wall sometimes; the important thing is not to dwell on it. If you feel a topic is too over your head, skip it and study something else. It’s too risky to hope you will be able to figure it out and have enough time to study everything else. In the case of when it is a “basic” concept that is vital to understanding the rest of the class, I still say skip it in favor of the simpler things that you can grasp. However, be sure to go back to it and learn it eventually. In reality, anything you skip over should be done so with the plan to return and attempt to learn again, but sometimes you will not have the time to do so. This idea is the same principle I described regarding “impossible classes” and thus a large component of how to study efficiently but also realistically. Too often people wrack their brains on something relatively trivial, only to later find they still have a mountain of information to cover.

      Most of you should be aware of this, but every teacher has his own way to test you and they almost always stick to this same method for all their exams. You may be thinking multiple choice, essays, or math problems and the like. However, this also includes subtleties like: does he test about random facts? Does he make large concepts worth the majority of your grade? Does he make questions similar to the book? To the lecture examples? Or are the questions like you’ve never seen before? Not only are the type of questions important to know but so are what the questions are and how they relate to what you’ve seen. The first test you will be going in blind and results in you having to study the best way you see fit. However, from this single exam you can gain a large amount of knowledge of how you are being tested. You will know whether you can skip studying the random facts or to care about them. You will know whether only the large concepts are considered important or whether to spread out your priorities to all topics. You will know whether to study examples from the book, homework, or lecture. In the worst case scenario, you will at least know that nothing you’ve seen before will be an effective way to study and to focus on your understanding of the subject rather than useless practice problems. Knowing how you are tested will greatly help you in preparing for future exams.

       If you’ve been doing everything I said, then I can almost guarantee that another day of studying will not have much of an impact on your grade. As a result, I do not study the day before my exams (other subjects are allowed). At most, I will do a VERY quick review of the material to make sure I haven’t missed anything. These are the days to kick back and relax and not think about the test. Obviously, you will probably have work to do for other classes, so continue doing that as needed, but I generally try to be most relaxed on days before the exam. Finally, the most important thing you need to do is get your sleep. Make sure you go to bed at a very reasonable time. You may not have a great sleeping habit, but on days you have exams, a well rested mind is essential. The day of the exam also entails resting and not studying for it. You will probably go to class early as most people do. In the extra 5 minutes that you have, do the fastest review of your life. This is just done for the sake of getting your mind working prior to the exam. Run through all the topics you’ve studied and check off that you studied your best. Even if you run into stuff you aren’t prepared for, just remember that you’ve been working hard for a long time (right?...) and another day wouldn’t have led to some epiphany. GLHF.

      First, look through the entire exam. If it’s pure multiple choice or something of that nature, there’s not much to see and I don’t really have any tips for that. If it entails long questions, be it math or essay or something, read all of them briefly. As you read them, write down any relevant terms that pop into your head that you think are important to the answer, 10 words max. This is for later use. Also, you will want to divide the test into time. Say you have 3 equal questions to do in an hour. Give yourself 20 minutes per question. In this way, you won’t get stuck on a question and lose partial credit on other questions. This entire process of going over the exam, jotting down notes, and roughly dividing the test should take 2-3 minutes max.
Start with the easiest questions that you know you can do. This gives you a mental confidence boost and secures you easy points. Keep working toward the harder questions but remember to keep a constant eye on the time. You absolutely do not want to get stuck and spend too much time on one question. You should only allow yourself to do that if you are no longer stuck and are in the process of finishing in it. It will be likely that as the test progresses, you start to forget things you should know easily. This is why you wrote key words down earlier. They will help give you a reminder as to how to answer the questions when you were in a clearer mind. Also, don’t be afraid to skip entire questions if you have no clue how to do them. This is just efficiency once again; get the points that you know how to first then worry about the points that you are clueless on.
      Finally, you are not allowed to turn in the test before time is called. You are not allowed to stop working on the test until your time runs out. Check your work. Check it twice. I don’t care if you have another hour; check it another ten times. Unless you are a super genius or you feel absolutely perfect about the exam (in both cases you wouldn’t need to read this), you will make stupid mistakes. Everyone makes the dumbest mistakes on exams. I’ve pretty much set a rule for myself on just assuming I make at least one mistake. Don’t let yourself lose points over something that you’ll get angry over later. Your reaction to any points lost should be “yeah, I didn’t know it.” If you can achieve that, as well as having entered the exam knowing you studied your best, then there’s really no reason to be upset about whatever your grade is. And if you can maintain this mindset, you’ll avoid a lot of unwanted stress, which can only be a good thing.