How to study?

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This may sound weird, but I really don't know how to study. Long story short, had tough times at home up until two semesters ago (spring 2018), and throughout my last 5 years of grade school. I didn't put any effort into school, and got by fine; but, now I really do need to study and keep information in my mind for the long-run. As a result, I have no study discipline and the only way I know how to study, sort-of, is for math, which is to just do extra practice problems and make sure I have all of the formulas memorized (then it's quite easy from there, assuming I don't get excited and litter my exams with small, but costly, errors).

So the two subjects I'm looking for tips on studying for are:
- Mathematics (will be taking calculus 1 this fall as well as two electrical engineering courses... after having done almost no math since high school).
- Literature (a requirement I missed earlier on, will involve reading three very uninteresting books that seem to target an elderly woman demographic -- in other words, I am not of the target demographic by any means).

All tips & advice greatly appreciated!

I like to take brief notes, rather than copy whole paragraphs. It's best to write what makes sense to you and not what the books tell you. They're often written as inhumanly as possible, where you need them to be digestible. Only take notes of things you don't understand yet and need to research. Use colour codes, such as red for completely not understanding, yellow for understanding bits here and there, and green for understanding most but not all of it. I don't know much calculus so I wouldn't be able to give examples, but it's best to focus on your weakest spots first.

As for reading, I think it's best to set targets (say, reading 20 - 30 pages per day) and then take small notes on things you might not remember, but don't concern yourself with overarching or minute details. Also, note page numbers for easy reference.

I think this is the best advice I could give. All people study differently so it's just best to find what works.


Good luck.

This isn’t exactly an answer. But your question reminded me of event years ago watching a person who happened to be studying across from me in the university library. This was in the very early 1990s before we used the Internet and computers for absolutely everything, so people tended to study using notepads, books, and highlighters. The person across from me was reading some sort of textbook and was using a yellow highlighter to emphasize key material. When I looked up at one point, she had highlighted every single sentence on the page she was reading, except the first one. I almost burst out laughing. I don’t know how that would have been helpful later on.

As a more serious response: any sort of math requires understanding the underlying concept. Although one can scrape by with a strategy of “do this whenever you see that kind of question,” it isn’t ideal. The strategy works less and less well as one moves toward advance math. For me personally, I have to play around with a mathematical concept or skill, using it in different ways until I see its patterns. That can include completing the assigned problems, but it also includes finding other examples to use as study aids. The key is to know when and how to apply it (along with the other skills that always go along with math, like being careful not to make basic calculation errors).

In more advanced literature courses, the emphasis is going to be on identifying major themes, literary techniques, and a book’s fit within a larger historical literary trend. To that end, your studying has to analyze a book at two levels. First, you obviously need to attend to the manifest meaning of the words on the page, meaning that you read the book well enough to know the basic plot. Second, you also have to take the time to try to connect the book (and/or specific exemplary passages in it) to the other material and themes you have been reading in class, as that is likely to be the level of analysis the instructor is interested in. This will require pausing in your reading and reflecting on how you think the book (or the passages you are reading) connects to other things you have read or discussed (or even to other themes evidenced in other parts of the same book). Jot those reflections down so that you can access them later (for a class discussion or term paper).

Using flash cards can be an effective way to study

In a math class, ideally I would review the subjects before hand and work the examples on the book.

I would take notes in class, and then as soon as possible after class, I would attempt the problems I had the answers to, and then attemp the homework problems. I would take note of things I didn't understand and then ask the professor if it came up in class or ask during office hours.

I did the same for physics.

Upon getting my graded homework and exams back, I would rework the problems I got wrong and check them against the solutions, and would take note of what my mistake or misunderstanding was.

Before exams, I would rework as many problems as possible, particularly ones I had previously missed and ones most of the class missed.

For other courses I typically just took notes, did required reading and writing, and memorized any terminology that was required. Sometimes I would use flashcards to do this, and I would spend a few hours the day before the exam reviewing and quizzing myself.

The exception was foreign language courses. I would try to actively use the language through out the day when I could.

I can't give you any advice on math because I completely sucked at it and barely passed what I needed to pass to get my degree. I basically had to get the instructor to explain it to me like I was a six-year-old.

For the literature class (or any other class, really) what I found worked for me was to try to find out what the instructor wanted from me. And by that I mean basically study for the test.

That's a terrible thing to say but it's the truth. Each instructor is different and they all teach differently. For all of my nursing classes (which involved everything from chemistry to pharmacology to the psychology of problem patients) I recorded the lecture with a little hand-held recorder, took notes during the lecture, then at home read the chapter, listened to the lecture again, read the notes I had taken and made some new ones, and with the more difficult subjects I outlined each chapter and rewrote it in language I could understand.

In short, I made sure I understood the material back to front. And I also learned how the instructor tested and the questions they would tend to ask. Like during their lecture, they would make subtle hints on a subject, so I would star that in my notes.

The reading may be boring but the idea is not necessarily what you know, it's more of how capable are you of learning an abstract subject and how able are you to comprehend it. Anyway hope this helps, good luck!

Bumping this for my own reference.
If anyone can give advice on organizing time for studying plus extra life responsibilities, e.g. someone here who has done further education while working or having kids or both

Would you consider giving advice to someone who has v bad executive functioning/planning/organization/TASK switching ability.

How to structure and get through courses ok? How to do this? I just bought a planner and don't know how I shd use it fr studying

Thank you