| Here's some of my personal experience how I have learned to study better in university: While reading through your material, take notes. Moreover take notes that make sense to you. Don't copy something for the sake of it if you don't understand it, try write it down in a way that reflects your current knowledge of it and how it makes sense to you. Also I wouldn't probably take everything in that article word for word. I mean: Do not listen to music or TV: It is virtually impossible to do two things at once if one of them is studying. sound just silly, okey I listen to calmer music when I study but should you always advocate for total ruthless silence? I think there's other aspect overlooked by the writer(s) that you should try to make studying enjoyable or at least tolerable. Of course in a way it is similar to straining yourself in physical exercise and more you do it the better you get at it but at times studying hard leaves you only depleted and uninspired about the work you do. I used to do studying in a group which while entertaining didn't really at times help me to internalize the material. Now when I do mostly self-studying I can internalize really well but the solitude is kinda boring at times. Until you get into the flow and really start digging what you are doing at least. But my advice to anyone who wants to study better is to take it seriously. Take notes from your material. Write down mind-maps or whatever from the concepts to help you visualize them. Use Youtube to find lessons if you feel the material is too abstract. Ask questions from people smarter than you (if there is anyone around). Implement your own solutions about problems you care about (if applicable). The mental border I see when people study is that some just want to pass the course and get perhaps a good grade. How I have started to study is I want internalize the key-concepts so well that I can use them. That means that I might spend ridiculous amounts of hours on some basic concept until it makes sense to me. At times that might cause me to miss on couple other concepts but that's the trade-off I'm willing to make. After you have studied the subject comes the hard part that is actually maintaining that knowledge. This is where I think having learnt key-concepts well really helps as you have those couple key-points to which you can return to quite easily. On the other hand if I didn't try to apply the concepts to something concrete I'll probably forget how those abstract ideas were ever linked to "reality". EDIT: Downvoted for no reason? Must have been a sore day for someone to have my comment cause him/her to channel their negative energy into disapproving my personal opinion on a subjective matter. But I guess this is nothing out of ordinary in HN. (Was it too long? You didn't agree with me on something? Please let me know) |