Don't work hard. Work smart!
I have not, in my personal experience,
had any significant issues with studying during my time as an active university
student. This statement, perhaps, is able to be defended by several reasons. I
have made choices that have aided my academic journey in the past four years.
This includes the choice of having an easier course for me, which is English.
However, this course has come with some beautiful challenges that required me
to overcome them with a few drops of sweat. Anyways, the following is the list
of my tips for studying:
1. Do not burn yourself out
People have tendencies of
imagining torturing scenes of restless study sessions with books in front of
the face, fixated to every letter in the page being read. I want to refute
this. One should take rest time between sessions, picture studying as being the
same as gym sessions. Take sets of studying, focus on what you want for an
amount of time, then take rests, short intervals that can distract you from
what you have learn, then return to your study, with a fresh eye. Do not take
one long study session, it is more prejudicial, rather than being beneficial,
such session exhausts the mind and creates morale fatigue. What I regularly do
is an hour of studying daily, 2 sessions of 20 minutes of study and 2 interval
sessions of 10 minutes. It is far more effective than a 2 hours continuous
study session.
2. If
reading does not work, try listening – there are other ways
Believe it or not, I am not much
of a reader, I detest reading books, I deem them as boring. Well, most of them,
if I read them with my weird voice in my mind. I resort to audiobooks and videos
on Youtube. I find them more efficient in delivering the necessary data. There is
a vast collection of any information that is imaginable by the human mind on the
internet, in any format that you want. Note that not everyone learns the same
way, others are readers, others are listeners. Hence, do not limit yourself to
only written intellectual sources, embrace the modern age by being an
intellectual opportunist. It is only a crime to publish others’ work as yours,
learning is never a crime.
In the Grammar classes, we learned
the functions of each verb tense and how they work. I would have class at 4
P.M. and go to teach English at 6 P.M., and all I did was convert the lessons
learned into lessons taught. This, basically implies that the theoretical data
collected during classes would be retaught in the evening English courses I
teach. This helps the mind in breaking down complex ideas learnt and making the
digestible for my course students. I have heard a quote that stated how one only
truly understands a subject matter if one is able to explain its most complex
aspect to a child in the simplest way. If you do not possess the luxury of a
class to teach, then try to discuss and help your peers who lack the understanding
on the subject you learn, try to simplify the explanations given by your
professors in order to teach your friends.
The biggest mistake people make
is memorizing or attempting to do so. Memorizing pages are useful to a certain
degree, yet, I see it as being misleading. Learning, in my opinion, consists of
analyzing the patterns in order to understand their concepts. One who memorizes
is stuck with the memorized scripts, one who analyzes has unlimited resources
to understand similar cases, it is the latter that is able to see similarities
and differences and draw a conclusion from them. One who masters the lesson taught
shall be able to use analogies at ease to explain the most complex of thoughts
into simple and understandable utterances.
You should not limit what you
study by what is and is not related to your course or work. The more you
know from different fields, the more you are able to connect them to your field
of study or work. Take these unrelated or distant matters as important as the
basics of your field, they belong to the foundation of a strong academic and
professional life. Give yourself some intellectual spices by being knowledgeable
in different areas, they serve as food to your brain with the most nutrition.
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