Monday, October 24, 2005
Study Advice for Honors (or anyone, really)...
I meant to mention this after our last exam. It is very good advice that I compiled from my top students from previous years:
Here is an easy way to tell whether or not you are studying:
1. Look at your writing hand
2. Is there a pen or pencil in that hand?
3. Are you solving a problem or writing a description, explanation, illustration, or mnemonic with said pen(cil)?
If you are not physically writing something: a solution, description, explanation, illustration, or mnemonic, (pen in contact with paper), then you are NOT studying. Do not fool yourself. What you ARE doing is the equivalent, in baseball, of "warming up in the bullpen". You are merely pre-studying or preparing to study.
Understand that the most effective way to study and do well on tests is for you to take good notes and then to transcribe and/or apply those notes (and other resources given in class) to questions. Staring at notes or re-reading the text is not studying though it is a necessary prerequisite in order for some students to study.
Follow this advice from those students whom everyone calls "geniuses" (they certainly are geniuses at studying and making it seem like they do not) and you may join that group yourself.
Pass it forward.
Here is an easy way to tell whether or not you are studying:
1. Look at your writing hand
2. Is there a pen or pencil in that hand?
3. Are you solving a problem or writing a description, explanation, illustration, or mnemonic with said pen(cil)?
If you are not physically writing something: a solution, description, explanation, illustration, or mnemonic, (pen in contact with paper), then you are NOT studying. Do not fool yourself. What you ARE doing is the equivalent, in baseball, of "warming up in the bullpen". You are merely pre-studying or preparing to study.
Understand that the most effective way to study and do well on tests is for you to take good notes and then to transcribe and/or apply those notes (and other resources given in class) to questions. Staring at notes or re-reading the text is not studying though it is a necessary prerequisite in order for some students to study.
Follow this advice from those students whom everyone calls "geniuses" (they certainly are geniuses at studying and making it seem like they do not) and you may join that group yourself.
Pass it forward.
# posted by C @ 5:20 PM 
