Being in college is an exciting time of life, and if you love to study you want to be able to do it effectively so that the money you’re spending on college is worth every cent. It can be very difficult to concentrate long enough to study effectively when you are surrounded by your friends and you’re all having a great time.
The thing is, when you are doing your degree this is the time in your life that you really need to be focusing on ensuring that all the information is being well retained. Understanding how to study is just as important as knowing that you need to study. College is very self-directed in terms of learning, so while you will have lectures and you will have tutors, you have to take ownership of your own learning.
The good news is that with the right planning in place, you can learn how to bypass school Wi-Fi to get over paywalls for certain websites, and you can take specific steps to develop study skills that will help you to succeed at college level. In this article, we have a few of the study tips that you would need to study for finals and develop good ongoing habits to ensure that you stay on top of those studies. All it takes is a little planning and a lot of persistence so let’s dive in.
Lay the groundwork.
If you want to be able to pass your exams without studying day and night in the week leading up to them, you need to lay the groundwork and plan in advance. Not everybody feels the need to cram their studying into the last second, and planning is going to be the best way to get around that.
Developing good study habits start from day one, even months in advance of your finals. To do this, you need to go to class, you need to know your timetable, and you need to know what’s ahead. Sit down with a timetable and a pen and start writing through the month when you plan to study and how long for and then stick to it.
You need to go in with the right mindset.
College is not for everybody, but for those who want to try hard you will do well. You’re only going to do well with your studies if you are committed to them. Yes, it may feel overwhelming not to have somebody telling you what to do every hour of the day like in high school, but if you can direct your own learning and you can keep your ambition and your goal at the top of your mind, you will achieve it.
Make and stick to a schedule.
Schedules are going to run your life as you study, and you will be very thankful to them. You should spend a couple of hours studying for every hour that you spend in your class, but effective time management is going to be your bread-and-butter.
You may want to create a calendar of activities down to when you eat and sleep, but really all you need to do is think about when your lectures are versus when your assignments are due and start building your study time around that. Visual schedules, audio schedules – no matter how you do it just make sure you do it.
Space it out.
The whole point here is you want to retain the information for a long time, not just cram it so that you can use it on short memory recall. If you have a test in 12 weeks, then spend an hour or so per week revising for the content of that test.
Sometimes you can’t start studying properly that far in advance anyway, because the content you’re going to learn along your course is going to come up before those 12 weeks. Spacing out will help you to avoid cramming and for every study session you do give yourself a quick question and answer session from the previous study lesson so that you can remember what you learned the study times before.
Create the right environment.
There is no way you are going to be able to study if your roommate is a party goer. You need to find somewhere on campus or in your house that will allow you to study effectively and quietly so that you can concentrate. You want to be able to get through your tests and know that you feel confident about your answers and about the planning in the preparation that you’ve done? That means you need somewhere quiet with the best environment to study.