Exams / Revision

Don’t ‘Learn’ it, ‘Understand’ it!

When it comes to strange and fascinating facts, it’s no surprise that some are kooky enough to take hold of your brain and stay with you for quite some time. But read too many silly facts and you won’t remember them all.

If it’s hard enough to remember something outrageous, how difficult must it be to remember everything you need for an exam?

The answer is in the way in which we learn things.

After reading some useless trivia, you’re not given the encompassing reasons behind the facts. There’s nothing to take with you other than the figures themselves. Because of this, you’re only able to learn that information. You haven’t been given the tools to fully understand why the answer is structured the way it is.

Your revision can go two ways too. On one hand, you can try digesting the hard facts, arguments, opinions, quotes, and statistics in isolation of the bigger picture. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a vague grasp on the wider implications and remember most of the facts so you can cobble something together under exam conditions.

On the other hand, you can take in the bigger picture first, truly getting to grips with the how and why of what you’re studying. If you’re faced with some facts that you need to learn, you’ll have a greater chance of remembering them if you ask yourself where this information fits in and how it works.

Your aim is to understand what you’re revising, rather than learning it by rote.

It’s not that good students pick this stuff up with ease. The secret is more that they ask questions and get background on what they don’t understand. When you’re given certain information to learn in preparation for an exam, things can go two ways:

A good student says, “I don’t understand this. I can see it’s important and clearly needs to be remembered, but how does it fit in with the bigger picture? How did this fact come to be?”

A half-hearted student says, “This is so difficult to learn. It just won’t go in. Why can’t I remember this kind of stuff? I don’t understand it anyway.”

Both types of student are in the same position, but one is willing to go beyond the surface in order to get a fuller understanding of the subject. Yes, it may require a little more time and research, but it’s not going to take much longer, so the payoff is good.

In fact, any research that takes a good student too long becomes a false economy…so they don’t do it, natch! The main thing to remember is to always keep one step ahead. It’s one thing to be clueless about an entire subject, but it’s another to waste too much time on a small area that’s difficult to perfect. Even the best students have blocks and difficulties. You need to know when to stop obsessing and start relaxing.

If you can develop the mindset to ‘understand’ and enhance your working, you’ll be well on the way to some quality revision and a confident state of learning.

In my next post, I’ll set out five tips for revision that will help focus your revision even more clearly.

Open your mind while you revise

With Christmas fast approaching, you’ve got a lot of time to explore your productivity by testing out different ways of working.

It doesn’t matter if you hate change, you may be surprised to find that incorporating some change in your life can work wonders. And as you get used to making changes, any lack of change becomes the difficult beast.

For many of you, exams are just around the corner. Revision covers so much ground that it’s not always clear where to start. Do you re-read your notes, write further notes, make flash cards, read scholarly books, create mnemonics, devise weird and wonderful learning tables…?

In revision, I suggest you should mix the game up a bit and embrace change. I mean several different things:

1. Use a variety of media

pen & pad: An oldie but a goodie. We’re so used to working from computers now that it can be quite liberating to write things down in longhand. You may be surprised at how differently your thinking can be when writing to how it is when you type at a keyboard.
word processor: If you’re working from lecture notes, it might help you to set them out electronically. Not only can the new input on screen help your memory, but you should also be able to make the notes more concise and readable.
flash cards: Not always applicable, but if you can work like this with your subject, don’t forget to make the most of memory jogging flash cards. They sound like a good idea to many students, but regularly get forgotten about. If you can remember things this way, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t give yourself the time to create the flashcards!
e-mail: Sometimes it’s good to see a different screen when you’re working, even if just for 10 minutes. Why not tap away an e-mail to yourself? The nature of writing this way is different to writing a letter, so you may be able to fool yourself into using different parts of your brain. Watch more ideas and memories come flooding out to help you with your revision!
mind maps: For a more diagramatic set of notes, mind maps work wonders. It will also provide links that you may not have noticed if you were working from words and numbers alone. If you’re not aware of mind maps, check Litemind, Mindmapping, Mashable and Wikipedia for introductions, tips, and helpful software/websites.
tables: No matter what subject you’re studying, you may be able to create tables in Excel or similar. Even if it’s just to note down similar concepts in a row, the shaping within tables can sometimes be quite helpful. When you look through a magazine, the tables and pictures are usually the most striking and memorable elements. It stands to reason that you can, therefore, make use of tables in jogging your memory rather well.
dictation machine: Your own voice is a powerful tool in itself. Don’t forget that speaking out loud can help your memory greatly. So why not speak out loud, which is a help in itself, but record those speeches at the same time? Listening back to yourself will open up yet more parts of your mind.

2. Visit numerous places for study

bedroom
dining table
library
friend’s house
park
cafe
campus

Changing area regularly while you study is a boon for some. Instead of getting bored with the same surroundings, it can keep the mind active. It can also engage your interest if you pick areas that you haven’t been before.

If you have a number of different places to go to, you may also find it helpful to pick a different topic for revision each time, so you can think back to when you were in a particular place. That should help the mind open up the memory banks.

Study in the park - photo by ortonesque

3. Go further than set texts

look AROUND the subject as well as within: It’s important to get a grasp of the bigger picture, even if you’re studying a niche area. Gaining a knowledge of the basics around what you’re studying can help all the pieces of the jigsaw come together. It’s the equivalent of finding all the corner pieces of the jigsaw first, so you know how the bigger picture is shaped.
research up-to-date journal articles: Academia goes far beyond your undergraduate degree, as you’re bound to know. Professors around the world are writing their own essays to fill millions of books and journals. That means you’d be wise to keep abreast of recent issues of journals that are relevant to your line of study. If you can refer to new discoveries, recent theories, and up-to-date opinions in your exam answers (and your essays, of course), you’re on the way to being a cut above.
read book reviews on related topics: While I was at uni, I found it so useful to read book reviews. They would give a potted explanation of the book, as well as the most important and controversial issues. If these were brand new books, sometimes the reviews were the only place you could get word of the book’s content, unless you were willing to pay huge amounts to buy the book yourself!
ask knowledgeable people (from professors to librarians): If you want more info, or if you’re stuck looking for some important revision material, don’t suffer alone! Always ask for help. Nuff said.
join mailing lists & read in forums: You may be treated to brand new arguments, or you may be propelled into some mind-expanding debate between people…if you’re lucky, it’ll be scholars arguing amongst themselves, which could give you a bit of working into their ways of thinking.

5 Ways to Embrace the Academic Meaning of Christmas

Christmas has a different meaning for different people:

A great religious event.
An excuse for partying.
A time for prezzies.
The time of the year for family gatherings.
An opportunity to let go and eat/drink all you want for once (stuff the turkey and stuff the diet).

What meaning does it have for students?

If you take a sensible view, Christmas is a time for students to do the following:

Take stock
Relax
Revise
Plan
Tidy Up

1 – TAKE STOCK

Whatever year you’re in, the Christmas break is a very good time to look at the time spent so far. You won’t be in the thick of things. Even if you remain on campus during the hols, most others won’t be, so you have a great opportunity to ask yourself some questions and get an understanding of where you’re at.

Freshers/1st Year/Level 1 – How has the new life changed the way you think, the way you live, the way you view the world, the way you want to be? Have you felt a good balance between your work and your social time? Do you have any wishes, any regrets, any need to improve?

2nd Year/Level 2 – Pretty much halfway through your degree now. Do you feel stable? Are you ready for more? Do you have the control to push yourself further as the degree gets deeper and more focused? Have you given the work your full attention, or do you need to knuckle down from now on?

3rd Year/Level 3 – How is your Final Year Project going? Is your research totally focused now? Do you have specific goals based on your previous two years of study? What else do you want to achieve before your time at uni has ended? Do you want to continue your academic study at Postgrad level, or are you planning various career moves?

2 – PLAN

Once you’ve taken stock, as suggested above, there’s no point in leaving it at that alone. Bring all your thoughts together and note down what you want to do for the rest of the year and beyond.

If you’ve got goals, you’ll get a lot further if you have a plan of getting from A to B…

3 – RELAX

As school children, Christmas was a big celebration. In the world of work, Christmas is a couple of extra days holiday. For anyone at university, Christmas is a strange situation.

There’s no denying that university equals a lot more than just doing work. Of course, this blog has a lot of study tips, but the secret to a successful time at uni is to use it with every possible part of your life.

So when Christmas comes along, you no longer have the nightly events, the parties, the tens/hundreds/thousands of friends on hand to do something at the last minute, or the fun community spirit that shouts “holiday camp” as opposed to “study area”.

At a time like this, I would suggest a period of relaxation. You’ve been granted a few weeks to recharge your batteries, so get recharging! Then you’ll be more than ready to burst back onto the scene in January.

4 – REVISE

Relaxing doesn’t mean you stop revising…

You’ll probably have exams looming when you return to uni. Obviously you’ll be spending some of your break on revision, but many students are fooled into ignoring the revision until they get back. You may have a week back at university where you’re meant to be back from Christmas and working toward the impending exams/essays that are due.

Rather than wait for the allotted uni-time for revision, make a point of spending very short bursts of time during the hols on getting up to speed. It’ll boost your confidence. It’ll also give you the chance to find out what you already know and let you focus later on what’s important.

5 – TIDY UP

You’ve suddenly been given some time away from the (by now) norm. That means it’s the best time to sort out what you’ve got and get rid of all the crap.

I mean it. Spring clean like it’s, erm…Spring! You may have started uni with a million items, of which you’ve used less than half of the stuff.

If you’ve had lots of junk gathering dust, make a decision about what you’re going to do with it. Throwing it away, selling it, leaving it at home…it doesn’t really matter; just do something with the junk.

The same goes for your notes, photocopies and degree materials. It’s now your chance to get everything into a nice order, get rid of the unneccessary overspill, tidy up any important notes you’ve made, and take control of what you’ve got.

5 Study Traps I’ve Fallen Into Myself

My time at university was not without its fair share of study traps. Today, I list the five biggest issues for me while I was working toward my degree:

Trapped (photo by winjohn)

1. Not making the time / Ignore my own time-management advice

Before I entered Higher Education, time-management was not one of my fortés. Fortunately, I made a 180-degree turn at uni and was always proud that I could manage my time well. Lots of free time, loads of fun to be had that didn’t get in the way of study…things were good.

Nevertheless, there were occasions when I relaxed too much and stopped focusing on my time.

That was a huge mistake.

Without the momentum pushing me along, it was as if time no longer mattered. It did, of course, because deadlines would creep up and nights out started to feel like guilty pleasures.

Luckily, I didn’t go much further than this, because the jolt of realisation was enough to shock me into getting back on top of my plans. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, though.

2. Complete the easier & more fun tasks before anything else

I bet we all like to do this from time to time. You’ve got a list of jobs to be done…some will take about two minutes and others should be a bit of a laugh. Once you’ve completed those, it’ll look like you’ve completed so much work. So you launch into those tasks and ignore the more pressing ones.

I liked to do this kind of thing. It made me feel as if I was achieving a great deal, but it ended up leaving all the crappy tasks to be done. Worse than that, they all had to be done together, so there was no light relief at the end!

It’s no use putting the less enjoyable stuff off for later…and later…and later…

To be honest, this was one trap I fell into a few too many times. Even now I might feel the initial buzz of finishing the better work first so it’s all off my list and giving me a fuzzy feeling inside.

Terrible, isn’t it?

3. Put too much importance on trivial matters

It’s probably a bit of an ego thing. From time to time, there would be a short test or a piece of work for a seminar, worth no marks and not requiring more than a brief amount of consideration. But if it worked with my way of thinking, I would go into overdrive and spend way too much time on preparation.

This was usually because I already knew about the things the tutors were trying to get us to understand. To go mental on a project with no real reward at the end, based on something that I didn’t need to learn any more about, was like a double whammy of pointlessness.

To an extent, this trap is a combination of the first two traps. I wasn’t spending my time productively because I was dealing with the fun stuff to the detriment of everything else.

When I realised this was going on, I decided to craft essays that were important to get good marks in and immerse myself in writing something quite different. If certain ideas gave me so much passion and interest, it was time to take it to my essays and presentations.

When you find something hitting you so positively, make it a focus of your more important work. That way, you’ll be driven and the work will be a lot easier to handle. Also, the marks you get should reflect your passion.

The most pointed example of this is when I wrote an essay that argued how a well-known critic of the Industrial Revolution was actually praising the revolution for what it had achieved. It was a cheeky little essay and I didn’t believe it in the slightest, but I enjoyed the subject and wanted to deliberately take things one step beyond the obvious. It was one of my highest marked pieces of work from my time at uni.

Trival matters may spark your interest, which is a great thing, but the best bet is to develop those sparks into something that you can get some recognition from. It’s a shame to put your heart and passion into a 15 minute seminar conversation that will be forgotten about as soon as it’s over.

4. Ignore the course notes & tutors plans

I kick myself for not having focused enough on some of my tutor’s booklets.

At the beginning of some modules, we would all be presented with a book of notes and questions and various helpful pointers for the weeks ahead. While most of us would make use of these books in seminars, they gently gathered dust the rest of the time. If I was writing an essay, I would rush to the library for texts and check the Internet for other scholarly essays. All the while, the booklet, with it’s ready information, would sit on a shelf, unloved.

Some of the books didn’t even get the luxury of a shelf…

You go to their lectures and listen to what they’re saying then (hopefully!), but as for the notes that you can read up in your own time? They just get briefly glanced at, but not much else.

But these books are a pointer for you to see where the tutors are coming from. If you want an idea of what questions your lecturers are going to set for exams, it’s important to see how they have set out their tips at the start of the module. It may become apparent that they regularly refer to particular texts and take a certain set of ideas as a specific starting point all the time. Of course, it’s up to you to develop your own opinions and ideas, but it’s a lot easier to do that if you know what kind of direction the tutor is headed.

5. Let temptation get in the way

I call this ‘Internal Peer Pressure’. It’s like there’s someone inside, coaxing you to go out each night and ignore the work. Your mind starts whispering, “There’s no time like the present…get everyone over for a laugh. You can get the work done tomorrow instead”. You see a magazine you bought earlier and want to read it. And since you’re only reading a magazine, you might as well listen to the new music you’ve got.

Suddenly, you find so many wonderful things that you could be doing instead of the work on your desk.

Now, I must admit, I frequently enjoyed a lot of my study. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop other temptations pulling me away on a regular basis. It’s so easy at university. Always stuff going on, never a quiet moment (even when it appears quiet, you know there’s some fun just around the corner). It’s so good, it’s a nightmare!

My way of dealing with this trap was to turn it around. It’s a simple trick, but it requires a lot of willpower. If you can manage it, tell yourself that you certainly will do those wonderfully tempting things…but only as a reward for doing your initial studying.

When you’ve finished what you need to do, the rest of the night is yours. You’re bound to enjoy it a lot more without the threat of work in the background. And you’ll be partying guilt free!

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