Midterm week is approaching and nothing is more dreadful than looking over your pages and pages of notes. It’s great to review your notes but it’s even better to write them in a way that you can process and understand them easier and faster. The key to studying smarter is understanding the process, rather than memorizing it. Study guides are a great way to do this because you’re pulling the main information from your class and textbook notes and organizing them. Your study guides will differ from subject to subject so I have compiled a list of tips for what you should include in your study guides.
Sciences (Biology, Chemistry, etc)
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I highly recommend organizing your study guide into topics/chapters first. Then, try to organize your information into processes or steps numerically. This way you can see the information in a logical order and find any missing gaps. This is where you should ask yourself, “how” and “why” questions about the information. I also recommend drawing in diagrams to help visualize the processes. Look for patterns or try to associate the information with real-life examples to help you remember!
Math (Physics, Calculus, DFQ, Economics, etc)
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The reason why I included physics under this topic is that like most math classes, it involves a lot of formulas. My best recommendation for subjects that have a ton of formulas is to again, divide your notes into topics. Write out the formula, an explanation for the formula, and multiple worked out examples. This helps you review and figure out the problems easier for each specific formula.
Writing/English
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This can get a bit tricky because there is not a general way to make a study guide for classes involving writing and reading. However, for the classes where you will be tested on a specific book I recommend compiling all of your reading notes into one document. Like the study guides for the sciences, you might want to write them in a chronological order. You can pick out important quotes and write why you find them important. Writing, you might want to go over your past essays and see the mistakes you tend to make and the corrections your professor suggests. You can practice writing essays on potential topics under a time limit and have them edited by your friends, as well.
History
Subjects involving heavy information such as history can get dense. Remember study guides are meant to be aides to your studying so don’t solely rely on them. My best advice is to simplify the information as much as possible. You want to be able to remember and understand who, what, where, why and how. There is a bit of memorization involved because you might need to know important dates and locations. Like your science study guides, maybe you can try to come up with clever techniques to remember a specific set of information or try to connect it to real life examples today.
These are just a few tips on study guides but there are many different ways to create study aids. Guides are meant to help you understand, organize and remember all the information you learned in class. Work on finding ways to take all of this information and remembering it well enough to apply it during your exams. Once you do so, I promise you will score A’s on all your midterms!
Happy studying!
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