How many times have you sat down and opened your laptop to do schoolwork only to realize you don’t know where to start?
As students, we often get so stressed about studying that we create unintentional barriers for ourselves. When those barriers build up, it can feel impossible to get around them. You may realize that the hardest part is not even the work itself, but figuring out where to begin.
The worst part of adjusting to studying in college is that, in most people’s cases, nobody actually taught them how to study. From elementary school through high school, students typically focus on day-to-day tasks without really thinking about how or why they are doing them. A lot of things are done on a whim, sometimes just minutes before those 11:59 p.m. deadlines. We never stop to think about their study habits, resulting in almost no concept of what actually works for us. So, we go through the motions, hoping that we pay enough attention in class to carry us through exams.
College makes this even more noticeable because there is suddenly a lot more freedom. Nobody is necessarily checking whether you started your assignment, reminding you that you have an exam coming up, or telling you exactly what you should be doing to prepare. You have to figure out how to manage your time, what you need to prioritize, and how you learn best.
Studying does not have to be as complicated as our brains want it to be. Throughout my time at university, I’ve learned what works for me and what doesn’t. Something to keep in mind is that the same things do not work for everyone. We’re all different people with different strengths and weaknesses. However, hopefully my tips and tricks in this article can at least give you ideas on where to get started if you feel a little lost.
The important thing is not to expect yourself to immediately have everything figured out. Finding an effective study routine takes some trial and error. You might try something that works really well for one exam and realize that it is not helpful for another class. That is okay! The goal is to figure out what helps you learn, rather than trying to force yourself into someone else’s routine.
Finding Your Spot
To begin with effective studying, you need to find your place. This is the first big example of how something might work well for you, but not so much for someone else. My advice is to explore different study spots around campus. You might find that you work well in the dining hall, where there is a lot going on. You might work well in the quiet part of your school library, where it is dead silent. You might work best in my personal favorite type of space, where there is a mixture of students doing work and chatting with their friends. This feels more productive for me because I am surrounded by people who are also working, but it is still a relaxed environment.
In other words, if you are constantly checking your phone or getting distracted by your roommates, it might be worth trying somewhere else. On the other hand, if complete silence makes you feel like you are studying in a doctor’s office, a busy environment might actually help you focus. Don’t be afraid to move around campus until you find somewhere that feels right. Your perfect study spot might not be the one that everyone else recommends.
Keeping Tabs on it All
An overlooked cliché is having a calendar and to-do list to keep track of everything. This is important as it ensures that your schoolwork doesn’t get lost somewhere in Canvas. I like to keep a Google Calendar for classes and other commitments, even blocking out when I plan on eating meals. I like Google Calendar because it notifies me when an event is coming up and lets me see empty blocks in my day that I can use to study, complete other tasks, or even take a break if I need it.
I also have a to-do list on Google Docs that I separate by subject. I put all of my assignments in here, along with their due dates. When I sit down to study, I go through the list and highlight what is most important, whether it is an assignment that is due soon or something that will require more work. What I highlight is what I work on during that session.
Having everything in one place also takes some of the mental pressure off. Instead of constantly thinking, “What am I forgetting?” I can look at my calendar or to-do list and know exactly what needs to be done. It also makes larger assignments feel more manageable. If I have a paper due in a week, I can see it coming and give myself time to work on it instead of waiting until the night before.
Asking for Help
Something we tend to overlook is asking our classmates to study or for help. It can feel isolating to study alone for a difficult class and feel like you are the only one struggling. That’s often because we don’t talk to the people in our classes enough. It is completely normal to talk to classmates, and even create a study group.
I took a class last year that I needed in order to get into my major. After talking to classmates, I realized that they could help me with things I was unsure about, and that there were things I could help them with, too. Some of us ended up studying together in the library before exams. When we didn’t understand concepts, we helped each other understand them better, which also helped with application. I ended up doing much better on my exams in that class.
You also do not necessarily need to have a formal study group. It could be as simple as asking someone in your class, “Do you understand this?” or sending a classmate a message before an exam. You might be surprised by how willing people are to help each other when someone is willing to ask!
Teaching the Info
Related to utilizing your classmates for help is teaching the information you are trying to learn to someone else. This is something I don’t do consistently enough, but when I have, I’ve done much better in my classes. Reiterating information to someone else, even if it’s something you don’t necessarily know well, helps with retention and can kind of trick your brain into knowing it better than you thought you did. This also helps you figure out what you actually know. Sometimes you can read over your notes and think, “Yeah, I understand this,” but when someone asks you to explain it, you realize there are parts you cannot quite explain yet. That is not a bad thing. It gives you a much clearer idea of what you need to go back and study.
I’ve pulled my parents and friends aside to practice presenting information, and sometimes even quizzed them at the end. It’s a little trickier to do this since everyone has a different schedule and their own priorities, but if you ever see that window of opportunity, I recommend giving it a try.
20/20 Method
My favorite method for studying alone is the 20/20 method. My friend taught me this in high school and it was a game changer. This is essentially sitting down and studying for 20 minutes, taking a 20 minute break, and repeating until I’ve gotten what I need to do done or run out of time. I set a timer at the beginning of every 20-minute block to hold myself accountable.
This has really helped me because it is so much less mentally taxing than studying for hours with no break. Information gets lost that way, and it becomes much more overwhelming. Giving myself that built-in time to distract myself prevents me from getting distracted and wanting to do it during working or study time. Twenty minutes feels doable. Once I finish that block, I can decide whether I want to keep going or take my break. Sometimes I end up taking a longer break than planned, and sometimes I get into a good rhythm and keep going. Either way, I feel like I have more control over my studying.
Learning to Be More Metacognitive
An idea that I learned during my freshman year GenEd psychology class is “metacognition,” or, essentially, thinking about thinking. It is understanding and being able to take control of your learning and cognitive processes. Most people don’t know what metacognition is or how to really utilize it, but once you learn how, studying becomes much more manageable.
There are three stages of metacognition: planning, monitoring, and evaluating. You choose the goals and strategies you will use before a task, check your understanding while completing it and change strategies if something isn’t working, and then look back after completion to figure out what worked and what to do better next time.
For instance, if you spend two hours rereading your notes for an exam and still feel like you do not understand the material, instead of assuming you are bad at the subject, you can ask yourself whether rereading is actually helping you. Maybe you need to make flashcards, practice application questions, explain the material out loud, or study with someone else. That is metacognition in practice.
Becoming more metacognitive can help you understand concepts that you never thought you could understand before. An example of when I had to learn how to use metacognition was during my prep course to become a Group Exercise Instructor. As a Communications Studies major, the training and content for this course was overwhelming because I had to learn about anatomy and scientific terms. But once I took a step back and thought about how I could retain the information better, studying became much more manageable.
Instead of continuing to study in the same way and hoping something would eventually stick, I had to figure out what I actually needed to do to understand the information. That meant recognizing what I knew, what I didn’t know, and what study strategies helped me remember it. Once I started paying attention to that process, the material did not feel nearly as impossible.
I worked for JMU Orientation over the summer, assisting students with their transitions to college. Almost every orientation day, without fail, a student in my group would ask me what the best study techniques are. I would never quite know how to answer because I knew that what was effective for me, more likely than not, would not be as effective for them. So, I would give them my advice with a grain of salt, encouraging them to try different things and figure out what works for them.
Looking back, I think that is probably the most important study advice I could give anyone. There is no single “right” way to study. You have to be willing to experiment, pay attention to what helps you learn, and adjust when something is not working.
College can make studying feel overwhelming, especially when you are still trying to figure out what works for you. But you do not have to have the perfect routine from the beginning. Start small. Find a place where you can focus, write down what you need to do, ask for help when you need it, and pay attention to how your own brain learns. You might not figure it all out at once, but eventually, studying can become less about getting through your work and more about truly understanding it.