As college students, we’re tired of the continual stream of midterms that start right around the 5th week of classes and sometimes doesn’t end until about a week or so before finals season starts. This period proves to be extremely stressful due to lack of sleep and trying to jam infinite amounts of information into your head before that big test. Try the following study tips to make sure that your midterm season is as stress-free as possible!
1. Finding YOUR “study space”
It’s important to find a place in which you will thrive. If you get distracted easily, cut out those distractions. Move your studying to a lounge within your hall or one of the study rooms in Swem. If Swem’s study rooms are all filled up, dare to take the leap to sit on the third floor. However, if you can work in any environment, find one where you can easily get studying done. Maybe you don’t need complete quiet, but don’t put yourself in the situation where social pressure will cause you to forget all about the work you need to get done. If you work best with other people, study with people who are going to help motivate you and keep you focused, not someone who will inhibit the learning process.
2. Take study breaks!
This is an important tip. Taking breaks allows your brain to relax for a few before having to jump back into the material. For every 30 to 40 minutes of studying you should take a 5 to 10 minute study break. Take a short walk around your hall, through Swem, or even outside (weather permitting, of course). Maybe take a bathroom break or grab a healthy snack and some water. Either way, this is an important step in studying that shouldn’t be overlooked or unconsidered because of “lack of time” or “too much material to review”. Whether you only have a couple hours left or hundreds of pages left, making yourself work until the last possible minute without stopping isn’t mentally healthy. Save yourself the mental breakdowns and take a couple of breaks here and there to give yourself time to breathe.
3. Continuous Reinforcement
Using this simple psychological technique, you can help yourself maintain the focus needed to get through the work. First, find your favorite snack: gummy bears, chips, cookies, crackers with hummus, etc. Next, set up an interval: every ten pages read, completing a set number of problems on a problem set, etc. Every time you complete an interval, reward yourself with your snack. You’ll end up working towards that food goal but also learning at the same time!
4. Study Buddies!
Find someone in your class to study with. This might seem cheesy or like something your professor would suggest, but reviewing the material with a classmate might help you understand something you have troubles with, or you might be the one to help your classmate out on their troubles. Either way, it’s beneficial to both parties in finding someone from your class to study with. And if you’re feeling real adventurous or social, try getting a whole group together. Two or more minds are much better than one. More opinions can help make understanding material a lot easier.
5. Explain to a Friend
If finding a classmate to talk to seems a little daunting, or maybe you think you just don’t understand a concept, try getting a friend to listen to you explain it. When we switch roles to becoming a teacher of the subject rather than the student, it helps instill the information into our brains a little better. You might find out you know more about the material than you think you did. If your friends are busy studying, too, try talking to a stuffed animal or even call up your parents and teach them about it. Anything that helps you study and learn the information is a good tactic to use.
6. Use those drawing skills
Okay, so some (maybe most) of us don’t have the most perfect drawing skills, but this tip still helps. Instead of staring at diagrams, charts, tables, etc. try creating your own. Label the parts that need labeling, and draw in what needs to be drawn. This tip might prove especially useful for those who are visual learners. It might take up more time than just reading and encoding the original diagram, but the information gained will be much greater than if you just started at something someone else drew. Actually writing out information causes us to remember it better than if we just read it.
7. Sleep
This last tip is important as well. Most of us tend to stay up until three, four, even five in the morning, or skip sleeping all together just to get studying done. DON’T. Sleep deprivation exhausts the brain and you will most likely not perform as well as you would if you had gotten a good chunk of sleep (not necessarily a full 10 to 12 hours of sleep). Try for 8 hours of sleep, but nothing less than 7. The importance of sleep cannot be stressed enough. As college students, we like to laugh and joke about how much we actually sleep, but taking care of our bodies and minds should be our top priority, even before our GPA.