Best ways to study?

[Ivan Kipling]

True, study habits / methods, vary from person to person. My advice, is to keep up as much as you possibly can; cramming never worked for me. Take copious notes. Review them, whenver you can stand it, before you need to study for exams. I'm speaking as an English / Spanish major. My tests were always essay. Also, try to write in a legible, hand. I was very lucky on this score. Many a professor told me that it was a 'pleasure' to read what I wrote, in part because of how my script, happened to look.
Now: once I got to law school . . . EVERYTHING, changed. Not just for me, but for just about everyone I knew, while I was there. I could make no sense whatever, of legal study. Students who were positive they'd get high marks on exams, who had lawyers for fathers, who were tutored, and studied, and deeply interested . . . sometimes got close to failing grades, on tests. I detested law school, with a passion. Got one or two very high grades, have no idea how or why. The rest of the time, I had nary a clue what to write on my tests. Study made absolutely no difference.

 

[Matt]

Originally Posted by rdawson808

But never learned the difference between "less than" and "fewer than".

Here's the advice I put on my Econ 112 Principles of Microeconomics syllabus:

"Some brief advice on how to do well in this class (or any other, for that matter):

"¢ When you do not understand something, ask for help. That is the number one, simple reason people do poorly in any class"”they do not ask for help when they need it. I am available during office hours, as well as most other hours of the day. I can also be contacted via e-mail and the phone.
"¢ Study hard and start your work early.
"¢ After taking notes in class, at the earliest possible time rewrite those notes. This gives you the chance to write more neatly, insert any missing information, and note where you do not understand something. Simply re-reading your notes is not as good of a studying tool as rewriting your notes is. Your brain processes the information differently when you have to write it down.
"¢ Work all of the example problems available to you."

Really, the first one is very important. I hate to say it but every semester (including this one) I will have one student who ignores every "Come see me" I put on his/her homework or exam. They ignore every e-mail I send telling them to come talk to me. The pretend like nothing is the matter even after I email them and their advisor suggesting that they withdraw from the class because their grade is so bad they have little to no chance of passing the class. If only they would ask for help they would do so much better. I have years' of experience that tells me this.

Asking for help also separates the A students from the B students. B students generally get it. A students do to, but want to get it a little better. They are the ones that not only review everything from class but read bits of the chapter I don't tell them to read. They try to extend what we are doing to more complex situations (sure that's an indifference curve for "standard" goods, but what about for two perfect complements?).

I am also shocked by the number of students who start their homework at 11pm the morning before it is due. Or they start studying the night before an exam and email me at 10pm expecting me to answer.

After you have completed work, review it to make sure it makes freaking sense. Does the table match the graph? Why on the table did you tell me the firm's profit-maximizing quantity is 50, but on the graph you mark it at 60; or if you're in macroeconomics, why is consumption = 100 with the equations but 150 on the graph?).

Ugh, I could go on. I'm probably better at telling students how to not piss off their professors (here's one: edit your writing).


bob
Interestingly Bob, despite picking on my grammar (five years in Asia has decimated my English), your advice from the academic side is not all that different from my how to succeed in college without really trying advice. Bug the professor/Rewrite your notes so they wedge themselves in your head...I just never bothered to do it early