Ooh - what a good question! If you get an answer, you will let me know yeah? I could really do with learning that….
<\sarcasm>
In all seriousness - I’m not really going to answer this question.
Why?
Everybody studies and learns in a different way.
Everybody finds that a certain method helps them more than it helps somebody else. Knowing how I study helps exactly one person: me.
There are 3 other physicists at Trinity (Oxford) in my year- and they all think my method of learning is over the top and needlessly time consuming. I personally don’t understand how they can learn and understand things without more mathematical rigour.
We’re all right - and we’re all wrong.
My methods work: for me.
Their individual methods work: for them.
So what would a reader gain from me going on an on about how I study - the complex spreadsheets that I use to keep track of my lecture notes or the way I structure my revision schedule?
You can tell how well revision is going from the fact I have a Netflix window open.
What would they learn from knowing that I go to bed every night at 1 in the morning, and get up at 8? What do they learn from knowing that I do every assignment with at least 1 day to spare?
Well - unless they were creepily obsessed with learning stuff about me - then they gain nothing which improves their own studying.
They learn how I, Jack Fraser, study.
It contains nothing about how you, dear reader, learn.
Learning how you learn is one of the most important pieces of information you can have about yourself.
If a reader read how I studied, and decided that was the “right” way, then they are crippling themselves in that lesson - since they won’t try any of the other methods that might help them more - since they automatically zoom in to my methods.
I had a teacher who loved mindmaps/brainstorms/networks. She forced us to make one for every single topic.
For me, this was a complete waste of time - I hated mindmaps, and I bloody well knew it. I tried to tell her I’d rather go about revision my own way - but she was adamant that mindmaps were the best.
Of course - this is nonsense - mindmaps were just the best for her.
But several students in my class took her message to heart - and were convinced that mindmaps were the best way to learn - it took them several years to unlearn this, and then to go about finding out what worked for them.
I don’t want to be like that teacher.
If you want to learn how to study well,- then you need to go and try different methods and find out what works for you.
Try making mindmaps, try writing distilled notes, try doing past exam papers - try as many different methods as you can think of, until you hit upon something which helps you.
This is something that no-one else can teach you - it is something you have to go and learn about yourself.
So there we go - I’ve gone on a long diatribe and deliberately not answered the question which was asked.
However - I hope that I have given you a decent answer to the question that should have been asked.
All the best,
Jack Fraser,BA(Physics)-Oxford University
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