Study Like You Mean It

It is the time of the semester when students start sending emails asking "What is the best way to study for the upcoming test?" Usually, these emails arrive a couple of days before the first big test of the semester.

Unfortunately, the honest answer to their question is that the best way to study is probably not something you are actually willing to do. First of all, for a big test coming in a couple of days, you should have started studying, in a formal, deliberate, and systematic manner, several weeks before. But rather than crush your spirit, I will just tell you how I would study for a test in my own courses.

Step 1: Take good class notes.

The first step to taking good notes in class is to actually attend class. As a comedian once observed, 90 percent of life is just showing up. I would add that you should arrive to class on time (or even a bit early), well-rested (more about this later), and not under the influence (i.e., with a clear head). Per the last point, one would do well to remember that airline pilots often have a 12-hour "stool to stick" policy; that is, they don't consume alcohol anytime in the 12 hours before they are going to fly.

College students would be well-advised to follow the same advice if their intention is to learn. I would add that taking the time to shower, comb your hair, and dress appropriately for class will also contribute to your being in the correct headspace to learn in class. If you dress like an actual college student, and not in sweat clothes, maybe you would feel more like a college student, i.e. someone whose foremost priority is the acquisition of knowledge.

Now to the notes themselves. You won't be able to take down everything the professor says, so don't even try. But do try to create meaningful "headlines" that capture the main ideas, e.g., "Thorazine (1954) contributed to deinstitutionalization." Make free use of arrows, + signs, Venn diagrams, etc. The notes you take in class are just a prompt for you to recall the structure of the lecture. If you miss some details, you can fill them in from your reading notes (yes, reading notes). It's a good idea to jot down some question marks in your class notes too, signifying concepts you don't quite get, or questions you have that you might ask the professor about at some time. By the way, I would certainly get into the habit of raising your hand and asking a question at least once every class. You are paying a lot for tuition and one of the benefits of being in college is having access to a subject-matter expert who is glad to entertain your idle curiosity. Take advantage.

Step 2: Refine your notes.

Most college courses involve a significant amount of reading, in addition to class lectures. The reading and the lectures tend to reinforce each other, providing context and focusing students' attention to certain aspects of the content. They are both essential. You have to do the reading. And you have to take notes on the reading the same way you would take notes in class. I'm sorry no one ever told you this before.

Reading a chapter on clinical psychopathology is not going to do you much good unless you write down the important concepts in that chapter, in addition to all the unfamiliar terms that you encounter. Think about learning a new subject as being like learning a foreign language. You can imagine how difficult it is to learn a foreign language. Well, that's how difficult it is to actually learn a new subject, whether it is botany or abnormal psychology or ancient philosophy. Remember that our goal here is to really learn the subject matter, and not just to "get a good grade." At some point, you have got to stop caring about your grades and start caring about how much and how well you are learning. The wonderful paradox is that once you start focusing on learning instead of grades, the high grades will come along as a natural side effect.

So, now you have to integrate your class notes and your reading notes into a single, handwritten document, one for each unit the course is broken down into. You should create a set of several pages of notes for, say mood disorders, as if you were preparing to lecture on the subject yourself. Every professor will tell you that "I never knew my subject so well as after I started teaching it." Take the same approach. The end goal for you shouldn't be performance on some test, but whether or not you could teach the material to someone else. Using your own "lecture notes," could you adequately convey the course material to a classmate?

Step 3: Spaced recall study.

Here is the part of this procedure that takes some courage. Most people "study" by repeatedly skimming over their notes, or worse, highlighted textbook pages. That method produces overconfidence in how much is actually being learned: You see something that you have seen before and you say "Aha! I know this!" when in fact all you have done is recognize it. Recognition memory is not recall memory. Recall memory requires effort. It is the difference between being able to name the 16th President of the United States and answering a multiple-choice question on the 16th President given these options: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Reagan.

After you have created your own set of lecture notes on a unit, sit and review them for a few minutes. Now, do something else for half an hour. Then, take out some blank sheets of paper and do your best to recreate your lecture notes from memory. If you are like most people, you will find this a humbling, even embarrassing, procedure. You don't know nearly as much as you thought you did. But that's okay, for now, because you have given yourself plenty of time to study. As a general rule of thumb, I would suggest beginning to study for a college test or exam at least as many days before it as the percentage points it is worth towards your final grade. For example, if your final exam is worth 30 percent of your final grade, then you should start studying for it 30 days prior to the date of the exam.

Memory Essential Reads

Can You Trust Your Memories?

Trying Harder Increases Cognitive Effort and Enhances Memory

For each daily study session, you will review your lecture notes on a unit for 15 to 30 minutes, then work on something else (homework for another course, for example) for 30 to 60 minutes, and then give yourself a recall test on the unit (the blank pages test). Compare the lecture notes you came up with to your original set and make note of everything that you omitted or got wrong. You don't have to "fix" your recall test until it looks just like your original lecture notes. In fact, it's okay if your recall test is full of acronyms and abbreviations and drawings or whatever particular shorthand you can use to indicate your own understanding and knowledge of the material. And don't worry if you can't exactly reproduce the lecture notes even after repeated trials. If you can get even 50 percent, you will be far ahead of classmates (who never even created their own sets of lecture notes).

Structure your studying so that you can do a recall test of each unit on the test at least three times. These recall tests should be spaced out by about 48 hours. The space between the second and third recall tests should be somewhat longer than the space between the first and the second. For example, I might do the first recall test on Monday, the second on Wednesday, and the third on Saturday. And, yes, those 30 days of studying for the test worth 30 percent of your grade includes weekends. No rest for the wicked!

An essential factor in any studying plan is sleep. If you are not getting at least seven hours of sleep per night, you are not going to be learning at anywhere near the level you need to be. Your brain needs sleep in order to help fortify the new neuronal connections you are making when you learn. Without sleep there is no learning.

Conclusion

I am quite aware, from nearly 20 years of college teaching, that most students will either completely disregard this advice, or will try it once, find it difficult, and give it up. Many rationalize their lack of effort by saying that they have better things to do. Others figure that they can earn a high grade in the class without going to all that effort. (They are correct, in an age when the modal grade at many colleges is "A.") I only wonder what college would be like for students who recognize that learning is their first priority and who study 28 hours a week (four hours a day), instead of the 10 to 13 hours a week that is the current norm. I suspect that at the end of four years, they might actually have learned something.