Have you been studying the entire semester? I would look back at my notes and pull out information that I have underlined or starred. I would then pull out any terms that are specific to what I was studying. I would re-read whatever material the test is covering, and finally I would make a practice test.
This has been what I have been doing for the last two years at least.
I would suggest spending more time reviewing your material than asking for help on how to review your material. But I sucked at studying, too. Good luck!
Go though your class notes - take notes BY HAND as it is then parked in more parts of your brain than when you type (yes science behind this). Go through the reading material. Take notes. By hand. Then combine both sets of notes into one set of notes. By hand. Then read them aloud. Repeat as much as you can with your eyes shut (out loud) imagining the words as you do this. Doing these last two things puts it in more parts of your brain. To remember this shit you need to find it in your brain somewhere, anywhere. Do this one page at a time until you can more or less repeat everything on the page. Go back through your notes. See what you know for sure and what you do not. Take notes on what you can't remember. By hand. Read out loud to yourself, etc. rinse and repeat.
At some point write the notes left of what you can't remember in small print on the paper so you have more on each piece of paper. Try to remember where on the paper the stuff is. Often you remember stuff around it and then can visually find it in your mind that way.
Take your notes with you everywhere you go. Everywhere. Read them go over them whenever you have even a spare minute. Spend time doing this EVERY SINGLE DAY several times a day for several hours - with breaks. DO NOT MULTI TASK. Takes almost 3 min to get refocused each and every time you switch your attention (science behind this as well). At least once a day go through the longer version of your notes so you remind yourself of what you have learned.
The night before the test DO NOT STAY UP ALL NIGHT. When taking cognitive tests people test as poorly as if they are legally drunk when they stay up all night. It is better to go to bed early and get up early than stay up late and get up later (also science behind this). Right before you go to bed carefully go through your notes using the usual method. Your brain will continue to process this while you sleep (in fact do this every night before you go to sleep as the last thing you do). If your test is in the afternoon or evening try to get a full night's sleep prior to the test. Leave several hours prior to the test to review your notes - out loud with eyes shut and open, trying to repeat everything on the sheets looking as few times as possible even if that means you get up at 4am for an 8am test.
When you walk into the test if there is stuff that is important that you keep forgetting read that stuff right before they hand out the test, write it down then start the test. Better you write it down than distract yourself during the test repeating it over and over to yourself trying to remember it in case you need it. Do not spend too much time on Q's you don't know well. Instead do everything you know and work backwards from there. Guess if you don't know if there is multiple choice and no penalty for guessing.
If you are caffeine dependent get your caffeine. Even if you are not try to get some (not a ton, just some) an hour or so before the exam. It helps you focus. Mountain Dew has more caffeine than any other soft drink. Do not go overboard with caffeine pills as if you take too much it actually gets in your way. Right before a test is not the time to experiment with this shit.
I teach. I have taught numerous students this method. It works for many. It takes time, effort and a willingness to do this by hand and not by computer.
IN THE FUTURE - here is the research - if you review, in depth, your notes within 48 hours (at around 24 hours is preferred) of the class you remember more at the end of the week, even if you don't look at it again, than if you do that later in the week. Take notes by hand. In research those who take notes by hand rather than on a computer get about a 1/2 letter grade higher on tests. Several studies found this including one I did with others using complex material they had to learn for a class. AND brain scans show that when you do this more parts of your brain light up when you try to remember stuff than if you type the notes. Just listening is the worst. Use the science to tip the scales in your favor.
@Kidsandliz I am exhausted after reading that. I agree with writing and using color pencils. Also, I have my kids watch history on their computer because they are visual learners.
@RedOak Well I had to figure some of this out on my own as I never studied k-12 and got good grades. Then in college I nearly failed anatomy as a first semester freshman (mostly cutthroat pre-med juniors in a highly competitive college in that class and no one told this fool that taking that class as a first semester freshman was a stupid idea; that placing out of bio 101 didn't mean I was ready to be up against premed juniors) because I had no clue how to memorize or study. Once I figured it out I went from D's to A's on those tests.
Then I had a run of teaching freshman success (which is a big pain in the ass to teach and dumped on junior faculty as each department had to draft someone to teach their majors that) and coached a number of kids through how to study. Refined it a bit taking an illiterate 10 year old with no english whom I adopted and helping her learn.
Then the research started coming in that backed up what I had discovered on my own. Teaching integrated business core we were driven to distraction with computer use (as in misuse) in the classroom, I randomly saw a brain scan study on hand written notes vs typing notes vs just listening and so we ran a study in there using the marketing section of the class. What we found backed up that brain scan study (students could choose which they wanted so they couldn't blame us for their grades, we also controlled for SAT scores, overall GPA, etc. and gave them all a copy of the power points - large mostly lecture class).
Basically the short version of that study method is repetition, using many senses, handwriting the notes (which forces you to think about how to consolidate and abbreviate what you are trying to learn which helps you learn just by thinking about that - typing often is done without much thinking as you can type far faster than you can handwrite), and preferably reviewing the stuff in depth very close to the time you first heard it for a head start on remembering it.
I also think (no research to back this up) that this is one reason why flashcards work - you are doing much of this making and then using flash cards to review over and over. I once memorized around 3000 more esoteric vocab words, some of which I had never seen before, many I did not know the precise meaning of, and some I had no clue how to pronounce, in 5 weeks doing this (100 new words a day for 6 days, plus the ones I didn't know at the end of the day were added to the 100 for the next day's pile, day 7 review the entire week, throw the ones I didn't know into the following week. The night before the GMAT I knew 95% of the words and got 4 questions right on the GMAT I would not have gotten right had I not done that).
When I took comps for my PhD I had a bunch of notebooks full of these kinds of notes (all stages of the consolidation of these notes - once you have notes like this you never have to read the original again for an exam, even two years later on comps) and spent the summer cramming this crap all back into my brain to be able to spit out for comps (20 hours of exam, 1 hour each essay questions, the outer edges of the universe weren't even close to the limit of what they could ask us). I also had to memorize close to 1500 article citations (along with their contents - much of my notes were on the articles, the rest on class notes and other crap I read to make sure I had the details of the theories) - the date, author and title to use in my answers - that so sucked. I had to repeat to myself there were good reasons why I started this PhD, the fact that I could not remember any of them right now was not good enough reason to quit nor good enough reason not to study long and hard enough to pass the damn comps.
And I am beyond grateful that I will never ever have to take a test again where I have to study. Ever. (grin).
@RedOak Umm yeah and it was painful thought way back when. Having a D in a class as a college first semester freshman because I had no clue how to study/memorize and just attending class, taking notes and reading my notes a couple of times was no longer getting me A's was a big motivator LOL.
@Mellaine Places with other people talking can be distracting unless you have earphones on. Have to get away from distractions so you can focus and temptations to do something else so you will stay on task such that the breaks you take don't mean suddenly it is 3 hours later instead of a 15 min break.
@Mellaine Have you been in a library lately? Libraries are filled with noise and distraction lately. People tend to treat libraries as internet cafe's more than anything else. It is a trend that I have been trying to fight over the last few years.
@legendornothing, I didn't read all of the posts above but the thing that helped me study the most in college was re-writing my notes by hand. Typically I'd take notes on my computer because I'm faster at typing than writing. Then before a final or mid-term I'd sit down and hand-write all my notes.
There's a lot of theories about kinesthetic learning and how it helps commit stuff to memory. I'm the worst at remembering specific dates and names, so writing and re-writing my notes helped me the most.
@hollboll what you wrote is part of the short version of what I said. Handwriting puts the stuff in more parts of your brain and when you are trying to remember all you have to do is find it in one of those many places. The more places it is in the more likely it is you are to find it. That you hand wrote your notes after typing them is the step many don't take after typing. Likely the system I spoke of would work with typing first provided the person had the self discipline to then write them out (consolidating as they write would be OK) - many people would not have that self discipline and so if they knew that about themselves then starting with handwriting likely would work better for them (backed up by tape recording the lecture so they could fill it in if need be). I could handwrite my notes so that later I could hear the faculty member talking in my head when I read them (others who borrowed my notes said the same thing) so if you type faster than you write likely starting with typing will work but if and only if you then switch to handwriting for all the rest of the steps in studying the stuff. Of course anything people do that they can then get them to review this stuff is going to help, even though some ways are more efficient/better than others. Highlighting the book and just reading the high lighting is close to useless (not to mention reduces the resale value of the book LOL) compared to the method we both stumbled across.
@Kidsandliz yup I understand how all that works. I have a bit of a background in training and development but didn't want to type it all out (or distract from potential study time). ;)
For me, I could listen and type at the same time, but if I was handwriting while listening I found that I missed a bunch of stuff. So the best thing for me was to type in class then hand-write before a test.
Don't even get me started on trying to re-sell my books after the quarter was over.
@hollboll I found once faculty switched to power point they didn't slow down enough for people to actually write enough. When you write on the board that slows down how fast you talk when you teach so people can keep up in lecture classes with handwritten notes. Even though I do use power point if the class is a lecture class I also still use the board but I also pause so people can catch up writing. I am thinking that is something many faculty don't do anymore. Thus typing first would make sense (provided they then hand wrote later) or handwriting and have a tape recorder running (one that has fast speed playback) to fill in gaps.
@Kidsandliz there were even some classes in college where I couldn't even type fast enough and had to just take pictures of the slides and hope to piece it all together after the fact.
@hollboll Clearly those faculty had no clue about the research about learning. Just listening has the lowest outcome on learning. Hopefully I never do that to students. If they are going to pull that stunt then their power points need to be available prior to the class session so you can download them and then put your own notes on them.
FWIW, I'd say you want to know three things: what the final is going to look like (multiple choice? essay questions? exercises?), how the answers are going to be weighted (is there a section that's worth more than the others? are wrong answers subtracted from the overall grade or ignored? are you expected to be slavish or original?), and who is actually going to be grading it (the instructor or a TA? do their views differ from the texts? how important is that?) Then you know what you need to concentrate on, i.e. text or notes, and how to plan your time strategy, i.e. do you zip through multiple-choice without bothering to double-check your answers so you have more time for the exercise section, do you practice constructing some sample essays from the course material, etc. That worked for me even for classes I mostly slept through during the semester (of course if you did THAT, you need good notes from someone else!)
What kind of history?
Have you been studying the entire semester? I would look back at my notes and pull out information that I have underlined or starred. I would then pull out any terms that are specific to what I was studying. I would re-read whatever material the test is covering, and finally I would make a practice test.
This has been what I have been doing for the last two years at least.
go to class and pay attention
good luck!
I would suggest spending more time reviewing your material than asking for help on how to review your material.
But I sucked at studying, too. Good luck!
Find some dirt on your professors. That usually helps.
@Sabre99 Usually, I would be against such things... BUT...
To get the 89 and above I recommend getting a whole lot of the answers correct.
@MrMark wow thanks
I'm a history teacher. I know all that shit. What is the specific area...I've got tips for everything!
Plot Twist: @studerc is @legendornothing's history teacher.
@studerc global perspectives
Change your mindset. If you believe you are going to fail, you probably will. Think positively!
Focus on the areas where you are weakest. Don't waste time studying things you already know well just because it is easier.
@hallmike prophesize your future #joelosteen
Don't know much about history.
Don't know much biology.
@nadroj http://www.neontommy.com/news/2010/12/teacher-inspires-students-despite-rare-cancer
Steven Gail.... aka Mr. G The Singing Substitute sang this song all across a district. That guy touched so many lives.
Go though your class notes - take notes BY HAND as it is then parked in more parts of your brain than when you type (yes science behind this). Go through the reading material. Take notes. By hand. Then combine both sets of notes into one set of notes. By hand. Then read them aloud. Repeat as much as you can with your eyes shut (out loud) imagining the words as you do this. Doing these last two things puts it in more parts of your brain. To remember this shit you need to find it in your brain somewhere, anywhere. Do this one page at a time until you can more or less repeat everything on the page. Go back through your notes. See what you know for sure and what you do not. Take notes on what you can't remember. By hand. Read out loud to yourself, etc. rinse and repeat.
At some point write the notes left of what you can't remember in small print on the paper so you have more on each piece of paper. Try to remember where on the paper the stuff is. Often you remember stuff around it and then can visually find it in your mind that way.
Take your notes with you everywhere you go. Everywhere. Read them go over them whenever you have even a spare minute. Spend time doing this EVERY SINGLE DAY several times a day for several hours - with breaks. DO NOT MULTI TASK. Takes almost 3 min to get refocused each and every time you switch your attention (science behind this as well). At least once a day go through the longer version of your notes so you remind yourself of what you have learned.
The night before the test DO NOT STAY UP ALL NIGHT. When taking cognitive tests people test as poorly as if they are legally drunk when they stay up all night. It is better to go to bed early and get up early than stay up late and get up later (also science behind this). Right before you go to bed carefully go through your notes using the usual method. Your brain will continue to process this while you sleep (in fact do this every night before you go to sleep as the last thing you do). If your test is in the afternoon or evening try to get a full night's sleep prior to the test. Leave several hours prior to the test to review your notes - out loud with eyes shut and open, trying to repeat everything on the sheets looking as few times as possible even if that means you get up at 4am for an 8am test.
When you walk into the test if there is stuff that is important that you keep forgetting read that stuff right before they hand out the test, write it down then start the test. Better you write it down than distract yourself during the test repeating it over and over to yourself trying to remember it in case you need it. Do not spend too much time on Q's you don't know well. Instead do everything you know and work backwards from there. Guess if you don't know if there is multiple choice and no penalty for guessing.
If you are caffeine dependent get your caffeine. Even if you are not try to get some (not a ton, just some) an hour or so before the exam. It helps you focus. Mountain Dew has more caffeine than any other soft drink. Do not go overboard with caffeine pills as if you take too much it actually gets in your way. Right before a test is not the time to experiment with this shit.
I teach. I have taught numerous students this method. It works for many. It takes time, effort and a willingness to do this by hand and not by computer.
IN THE FUTURE - here is the research - if you review, in depth, your notes within 48 hours (at around 24 hours is preferred) of the class you remember more at the end of the week, even if you don't look at it again, than if you do that later in the week. Take notes by hand. In research those who take notes by hand rather than on a computer get about a 1/2 letter grade higher on tests. Several studies found this including one I did with others using complex material they had to learn for a class. AND brain scans show that when you do this more parts of your brain light up when you try to remember stuff than if you type the notes. Just listening is the worst. Use the science to tip the scales in your favor.
Have more questions. Ask and I will answer you.
@Kidsandliz i feel like you just channeled your inner @joelmw.
@Kidsandliz You've given this some thought.
@Kidsandliz I am exhausted after reading that. I agree with writing and using color pencils. Also, I have my kids watch history on their computer because they are visual learners.
@Mellaine I also recommend going to a library, bookstore or starbucks where you are not distracted
@RedOak Well I had to figure some of this out on my own as I never studied k-12 and got good grades. Then in college I nearly failed anatomy as a first semester freshman (mostly cutthroat pre-med juniors in a highly competitive college in that class and no one told this fool that taking that class as a first semester freshman was a stupid idea; that placing out of bio 101 didn't mean I was ready to be up against premed juniors) because I had no clue how to memorize or study. Once I figured it out I went from D's to A's on those tests.
Then I had a run of teaching freshman success (which is a big pain in the ass to teach and dumped on junior faculty as each department had to draft someone to teach their majors that) and coached a number of kids through how to study. Refined it a bit taking an illiterate 10 year old with no english whom I adopted and helping her learn.
Then the research started coming in that backed up what I had discovered on my own. Teaching integrated business core we were driven to distraction with computer use (as in misuse) in the classroom, I randomly saw a brain scan study on hand written notes vs typing notes vs just listening and so we ran a study in there using the marketing section of the class. What we found backed up that brain scan study (students could choose which they wanted so they couldn't blame us for their grades, we also controlled for SAT scores, overall GPA, etc. and gave them all a copy of the power points - large mostly lecture class).
Basically the short version of that study method is repetition, using many senses, handwriting the notes (which forces you to think about how to consolidate and abbreviate what you are trying to learn which helps you learn just by thinking about that - typing often is done without much thinking as you can type far faster than you can handwrite), and preferably reviewing the stuff in depth very close to the time you first heard it for a head start on remembering it.
I also think (no research to back this up) that this is one reason why flashcards work - you are doing much of this making and then using flash cards to review over and over. I once memorized around 3000 more esoteric vocab words, some of which I had never seen before, many I did not know the precise meaning of, and some I had no clue how to pronounce, in 5 weeks doing this (100 new words a day for 6 days, plus the ones I didn't know at the end of the day were added to the 100 for the next day's pile, day 7 review the entire week, throw the ones I didn't know into the following week. The night before the GMAT I knew 95% of the words and got 4 questions right on the GMAT I would not have gotten right had I not done that).
When I took comps for my PhD I had a bunch of notebooks full of these kinds of notes (all stages of the consolidation of these notes - once you have notes like this you never have to read the original again for an exam, even two years later on comps) and spent the summer cramming this crap all back into my brain to be able to spit out for comps (20 hours of exam, 1 hour each essay questions, the outer edges of the universe weren't even close to the limit of what they could ask us). I also had to memorize close to 1500 article citations (along with their contents - much of my notes were on the articles, the rest on class notes and other crap I read to make sure I had the details of the theories) - the date, author and title to use in my answers - that so sucked. I had to repeat to myself there were good reasons why I started this PhD, the fact that I could not remember any of them right now was not good enough reason to quit nor good enough reason not to study long and hard enough to pass the damn comps.
And I am beyond grateful that I will never ever have to take a test again where I have to study. Ever. (grin).
@carl669 naw just did a brain dump, short version, of what I learned about how to study.
@RedOak Umm yeah and it was painful thought way back when. Having a D in a class as a college first semester freshman because I had no clue how to study/memorize and just attending class, taking notes and reading my notes a couple of times was no longer getting me A's was a big motivator LOL.
@Mellaine Places with other people talking can be distracting unless you have earphones on. Have to get away from distractions so you can focus and temptations to do something else so you will stay on task such that the breaks you take don't mean suddenly it is 3 hours later instead of a 15 min break.
@Mellaine Have you been in a library lately? Libraries are filled with noise and distraction lately. People tend to treat libraries as internet cafe's more than anything else. It is a trend that I have been trying to fight over the last few years.
@carl669 Awww. I have a thing. :-) (Yeah, I'll just leave that odd phrasing. And keep this post unjoelmw.)
@carl669 Oh wait is channeling @joelmw an insult or, maybe if I am really lucky, a complement....?
@legendornothing Even if you fail at school, you won at life... you are immortalized in an Irk video!
@legendornothing, I didn't read all of the posts above but the thing that helped me study the most in college was re-writing my notes by hand. Typically I'd take notes on my computer because I'm faster at typing than writing. Then before a final or mid-term I'd sit down and hand-write all my notes.
There's a lot of theories about kinesthetic learning and how it helps commit stuff to memory. I'm the worst at remembering specific dates and names, so writing and re-writing my notes helped me the most.
Good luck!
@hollboll what you wrote is part of the short version of what I said. Handwriting puts the stuff in more parts of your brain and when you are trying to remember all you have to do is find it in one of those many places. The more places it is in the more likely it is you are to find it. That you hand wrote your notes after typing them is the step many don't take after typing. Likely the system I spoke of would work with typing first provided the person had the self discipline to then write them out (consolidating as they write would be OK) - many people would not have that self discipline and so if they knew that about themselves then starting with handwriting likely would work better for them (backed up by tape recording the lecture so they could fill it in if need be). I could handwrite my notes so that later I could hear the faculty member talking in my head when I read them (others who borrowed my notes said the same thing) so if you type faster than you write likely starting with typing will work but if and only if you then switch to handwriting for all the rest of the steps in studying the stuff. Of course anything people do that they can then get them to review this stuff is going to help, even though some ways are more efficient/better than others. Highlighting the book and just reading the high lighting is close to useless (not to mention reduces the resale value of the book LOL) compared to the method we both stumbled across.
@Kidsandliz yup I understand how all that works. I have a bit of a background in training and development but didn't want to type it all out (or distract from potential study time). ;)
For me, I could listen and type at the same time, but if I was handwriting while listening I found that I missed a bunch of stuff. So the best thing for me was to type in class then hand-write before a test.
Don't even get me started on trying to re-sell my books after the quarter was over.
@hollboll I found once faculty switched to power point they didn't slow down enough for people to actually write enough. When you write on the board that slows down how fast you talk when you teach so people can keep up in lecture classes with handwritten notes. Even though I do use power point if the class is a lecture class I also still use the board but I also pause so people can catch up writing. I am thinking that is something many faculty don't do anymore. Thus typing first would make sense (provided they then hand wrote later) or handwriting and have a tape recorder running (one that has fast speed playback) to fill in gaps.
@Kidsandliz there were even some classes in college where I couldn't even type fast enough and had to just take pictures of the slides and hope to piece it all together after the fact.
@hollboll Clearly those faculty had no clue about the research about learning. Just listening has the lowest outcome on learning. Hopefully I never do that to students. If they are going to pull that stunt then their power points need to be available prior to the class session so you can download them and then put your own notes on them.
Just watch a bunch of episodes of Drunk History.
FWIW, I'd say you want to know three things: what the final is going to look like (multiple choice? essay questions? exercises?), how the answers are going to be weighted (is there a section that's worth more than the others? are wrong answers subtracted from the overall grade or ignored? are you expected to be slavish or original?), and who is actually going to be grading it (the instructor or a TA? do their views differ from the texts? how important is that?) Then you know what you need to concentrate on, i.e. text or notes, and how to plan your time strategy, i.e. do you zip through multiple-choice without bothering to double-check your answers so you have more time for the exercise section, do you practice constructing some sample essays from the course material, etc. That worked for me even for classes I mostly slept through during the semester (of course if you did THAT, you need good notes from someone else!)
Read the Wikipedia articles on the subjects covered. I find Wiki authors often boil down a subject so it more easily digested.
Also, stop playing Medal of Honor.