How to Study - Biology As Poetry

To effectively learn any subject one must first learn how to learn. The process of learning is as individual as there are individuals. Nevertheless, certain skills exist which are applicable to both multiple individuals and multiple subjects. If you are struggling in your classes, want to improve your grades, or simply want to study more efficiently or effectively, then you may be a good candidate for improving your study skills. What follows is a walk through various videos addressing the important question of how to study.

The above video is an introduction to how to take notes while listening to a lecture, or really just about any time that you need to take good, useful notes.

The following video is a good place to start playing with the speed settings on YouTube videos. In the lower right of the video box there should be an icon that looks like a gear. Hover your mouse over it and it should say "Settings". Click on this word and you may (depending on the video) see two entries, "Speed" and "Quality". Often I like to set quality as high as I can since, I mean, who doesn't prefer to have clearer versus fuzzier images. You will be limited, however, by the speed of your internet connection as well as the quality of the post video itself.

The "Speed" setting will allow you to speed up or slow down videos. While watching educational videos it is my personal preference to speed things up. It is possible to speed things up just a bit, to 1.25-fold speed. Again it is my personal preference, in most cases, to watch videos at 1.5-fold speed. With the following video, try out these various speeds to see if what you might prefer. Don't forget that you can always slow a video down, or pause it to take notes. The goal always should be to be effective in your studying rather than to spend excessive amounts of time or, for that matter, too little time on your efforts. If at the end of the day you have learned what you have set out to study, then you've accomplished what you need to accomplish.

Take-home message:

Technology can be Your Friend,
Especially if you Know How to Use It!

So you have trouble memorizing for exams? This video provides some very helpful tips and explanation for what might be going wrong.

Take-home message (among many):

Knowing Material More Deeply can Help
Assure you Know Material More Effectively

I do a lot of these things discussed in the videos. When you push yourself really hard, you have to compensate somewhere. When in doubt, or if all else fails, take a shower. ☺

This videos makes a lot of good points, but also gets a little complicated. Probably best to listen to this one at normal speed. But if you want to see what sort contortions a science student might go through towards being an effective student, this is definitely good for you to view. Very importantly, it the video takes a very holistic look at what it takes to kick butt in a heavy-duty science class!

Take-home message:

Yes, Studying for Science Classes isn't
Necessarily Going to be Trivial for You

I'm actually shooting on this page to introduce science/studying for non-majors courses, but if you want to get a better feel for what it's like to kick butt as a science major, then this is the videos for you. Note: I was pretty extreme in college – i.e., I read the textbook, attended all lectures, took awesome notes (really), copied the notes I had taken over after class, did all of any assigned problems, studied long hours for exams well in advance of taking exams, etc. – but I was nowhere near as extreme as this guy.

Nevertheless, as he notes, "It's all about doing problems!" Of course, this assumes that in fact there are problems on the exam… Regardless, this guy is awesome! And, for the record, for math or chemistry or physics classes I would do all of the problems assigned at least three if not four times, once after class, once while studying the weekend before the exam, and twice the night before the exam. For the latter I would do the problems as fast as I possibly could. Consequently, on exams I was able to able to go through each problem at least two and sometimes three times, trying different approaches and, of course, noting discrepancies!

Take-home message:

Yes, I was a Pretty Nuts Student,
But also a Pretty Successful Student ☺