Hey Everyone, So I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread where everyone can post their advice for studying and techniques that work

I guess I'll start so right now I'm in trig and I am doing...well....i guess....but my problem is that I'm dependent on my notes. When I have my notes in front of me I might get two problems wrong in a total of 15 but, if I don't or can't have my notes out I tend to go blank.

Well, when I have to memorize a lot of things, like dates or definitions, I make cards with the word on one side, and the definition/ explanation in the other. Usually, I use different colors to classify similar concepts.

It works a lot when you're strong in visual memory.

Best advice: Be or get interested to your subject. You remember everything better when you are interested.

This very very very simple technique always worked for me. Of course, not every subject was interesting to me so I tried to convince myself of any use it could have for me and I would then get more interested. When you are interested, your brain records everything better (Even if you are not completely concentrating on the class itself) I never had to write down notes in my entire life to have great grades.

Of course, if you are used to taking notes, don't stop it!!! But when you read it again after, don't read them as notes, concentrating too much on one part at a time, it is just going to get you tired then nothing will stay in your mind after. Just read it as a book. Why do you remember most part of a book? Probably because you had interest and because you were feeling relaxed while reading it.

Just make sure you pick a technique that suits you. Mine may work for you too, but maybe some other technique can be better for you. You can always try them first only for fun. (Not for a very important exam)

I was also about to forget... Are you most visual or auditive?? Do you remember most things you heard or read??? This may help a lot to pick a good technique for you.

If you are more auditive, if someone wants to read notes out loud for you it might help, but if you have none, you can read the notes out loud to yourself, it might sound funny, but it can work

How often do you go over your notes? You need to be familiar enough with the material that you can recall it on your own with minimal prompting. One thing that really helped me during my last two years of my undergraduate schooling was that I re-read all of my notes every day. If the tests were not cumulative, then I would only re-read the relevant notes for the test. The key is that I read them so often that I began to memorize them without really trying.

Also, specifically for math... the more practice you have, the better. Try to practice the trig problems as often as you can without relying on your notes. You'll learn more from your mistakes, especially if you go back over your practice problems and correct yourself once you are finished. If you learn to rely on your notes while working through practice problems, then you'll have a harder time when your notes aren't available to you (like during quizzes and tests).

And tagging onto what Jo said, see if you can bring a recorder to class. You can record the class session, than play it back later. Of course, you have to get your teacher's permission first, because you wouldn't want to be accused of copyright infringement. Also, SailorSedna brings up a great point. Flashcards work excellent, even in math. Flashcards are great for memorizing equations.

Also, a bit on the math end, I had a calc teacher tell me that trying to remember EVERY formula is just ridiculous and you will never truly memorize them all (I guess unless you have a photographic memory or something XD). My teacher advised me to put in some of the formulas on my graphing calculator. However, I know not all teachers are like that and will consider that cheating.

But, with trig, its important to learn most of the stuff by memory because you will need it in the future. So definitely follow all of the advice given above, its all very helpful!

Writing, I find, and taking your own notes is a huge boon---especially when in class. You'll take notes at your own pace and in your own style, allowing for greater accessibility when you're reviewing material. How specific you are with notations is really dependent on the class and whether you feel the need to capture every single nuance of the lesson. But being reliant solely on a textbook is a perilous proposition; if you take mathematics or the hard sciences, practice is going to be a necessity, meaning flipping through a textbook will be insufficient. In addition, textbook material can be daunting as it often covers a wide variety of subjects and related problems. Pick a focus and work from there; otherwise you'll be trying to cover one too many bases.

As JoJia mentioned, it helps to have a subject in which you are interested. I found most liberal arts courses (e.g., literature, history, religion, government, philosophy, etc.) to be fairly easy in comparison to the hard and applied sciences (e.g., mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, etc.). Part of it is skill set---I am better with words than I am with numbers---and part of it is interested: I have little interest in mathematics, so I don't invest a lot of time in learning the shortcuts a practiced math student knows. If you have to take a subject with which you are familiar or otherwise do not possess an interest in, make certain to practice frequently and repeatedly. There is little way around it. That's what I had to do for my own mathematics test in order to earn equivalent college credits: I hired a tutor, worked on the problems for several months, and then put my money where my mouth was. Basically, that's all you can do at times; but it helps to find resources and put them to use in your favor.

The other folks in this thread have already highlighted variant forms of processing information, so I won't repeat what they have said.

Well, one of my studying techniques is just printing out the review and answering the questions on my notebook by hand instead of going over power-points or chapters over and over again. The way I learn best and prepare for exams is by writing things down over and over again. It helps me get "A"s in psych, TX government, college algebra, Macroeconomics, and has helped me pick up my test grades for bio.

Hehe. My notes for studying for tests are EPIC and have never let me down. I firmly believe that they are the reason why I was an A student during college. ^^

First, I re-write ALL of my notes from class -- any class as well, be it math, history, science, etc.

Second, as I re-write these notes, I say them all out loud. This reinforces the learning by the action of writing, seeing the words and hearing them as well.

Third, I put color into everything. I think a sea of black text can become very dull for the eyes, so I break up everything by making every title/question and description/answer in a different color. Example: title/question and below it the answer/description.

Fourth, I read aloud all of my notes as if I am explaining them to a friend or giving a lecture. It makes it more interesting this way. Ever notice how easy it is to remember random things in a conversation but how the brain just seems to SHUT DOWN when needed to memorize facts for an exam? I trick my brain into thinking that 1. I know what I am talking about and 2. that it is rather interesting in the first place. If I can not remember what was written down as I speal I go over them until I can recite each question/answer without looking. If I can't remember it, then I am not going to remember it for the exam.


I've used this for every subject so I know it is not limited to worded subjects such as history or psychology but also works for topics such as math, chemistry and science.

Best of luck to you! ^^

I am about to rewrite my notes for Biology on taxanomy, which is really easy but there's a lot classes and phylums and subphlyums but they're sticking with me really well. With math problems, I just do them over and over again.