Ways of Studying...

Well I just found out that my little brother uses the same study methods I used when I was in tertiary. Ok not exactly the same, but certainly the same approach. He, like me, finds it impossible to study for an exam days in advance. He uses the night before approach... Um.

During my days at tertiary, I fully trusted my brain and memory to work the magic for me. We had a straightforward deal. I won't ever drink, smoke etc and it too had to promise that it would deliver under any circumstance without exceptions. It was a mutual understanding that worked for both of us. And work it did!

First I would find out when I'll be writing and what time. I prefered it when the exam started at about 12pm or later. During those periods where I was supremely confident, I would not even study at all the night before. I would simply wait until the morning and make sure I arrived at tertiary 8am sharp. Then the next important thing was to find a quite classroom to study in. That was very important, especially when I'll be absorbing huge quantities of textbook information. I'll have the textbook, a single sheet of paper and a pen in front of me and then begin. First I quickly skim through all the chapters I'll be studying, noting key points that I would have to know well and study. I was very good at this, I'll admit. I mean all you had to do was know your lecture's style of teaching and you'd really know which questions he/she was likely to ask in the exam paper. After about 20mins of skimming the text book, your brain already knows what to expect and prepares your brain cells for maximum information storage capacity... Then the studying begins. I would write down what I had to know and squize all those chapters into that single sheet of paper. My writing would be extremely small obviously but it worked for me. That would take about 2 hours, just to write down and learn all those stuff. After that I take a 10/15 min break... I mean really, my head would be near boiling point at that time, so I had to take it easy. After the break I close the textbook and study from the sheet of paper right until about 30mins before the exam starts. During those 30mins I put everything away and walk around. You know you just have to let everything bake in there with that heat lol. Then I would go on to write the exam and the next thing you know someone bagged an 80 plus...

So it really suprised me when I found out that my little brother is writing the next day and didn't even study all weekend. All he said was he'll catch up in the morning. I was like dude are you serious and then remembered that's what I used to do most of the time. I obviously passed him some tips and tricks but then hoped he had an agreement between himself and his memory. Because you really have to be sure of your abilities to be able to pull it off.

He told me that's what he does most of the time as well so I guess it's in the family :-)... Contrast that to my lil sister who makes sure she knows her stuff days in advance.

Pretty interesting indeed..

October 31, 2010 at 10:39pm