You don’t feel like studying at all
Leaving studying until just before exam season is a common mistake that we all make sometime (or always) during college. When the date approaches, we stick to marathon days in front of the notes trying to swallow everything in the shortest possible time, which in addition to damaging our average, is stressful and exhausting. But of course, who wants to study after several hours of class?
In the end we are leaving it and, when we want to find out, we have the exams on top and we have no choice but to tie ourselves to the chair for a thousand hours. Finishing the degree with an A’s and earning our professional ghostwriting company can be fun. It all depends on how we take it.
It only costs to start
If we do not have a daily study routine, what is going to give us a lot of laziness is to start having it. That is the worst part. After a couple of weeks, it will be as common as having coffee for breakfast or brushing our teeth before going to bed and it will not be such a big sacrifice. Of course, you have to be consistent and establish that routine for that to happen.
In addition, it must be done every day after class (or the next morning for those who have afternoon hours) when we still have everything fresh in our memory. If we start doing it and two days later we stop, and then we do it another day and we leave it again the next, we will not establish a routine and we will end up leaving everything for last.
One more hour of class
We can see it, simply, as one more hour of class, because we will not need to invest much more time if we are really constant. From Monday to Friday, one more hour does not really involve so much effort and, like everything else, if we see it as something good and orient our thoughts in a positive way instead of feeling like Sisyphus carrying his rock, everything will be more bearable.
Can studying be fun?
Absolutely yes. And this is the trick to having a daily study routine: having fun. The kneeling thing is for exam time. Now, what it is about, is to do a daily review of the classes applying different study techniques that are useful and entertaining at the same time. Attention: none of these study techniques consists of passing the notes clean, so peace of mind.
1. Bring out the ‘hater’ in you in the subjects you don’t like
We just got out of class and got home; We have our notes for the day on the table and it is time to see what we have learned today and consolidate it, and a good way to do that is to discuss with our notes. We have before us the typical obnoxious subject that does not feel like, on top, put to review. It’s okay, we can understand it and learn it using how much we hate it. Write in the margins of the notebook or use annotations in red for the computer. Tell your notes what you do not agree with or which parts you find most insufferable and unnecessary and why. Underline, draw, put admiration and propose a different argument. To criticize something you have to understand it and if we connect it to an emotion, it will stay much faster. It is not enough to fill the notes with squiggles proclaiming our absolute contempt,
2. Play to teach a class
Who has not played as a teacher as a child? And with how much fun it was, why did we stop playing? Well, it’s time to get back to it, because one of the most effective and fun study techniques is to explain what we study. If we have a little brother to torture, fine; if not, we can tell it to the computer camera. As we have just left class and everything is familiar to us, all we have to do is read a page of our notes and tell it to the camera as if it were a student who does not know.
3. Musicians and poets (or fans), you are in luck
If we like rhymes (and better if they are ridiculous), to play words or to put music to everything, a good technique to memorize something important that has been given in class is to put our creativity to work. It’s fun and the more absurd it is, the better it will stick in our memory. We apologize if 20 years later you are still humming a Rihanna song with the letter of the Latin names of the beetles that inhabit the Mediterranean forests.
If we manage to do this on a daily basis, when exam time comes we will have everything so internalized that it will only take a little review to get a 10. It is worth a try, right?
