8 Post Finals Tips

Posted on 12/15/2010. Filed under: Studying | Tags: exams, learning styles, science, study methods |

So, my class is finally over. I think my professor tried to scare us with the first couple of questions because they were very wordy and needed lots of thinking. But, the rest of it was a total breeze. Based on the different studying methods I tried in this class, I have noted a few things that worked for me and things that went completely out the window. Here they are:-

1. Visual thinking – I am a person that needs to see things to understand it. Youtube was so helpful to me when I could find what I wanted. The internet on a whole was helpful seeing that I never bought the textbook for the class. Looking back, I don’t know if that was a good idea seeing that it was a science course but when you have to spend hundreds on a book and the professor only uses slides for every class then you really have to make a decision on whether it’s worthwhile.

2. Repetition – going over information only works up to a point. It worked for smaller pieces of information but when you have a lot of information, it wasn’t as helpful. It was great being able to say, ok, I know that because I’ve been seeing it over and over everyday but after a while it fades to the background once you move on.

3. Mnemonics – For some reason I used this a lot without a second thought. I would see a list and automatically look at the beginning letters and come up with something silly. For example, the classification levels had beginning letters, KDSCOFGSS. I turned it into words like Kids, Cough(the gh being the ‘F’ sound), Gross. So when we were asked which one was higher I would just say the words to remember.

4. Diagramming/Drawing – I was a bit skeptical to use this method for fear that it wouldn’t work but it turns out that because I’m so visual that I sometimes remembered where the information was on the page, so I started writing different sections in different corners to help jog my memory. The only issue with this, was that it took a lot of time and trying to put it in color was even more arduous and pencil just didn’t cut it. All in all, it did help especially a few days before the test where I condensed every set of slides into one page. I think I just needed a different pen, the multi-colored pen I used was not the best in terms of decent flowing ink.

5. Question Guessing – This was the most difficult for me, I just could not come up with decent questions. They all seemed to come out the same way, with the beginning as ‘what was’ or ‘what is’…very boring. I wish there was a program that could help students come up with ways to create questions for exams. Once I had the professor’s actual exam back to review, a lot of the information was easier to grasp since I could see where my gaps were in learning the information.

6. Flash cards – I went to http://www.flashcardexchange.com but I didn’t have the time and didn’t want to use someone else’s since some had too much info. while some had too little pertaining to my class. I know one of my other classmates used homemade flashcards a lot and she seemed to do well.

7. Whole picture thinking – To me this was the most helpful thing in this class. The professor who probably assumed that we were all diligently reading texts never bothered to give us the big picture. Upon entering the class he would open up his slides and just start talking about it. This made it all the more difficult because I had to go home and try to figure out where the pieces all fit together. I really should have gone in for an office visit but time was of the essence for me.

8. Relating information – This method was important because it helped the information really stick. For example, to remember IgE and the release of Histamines, I used my son who has allergies and whose middle initial has an ‘E’ in it. I probably won’t ever forget that bit of information.

For test questions, I needed to remember to pay attention to key words in my slides. In many of the test questions there were words that should have been very obvious to me when trying to figure out the answer. I sometimes tend to read too fast which hinders me during exams. It’s an issue that I really need to work on in the future.

If you have any other helpful bits of learning/studying ideas, feel free to leave a comment.

Update – using these methods resulted in an A in this class.

 

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