I'm finally presenting to you the study tips I've assembled over almost 2 months of university! Since I am taking 4 science courses (and 1 social science course), some of those techniques you might or might not need in social sciences and humanities. Anyway, please follow through, and I hope it helps!
1. Textbook is your friend
I've encountered multiple people who have said that they 'didn't even need the textbook', they 'didn't open the textbook', 'the textbook is too detailed, so it makes no sense to use', etc.
I use all my textbook, and it's true - they use greater detail, but...:
1. we never know what's coming on the exam
2. it will help in our future courses.
I not only highlight the assigned readings, but I take notes from them, work through the practice problems, and analyze tables and diagrams.
2. Gather all resources
The majority of my courses have lectures, tutorials, labs, textbook reading & problems, online modules, and online quizzes. I like to incorporate all of those when I'm studying for my exams. I have a notebook, where I record all of the information from those resources. That way, I won't have to search through everything to find the needed piece of info.
3. Create your own resources
Like I mentioned in my previous blog posts, I created my own online flashcards which are very convenient to review on the go. You can also assemble your own practice packages, question-a-day jar, or whatever your creative mind makes up.
4. Practice retrieving
It's easy to fall into a trap of thinking that you know and understand the information when you are only skimming or highlighting through it. Since it is always better to double check, cover the information with your hand or a post-it while trying to recall what a certain concept entailed.
5. Review regularly
Being regular is very important because it is a big part of time management. If you will distribute your workload effectively across a weekly/monthly period, you won't be very stressed at the end.
6. Do practice questions
I cannot stress the importance of this fundamental suggestion enough...
I was not practicing this in the beginning of my uni this year, and I have definitely faced the negative consequences. Whatever resources available to you for practice - use them. Also, when you are solving/answering questions from a practice test or what not, make sure to do at least 5 of your best attempts at solving something before actually looking up the answer/solution.
7. Make sure you are fully focused
Our Psych professor does a few "probes" (as he calls them) throughout the lecture. The probe is a question which asks whether we were "on task" before the question appeared, "unintentionally mind wandering" or "intentionally mind wandering". Since those probes appear multiple times throughout lecture, I discovered that I begin unintentionally mind wandering after approximately 20-25 mins of an (interesting, though) lecture.
What I'm leading it up to, and what our professor suggested, is that try to control your brain's impulses, and if there is something in your head, write it down somewhere, so that it can be temporarily misplaced out of your attention. Also, take regular breaks of ~5 minutes long to "recharge" on the ability to focus on the material.
8. Do the easier stuff first
That might contradict a lot of suggestions you've heard before, but my reasoning is the pursuit of motivation. If I have a long to-do list of tasks, I will definitely get the small ones out of the way, so I will not be dreaded by a number of things I still have to do after I finish a time-consuming, "heavy" task.
9. Don't be too confident
Overconfidence is my old "frienemy", because sometimes it helps, but often it doesn't. For instance, I started out this semester with a quiz on almost every course I have, and my grades turned out to be fabulous! The problem was that I underestimated the midterms, and didn't do as well as I expected due to the lack of the sufficient amount of work put into it. Now, I am trying to bounce back with active studying techniques, and improve my grades until they will match my standards.
10. Make sure you understand why
It applies to everything! In order to be a successful individual, an intelligent student, a good investigator, etc. you must not only understand the concept and its applications but also why is it occurring. It is a deep level of thinking, and even though you might or might not get assessed on it on a test - inquiry is still a skill which all successful people possess.
Good Luck!
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