I have long since come to the conclusion that I have the attention span of a small child
the problem is actually getting anything out of the time I spend slogging over books. It seems to be becoming more and more time-consuming yet less and less productive.
Short, frequent sessions or one enormous study blowout?
Based on what you have said in the excerpts I selected I would gather that enormous study blowouts would be very counterproductive for you.
Since you've made it to the last year in university it is obvious you have at least figured out "some" sort of methodology to at least pass your classes.
When I reached my last year in college I looked at every class I had to take and realized that there was absolutely no new information that I needed to learn. The only thing I had to do was to apply what I already knew to different and more complex situations.
My methods for staying on top of my studies:
1) I made an agreement with myself that I would never stay up past midnight studying.
2) I went to every class and paid attention to the types of questions the teacher was asking, the types of problems being discussed in class, and what sections of the text the teacher was refering to most often. (This will tell you what's going to be on the exams) I was always amazed at people who would take an exam and walk away saying things like, "I had no idea what was going to be on the test." Of course, these were always the people that never showed up for class too.
3) When I needed to, I would use what I'll call an Outline Method of Redacting information in text books. I'll see if I can describe it here in any type of meaningful detail:
I would first skim a chapter of a text book looking only at the major headings and/or sections. Most, if not all, of the text books I ever had were broken down this way. So, now I've got the Chapter title which tells me more or less what to expect in the chapter and I've got a general idea of the major sub-categories in that chapter. This will take all of 2 minutes.
Next, I "read" the chapter. I use quotations here because I never read the chapter word-for-word. What I'm doing is looking for the "key" concepts within each of the major sub-categories. You can skim a section pretty quickly and figure this out. I would underline or highlight the key phrases in each of the sections. Since most chapters in the text books were only 20-50 pages long, I could usually do this in about 15-20 minutes. Most of the time I would do this between classes.
OK, when it comes time for the exam, most of my exams generally covered anywhere from 4-8 chapters in a text book. To this point, I've been to every class, I've skimmed the chapters, and I've located the areas within those chapters that contain the key information I need to understand that section. I've invested anywhere from 1-2 hours in the text book side of things.
Now, depending on the type of exam I'm expecting, my study habits from here can be quite varied. A written exam will generally be approached somewhat differently than an exam that requires computational work and very different from a multiple choice exam (not that I would expect too many of the latter in my last year of university).
As a general rule, however, I would pull out a note book and hand-write an outline of the chapters. This would include the title and the sub-category. I would go to the first sub-category and see if I could describe, in my own words, what the gist of that category was. To the extent I could do that I would. If I couldn't, I would review the key areas I had underlined previously and then write out, in my own words, what I thought I needed to know from that section. In most cases, this was simply one or two sentences. I would complete this process for each chapter that was covered in the exam. Since I was using an outline methodology, I could start and stop any time I wanted. If I felt I was making progress I could continue; if I was getting bogged down I could go to another subject or go do something else. The key was to only do this while it was leading somewhere productive.
Once I had these handwritten outlines, I rarely, if ever, looked back at the book. I would simply review my outlines. From the outline, written in my own hand, and in my own words, I often felt the information was internalized. I felt comfortable I could answer just about any question in a written or multiple-choice format.
For exams that required computational work I would generally use a similar process but I would tie in key practice problems as well. Additionally, I would try and find someone who needed help in the class and act as their teacher or mentor. I found that the process of helping someone else figure out a problem, I had to know it inside and out.
In reading back through this it all sounds very time consuming. For me it wasn't. I worked full time, went to school full time, and was married. I didn't have a lot of time to study, nor do I find it particularly enjoyable. I probably put in, on average, about an hour a day, some days none, and other days more of study time.
Studying, and more importantly how we process information, is a very personal thing. If any of what I've written here sounds like it might help, use it, if not, discard it. My ultimate goal in reducing all the information was to get to a point where I could look at the title to a chapter and pretty much know everything of importance that could be asked from that chapter. This, in conjuction with going to class (which allowed me to guess the likelihood of something being asked) allowed me to walk into exams with a fairly high confidence level that I had studied the right things. I was virtually never surprised by what was on an exam. And, I had a life while I was in school too.
Jef
Topic: Studying?