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How to Study: A Brief Guide

cse.buffalo.edu

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Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#41

Post by pmulv »

pdm55 wrote: post #36

A key insight, that I got from Barbara Oakley's "A Mind for Numbers", was a way to avoid procrastination. The secret was to trick your mind. Don't think, "I have to do two hours of study." Just say to yourself, "I will study for 10 minutes." The mind says, "That's easy, I can do that." Once you are started, you can then keep going. With this trick, study becomes a habit, something you really miss if you don't do it e…

I've found that this trick works really well for reading in general, as well. If I tell myself to just read a short chapter, I often end up reading 3.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#42

Post by BeetleB »

applecrazy wrote: post #2

Excellent resource with many study tips. As a high school student, it's hard to balance school, leisure, and code, and any sort of advice is appreciated. In addition, I've found Cal Newport's blog both inspiring and also interesting, as he focuses on "hacks" to get higher quality studying for your time ("more bang for your buck") Edit: Cal Newport's blog: http://calnewport.com/blog/ Edit 2: Another one of my sources…

Cal Newport's advice contradicts his in some places (especially regarding note taking in class).

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#43

Post by BeetleB »

I'll add a crazy one:

Don't go to an undergrad program where they inundate you with lots and lots of homework.

I went to an "average" university for my undergrad and a top one for my grad. Once I got to the top one, I was shocked at how much the workload was for undergrads (but not for grad students). The undergrad homeworks and exams were mostly grunt work - not the type of homework that makes you think deeply about the material (fortunately, the grad courses gave you that type of HW).

As such, students spent most of their free time solving problems that did not give them much insight.

My average undergrad didn't give insightful homework either, but the HW wasn't that demanding so it freed up the time to ponder over the material, etc.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#44

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

ams6110 wrote: post #33
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #8

This focuses on how to study when you're in school and taking classes. But that likely only represents a small number of years in your life, while the rest will be spent outside of school! IMO, learning how to study when you're outside of school is just as important. Here's two comments I wish I'd been told earlier: 1. In the context of Computer Science, many books and research papers between the 70s and 90s cover a…

> be wary of snake oil salesmen Indeed, and maybe it's just the ones I've read, but it seems to me that most "white papers" are written in the marketing department.

Yup, that's been my experience as well. When I first started noticing their existence I thought they were always marketing propaganda. But you can occasionally find good technical white papers, so it's worth at least being aware of their existence.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#45

Post by bg4 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #31
terminalcommand wrote: post #5

I think that this kind of advice can be detrimental to people like me. It basically says force yourself to study 5 hours a day no exceptions. If you get a job or other extracurricular activities don't count it as work time. Well, I lived that lifestyle in high school. I studied 4 hours a day, limited every extracurricular activities to not interfer with my study time. At the end I believe I have missed a great portio…

I think the point is you need to have time set aside as part of your normal process to study if you are serious about your education. It's time that you should be focused on your academic pursuits, not drinking, working, gaming, girls, etc. I didn't follow this sort of advice, and paid the price. I sailed through most classes on my wits, but hit a wall when more advanced classes had time demands that I couldn't meet…

Same, regret it to this day.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#46

Post by baby »

crististm wrote: post #24
baby wrote: post #22

Taking notes is the worst advice you can give to someone. I've had this argument here on HN before, but taking notes distract you from the actual class. The best people I've been studying with were never taking notes, they were listening. If you need to know something after class, you can just google it or look in a book for it.

I've seen recommendations for not taking notes in class as well. But your position suggests that taking notes is indeed the worst thing to do in class. How can that be? No qualifications or downplays like "for most people" or "bad"? What I mean is that unless you have the results of Cal Newport or Jordan Peterson your extreme position does not carry the same weight as theirs.

> What I mean is that unless you have the results of Cal Newport or Jordan Peterson your extreme position does not carry the same weight as theirs.

That point of authority doesn't dismiss the fact that spending time taking notes takes from your actual attention and interactivity with the class.

I'm in for writing down a few words here and there, but people tend to write way more and it's actually detrimental to them. We end up in a situation where "taking note" becomes a bad advice and in most cases is not helping.

My story is just anecdotal, but from what I've seen: the more notes students took, the more they failed; the less notes students took, the more they were succeeded. I go to conferences all the time now, and I don't see people taking notes anymore (and the few who do, do not do it as intensively as I've seen it being done in university). Isn't that a sign that people who actually succeeded in becoming PHD students, or postgrads, or professors, or good people in the industry, ... are all people who do not take notes in conferences? (which are extremly similar to classes to some extent)

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#47

Post by hood_syntax »

Spooky23 wrote: post #31
terminalcommand wrote: post #5

I think that this kind of advice can be detrimental to people like me. It basically says force yourself to study 5 hours a day no exceptions. If you get a job or other extracurricular activities don't count it as work time. Well, I lived that lifestyle in high school. I studied 4 hours a day, limited every extracurricular activities to not interfer with my study time. At the end I believe I have missed a great portio…

I think the point is you need to have time set aside as part of your normal process to study if you are serious about your education. It's time that you should be focused on your academic pursuits, not drinking, working, gaming, girls, etc. I didn't follow this sort of advice, and paid the price. I sailed through most classes on my wits, but hit a wall when more advanced classes had time demands that I couldn't meet…

cough Calc 3 cough

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#48

Post by bachmeier »

citruscomputing wrote: post #39
bachmeier wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a pity they're only used by older academics now. For about a year or so I've gone with the (nearly) plain HTML style. It sometimes feels weird to avoid styling, but it's hard to do better for anyone using a mobile device/poor internet connection. It really changed my perspective when I was using a 2G connection and couldn't even check the score of a football game.

I really appreciate the plain HTML too, but it can be a bit ugly, and too wide on my monitor. I use a bookmarklet with sakura[0] to make these pages look nicer. javascript:var head = document.head, link = document.createElement("link");link.type = "text/css";link.rel = "stylesheet";link.href = "https://unpkg.com/sakura.css/css/sakura.css";head.appendChild(link) [0] https://github.com/oxalorg/sakura

Yeah, I go more the approach of http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#49

Post by claudiulodro »

baby wrote: post #22

Taking notes is the worst advice you can give to someone. I've had this argument here on HN before, but taking notes distract you from the actual class. The best people I've been studying with were never taking notes, they were listening. If you need to know something after class, you can just google it or look in a book for it.

I think it depends on the person. If I don't take notes I naturally end up daydreaming and have missed an important concept by the time I snap back to reality. Taking notes forces my mind to pay attention to what is being said.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#50

Post by baby »

claudiulodro wrote: post #49
baby wrote: post #22

Taking notes is the worst advice you can give to someone. I've had this argument here on HN before, but taking notes distract you from the actual class. The best people I've been studying with were never taking notes, they were listening. If you need to know something after class, you can just google it or look in a book for it.

I think it depends on the person. If I don't take notes I naturally end up daydreaming and have missed an important concept by the time I snap back to reality. Taking notes forces my mind to pay attention to what is being said.

I'd say it's mostly a bad advice, seeing how people abuse it, but if you can restrain yourself to just a few words here and there it's actually good.
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