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How to Study: A Brief Guide

cse.buffalo.edu

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Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#51

Post by hokus »

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…

It was all so easy until it wasn't!

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#52

Post by hokus »

ams6110 wrote: post #32
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…

Bear in mind that this guide was written by a professor. Someone who chose to make academia the focus of his life. Such a person may be likely to feel that academic achievement should be the highest priority in one's life, since it was for him.

I sense great pedantic joy in the text. One of my personal rules: When people are enjoying themselves I must figure out why I'm missing out. If I can just hold onto 1% of the joy I can usually expand it later on my own.

Its not that I have to make my own candles and my own candle holders then burn them for specific purposes - but I do know how some manage to enjoy that process.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#53

Post by sonabinu »

chadlavi wrote: post #37
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…

Barbara Oakley's great. I wish her "learning how to learn" course had existed when I was in middle/high school!

Yes, I wish I knew those techniques way back. But her methods have been great and I have been able to do a number of coursera and other MOOC classes

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#54

Post by dhimes »

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…

Me too. Trying to help others avoid this mistake.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#55

Post by dhimes »

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…

To your point 1- You are also likely to come across texts that don't do a very good job explaining some fundamental/foundational ideas, perhaps because they were explained so well in the original papers- the ones that your textbook author read- that your textbook author didn't think it was worth spending too much time on it. The original source can be a goldmine in these cases.

This also happens between editions of textbooks by the same author. On an update they leave out stuff to save space or something.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#56

Post by copperx »

sixhobbits wrote: post #3

My Comp Sci lecturer always said you could get a lot by coming to class 10 minutes early and reading the relevant material and leaving 5 minutes late to read it again. I tried this method for a third-year compilers course and it was a very efficient way of getting a high frequency of "Gotcha" moments of understanding. As an aside, I really love how responsive and friendly web pages in this plain HTML style are. It's…

You can still make an unfriendly website with plain HTML. For example, see http://stallman.org.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#57

Post by kylepdm »

A lot of this is absolutely great advice. I struggled a lot in my first couple years of university having to get adjusted to a much more difficult learning environment that expects much more of you than what HS required.

The biggest change for me was when I started to take notes by hand, and re-take them, as a form of studying. Also focusing on understanding the fundamentals of a class vs trying to ace practice material. I went from a mid 70s GPA to 90s.

But I think a lot of where students struggle is just the acquired discipline necessary to succeed. Studying isn't very fun or enjoyable - at most it can be nice to focus and have goals, but most people have tons of anxiety leading into it and procrastinate a bunch. At the end of the day, there aren't any study hacks or anything, it's just that you have to put the time into it, and you have to essentially "learn how to learn".

This was very apparent in my upper year CS classes where I saw a lot of students struggle to do well in exams for what wasn't terribly difficult material. I realized a lot of students just weren't willing to sit down and study the necessary amount of time. I thank my time in microbiology courses where I had to learn to study every night to memorize tons of different concepts and be able to apply them all to each other. I think students in life sciences tend to know how to study more simply because their courses have a lot more concepts and fundamentals than most CS courses.

If you are in college/university and reading this you have to realize you just have to put the time in. That amount of time differs from person to person. I did really well in my CS program, but I put tons of time into it.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#58

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

kylepdm wrote: post #57

A lot of this is absolutely great advice. I struggled a lot in my first couple years of university having to get adjusted to a much more difficult learning environment that expects much more of you than what HS required. The biggest change for me was when I started to take notes by hand, and re-take them, as a form of studying. Also focusing on understanding the fundamentals of a class vs trying to ace practice mater…

There is more to it than just time..

As a History major all I ever needed to do was read all the material. I dedicated enough time to do that and was fine in all my history classes. 90% reading 10% note review.

For CS and Biology, I read the material but that didn't mean I understood it well enough to map it onto the material that came afterward. I never really knew when I understood something well enough, or how to know be confident I knew something well enough to move forward.

Programming eventually came to me through websites like CodeWars, where I could repeat the easy concepts Over and Over again as simple games. After months of playing around, I understood them in a more subconscious way. Although I still don't know how to make this progress efficiently.

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#59

Post by pixelperfect »

e19293001 wrote: post #11

If you are an emacs user, please take a look at org-mode. Most of the advice had been implemented in org-mode. I hope someone will find it worthwhile because org-mode helps me manage everything in just a text file. And, if you like it, here's an example set-up that I used: http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html Please don't be discouraged on the complexity of the tool. Just learn one at a time and soon you'll be used to…

I've been using org-mode with Deft for a few months now and love it. I'm slowly building a personal Wiki filled with knowledge that is rapidly searchable and has no risk of becoming obsolete (unlike say Evernote where you are at the mercy of the service).

Re: How to Study: A Brief Guide

#60

Post by mendelk »

schuke wrote: post #4
sixhobbits wrote: post #3

My Comp Sci lecturer always said you could get a lot by coming to class 10 minutes early and reading the relevant material and leaving 5 minutes late to read it again. I tried this method for a third-year compilers course and it was a very efficient way of getting a high frequency of "Gotcha" moments of understanding. As an aside, I really love how responsive and friendly web pages in this plain HTML style are. It's…

text.npr.org is a good example.

On similar lines: http://lite.cnn.com/en
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