[brapper]

So what is it?
Special place?
Method of organization?
Music?
Food?
Company?
etc.

Mine: no organization. last minute, in a deserted building on campus. For as long as I can stand it. With a lot of food (junk) and coke to keep me awake. Silence or, light classical in headphones if I can't find complete silence.

[rozwado1]

i could never study. --just focus on women instead.

[hyperb0le]

My preferred study method: none. I have yet to study for a single thing in High School at home. It seems to be working for me, though (GPA is 4.4). Yes, I know that will need to change when I go off to college, but for the time being, it's working well.

[brapper]

Originally posted by rozwado1:
i could never study. --just focus on women instead.

yup, that's why i go to a deserted building.
girls here actually get dressed up for the library...it's a social thing.

[Xeo]

I usually read in a quiet place. Chairs in the campus center, or something. Can't listen to music when reading or writing a paper. But when doing CS homework I always listen to music so I usually do that in my room.

I have a lot of work to do this weekend, a large amount of it being CS stuff, so if I can pull my self away from you losers for long enough, I'll crank up the music and go at it.

[Sage]

I only listen to music if I need to block out other noise (like from the TV that my parents are watching), or if I'm really on the verge of falling asleep. I had to pull through a 6-hour assignment Tuesday night, and the only thing that kept me from falling asleep through it was music. Normally though, music's distracting.

I don't really study very much though, except for finals. For normal tests, I spend about 10 minutes reviewing anything that I don't remember or don't know how to do off the top of my head. For finals, it kind of depends on the class, but usually I go through all of my notes one time, and setting aside any section I know I'll have a hard time with and then revisiting the stack once I'm done. I don't spend more than 2 hours studying for one class for finals.

I don't care about where I am or what I'm eating or any of that – I can study just about anywhere. It's not uncommon for me to do some quick studying in a class for a different class... priorities.

[brapper]

Originally posted by hyperb0le:
My preferred study method: none. I have yet to study for a single thing in High School at home. It seems to be working for me, though (GPA is 4.4). Yes, I know that will need to change when I go off to college, but for the time being, it's working well.

Yeah i was like you and made it into a fairly reputable university that actually likes to keep their course averages low (65ish)..
So studying is the thing to do, and I'm completely lacking in any real technique. Isee others with all sorts of organizational method...it's all foreign to me.
Additionally, I don't like taking notes during class because i don't find i leanr while writing. So if I don't get notes from others to study later, I'm fuct.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by brapper:
Additionally, I don't like taking notes during class because i don't find i leanr while writing. So if I don't get notes from others to study later, I'm fuct.

This same behavior all of a sudden changed in me this year. I have a prof right now who bases everything on his lectures. There is no written version of his lectures as he didn't give us text books and it's for a history class. Notes are essential, but I have found that I remember quite a bit of what he says just by writing it down. I don't have to go back and read it very intensely to remember the lectures. Missing a single lecture really hurts, though. I also take notes in another class and I remember all that stuff too. The classes that are 95% memorization are made easier by notes. At least, this semester that is the case.

I don't take notes in my CS classes though. Participating and trying to understand the material is far more important that writing down the lemmas. I can find those in the book, later.

[Weezer]

never study in your dorm room, stay away from the internet and distractions, caffiene is your friend (adderall and study drugs are not, don't cheat), studying in groups can either be very effective or a complete waste of time, don't wait until the last minute.

[Spliffdaddy]

For some strange reason it always helps to have some George Clinton & Parliament playing in the background.

Coffee and P-funk. That's the trick.

Try it...you'll see.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
For some strange reason it always helps to have some George Clinton & Parliament playing in the background.

Coffee and P-funk. That's the trick.

Try it...you'll see.

I would, but what if it's the secret recipe to change me into a conservative?

disclaimer: joke, not an attack or derailment

[sworthy]

for the first time in my life I had no tests, and just papers (3 were over 40 pages, and my thesis isn't even until next semester...yikes!)

My solution:

Break papers down into as many subsections as possible. Write a bunch of "mini-papers" about each.

Get a rough draft done at least a few days before it's actually due.

Edit it.

Have someone else edit it.

Edit it.

Turn in, get an A.

A paper that has gone through revisions will get at least a grade higher.

[juanvaldes]

studying never helps me. Either I do it or not.

[jcadam]

The senior level-CS classes were more project-based than test-based. Compiler Design was the worst. Almost your entire grade rested upon wether the compiler you turned in on the last day of class worked or not. You couldn't write it in one night. The last night for me consisted of staying up all night in the lab w/ coffee in front of a UNIX box trying to shake the last few pesky bugs out. Worked on it up until class time. Printed out the code listing, stuck it in a folder, slapped the final product on a disk (he wanted source code and a makefile, and it better the hell compile without any errors), walked up to the classroom, handed it to the long-bearded CS prof.

Most of the students (myself included) didn't stick around for the lecture, we just turned our stuff in and went home to sleep.

[ambush]

I heard some drugs can help.
I reckon I should try MJ+studying some day.
Anyway.

Yesterday I had a date with my GF (omg omg I'm officially going out with her now!@) and we drank....

so at 1AM yesterday I went and bought a RedBull can at a 24hour conv. store.

Works great!

[DeathToWindows]

Ok... for history and latin I study my notes (which are fairly insane BTW) at least 24 hours before the test or final... then I review with 24hrs to spare... then I chill

for writing courses: get papers done as early as possible and edit the crap out of them... or as I generally say, beat 'em with a stick!

[MacMan4000]

What I do is forget about all tests until I get to the class and the teacher is saying "get everything off your desk" and telling us the usual don't cheat speech. Then I grab the notes/textbook/worksheet/etc. and cram for 30 seconds... works wonders.

My last vocab test was a 97% without ever looking at the vocab words until a minute or two before the test was handed out.

[Goldfinger]

Originally posted by MacMan4000:
What I do is forget about all tests until I get to the class and the teacher is saying "get everything off your desk" and telling us the usual don't cheat speech. Then I grab the notes/textbook/worksheet/etc. and cram for 30 seconds... works wonders.

My last vocab test was a 97% without ever looking at the vocab words until a minute or two before the test was handed out.

What language ?

[MacMan4000]

Originally posted by Goldfinger:
What language ?

English

[Sealobo]

Learning by Doing.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by MacMan4000:
What I do is forget about all tests until I get to the class and the teacher is saying "get everything off your desk" and telling us the usual don't cheat speech. Then I grab the notes/textbook/worksheet/etc. and cram for 30 seconds... works wonders.

My last vocab test was a 97% without ever looking at the vocab words until a minute or two before the test was handed out.

Yeah, high school was easy for me too. Those same techniques do not work in college.

[Sherwin]

Get yourself a photographic memory. Works every time.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by Sherwin:
Get yourself a photographic memory. Works every time.

[spiky_dog]

Originally posted by Sherwin:
Get yourself a photographic memory. Works every time.

only for things that lend themselves to it. will hunting is not the ideal student outside of hollywood. being able to quote a passage in a test and then give the page number is a nice trick, but it won't help you when the test is asking for your analysis of a new passage or set of data.

Originally posted by Xeo:
Yeah, high school was easy for me too. Those same techniques do not work in college.

agreed, especially if you go to a competitive school. here is what i recently wrote on slashdot on a similar subject. note that i actually capitalize my comments there, imagine that

Originally posted by ajna on slashdot, aka spiky_dog on MacNN:
Having the teacher hand me a prealgebra textbook and tell me to come back when I had learned it is what happened to me, in 6th grade, with 2 other kids. Add in a summer course of geometry before 8th grade and I was done with Calc BC by 10th grade, at the tender age of 14. During middle and high school I did do the homework, however, although often in the 5 or 10 minutes before class began. This came to bite me in the butt my own freshman year in college, but I perservered, swallowed my pride, and actually began to work for the first time in my life.

Now, a year out of college, I'm in med school. Here I'm surrounded by people who like what they're studying (I do as well), and studying a LOT is the norm. And, at this stage, it actually matters whether I know my stuff, so I put my nose to the grindstone and join in, no matter how much it hurts.

I was quite the academic phenom at a young age (not just in math, I was a SET kid, see http://www.jhu.edu/~gifted/set/ for what that program is about), and this helped me in some ways: I never felt the need to compete in a vicious manner or belittle others' achievements since I'd already had the institutional pat on the back from a young age, so to speak. However, it also made me complacent, and this complacency almost was my failure.

The moral of my rambling, self-congratulatory story? Not everyone who finds the pace and scope of traditional school easy ends up falling by the wayside. We all have to learn how to apply ourselves, and to grasp that being smart is simply not enough on its own. Growing up as a precocious youth one often feels that being gifted means that less effort should be expected of oneself, and that academics is a game in which the goal is to find the least amount of work that will appease the taskmasters. I encourage those who might feel this way to go to a competitive school, and learn from the positive example of their peers that the application of one's talents is as important as their mere existence.

addition: as for how i study/take notes, what i do is to keep up with the classes throughout the year. i either sketch notes or follow along in the sourcebook/textbook/lecture notes if available. this is typically all i do*, no big cram before the test, just a solid night of sleep.

(* gross anatomy caused me to ramp up my usual practice a bit. for that i ended up writing/paraphrasing every one of a list of topics covering the quarter [read my rambling, 4.3 MB/103 page writeup here ]. we were responsible for the content anyway and had to give verbal presentations on random topics, and these topics and concepts are not those that i, at least, can simply absorb without some effort, so i figured writing them out would be the best form of study. ymmv, but some variant of this method of writing-an-obscene-amount-then-editing-it-down should work for you, both for papers and for memorization heavy classes.)

[Goldfinger]

Originally posted by MacMan4000:
English

, that would explain the 97%

[MacMan4000]

Originally posted by Goldfinger:
, that would explain the 97%

Yeah, Spanish is not that easy. For Spanish a cheat sheet* is required.



*I do not condone cheating or any other illegal activity (except illegal fireworks... those are just good clean fun!)

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by spiky_dog:
only for things that lend themselves to it. being able to quote a passage in a test and then give the page number is a nice trick, but it won't help you when the test is asking for your analysis of a new passage or set of data.

Incorrect, sorry.

[spiky_dog]

Originally posted by Sherwin:
Incorrect, sorry.

do explain: how does having a photographic memory help you in the analysis of a passage that you haven't read before? unless you plan on writing an analysis solely composed of other texts you've looked at at memorized i fail to see the advantage.

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by spiky_dog:
do explain: how does having a photographic memory help you in the analysis of a passage that you haven't read before?

It doesn't, directly. However, it helps in the cross-referencing of study material and thus gives indirect gains.

[wdlove]

Having a place of peace and quiet. Trying to stay focused.

[Kenneth]

1) Last minute?
2) Cheat sheets
3) Never study in the dorm (like someone said)
4) note cards
5) Study guides from instructors.
6) Walking around rather than sit there.
7) Don't forget to get some sleep before exam.

[Albert Pujols]

Originally posted by hyperb0le:
My preferred study method: none. I have yet to study for a single thing in High School at home. It seems to be working for me, though (GPA is 4.4). Yes, I know that will need to change when I go off to college, but for the time being, it's working well.

You have a 4.4 GPA out of 5.0 right?

I don't study very much, but when I do study it is usually a minute before class, Homework is done the same way. Of course, I probably should study. My GPA is horrible, 3.3 (on a 4.0 scale). Although today, I did my calculus homework literally 30 seconds before it was due and I got a 12/15. I'm proud of myself

Oh and today, I had everyone in my advanced biology class beg for a take-home test just so I wouldn't have to study. It worked

[storer]

Lie flat on my bedroom floor with my cd player pumped up. The music is all my old stuff, like singles and albums from 1995 - 2000. I dunno why the old stuff, it just helps.

[Sage]

Well, I was studying for my AP Physics C (Mechanical/Electrical) final, but my dad just turned Monday Night football on. Too bad there isn't any other decent studying spot in the house (small house).