Studying isn't helping me pass the tests as I want to be...

PrincessBetty1

PrincessBetty1

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I have been studying more than I expected out of myself. I would normally study a week, nonstop until the day of the test and class. I've tried rereading it over it repeatedly. I've tried flash cards and STILL not remembering any of them.

My next method is write it all down repeatedly until it becomes natural to remember, but it's not fun to absorb.

So, what other ways are there to study? What's your trick/tactic? I'm trying to study smart, but nothing seem to click. Colors hurt my eyes, snack rewarding doesn't help much, and no study partner either. Never been exactly comfortable with studying others and discourages me a lot.

I enjoy writing, but I want it to actually stick in my head for once! I'm studying psychology and I really just want to receive a B+ for once. This teacher grades by 200 points...I try to mentally forget it and focus on what I remember, studying, and learned from class. I have read the chapters 3rd times now. I went over my notes. This is getting ridiculous for me now...I really need to get a B+ for once!

Any ideas?
 
You're probably not a rote-memorization type of a student. You probably need another method of learning.

Now, I don't know why I don't remember things about products I sell very well, but I can recite the Greek alphabet even though I've been out of Greek Row for 23 years, and I can tell you the VID number to a car lost in a wreck in '90, a car that I had and later sold in 2000, and the current Jeep I have now. WHY?? It's useless except as a long-ass password or something like that.

Or... Have you considered the possibility is that it's NOT because you can't do it, but because it's not important to you, so you won't commit it to memory, or that you don't have something tangible to help you remember it.

That reminds of me a class I took in college, in which all I had to do to pass it was to memorize all the answers to the test questions by printing out the questions, putting the answers on the right side, and covering them up. What you need to understand is that school these days is about doing well at TAKING TESTS, not at whether yo know your stuff, a solid foundation of knowledge, understanding, and APPLICATION of what you learned. I could just KICK education's ass for putting me through the same crap, only to find out that I was a TINY, TINY fish of knowledge in an ocean the size of the universe when I got to college. What the hell was I doing for 12 years???

Sorry, go ahead.
 
deafdrummer said:
You're probably not a rote-memorization type of a student. You probably need another method of learning.

Now, I don't know why I don't remember things about products I sell very well, but I can recite the Greek alphabet even though I've been out of Greek Row for 23 years, and I can tell you the VID number to a car lost in a wreck in '90, a car that I had and later sold in 2000, and the current Jeep I have now. WHY?? It's useless except as a long-ass password or something like that.

Or... Have you considered the possibility is that it's NOT because you can't do it, but because it's not important to you, so you won't commit it to memory, or that you don't have something tangible to help you remember it.

That reminds of me a class I took in college, in which all I had to do to pass it was to memorize all the answers to the test questions by printing out the questions, putting the answers on the right side, and covering them up. What you need to understand is that school these days is about doing well at TAKING TESTS, not at whether yo know your stuff, a solid foundation of knowledge, understanding, and APPLICATION of what you learned. I could just KICK education's ass for putting me through the same crap, only to find out that I was a TINY, TINY fish of knowledge in an ocean the size of the universe when I got to college. What the hell was I doing for 12 years???

Sorry, go ahead.
Click to expand...

It is important to me in this class, it's actually one of the classes I'm so eager to get involved with and make a lot sense in my life. It's like, Flashbulb memory. You can grasp little from the event/experience, but you don't have a complete set of story in your brain. That's the one I CAN remember. However, everything else is like so much to take in! I only remember that stands out the most, yet, it's 14 flashcards I remember out of 50 flashcards. That isn't good.

So, if I am not a visual learner, what type of a learner am I? Especially when I don't listen well with the hearing aids. I don't even like reading aloud on these stuff. So, I feel that I am left with visual studying.
 
I also use flashcards and discard the cards as I memorize them so that I end up with a small stack of harder concepts at the end of the week.

For articles (15 or less pages) that are difficult to read, I read the article out loud onto a recorder and hear myself read the article a few times, while taking notes. I suppose you could have someone else read the article to you too, but it's very tiring to read a whole article out loud.

When I was studying for art history, I put all the paintings I had to know into a screensaver, and I would try to blurt out as much as I knew about a painting before it flashed off the screen. I did the same for memorizing vocab/kanji when I was studying for a Japanese proficiency exam with some success.

If there is a lot of content to study, maybe you can break the material down by chapters, and then try to memorize the 3 most important facts from each chapter at a time? Or you could make a list of all the things you think you need to study, and then prioritize them based on how much time you have.
 
Association. Link trems with something easier to remember. Like. Ego and eggo waffles. It is a trick I use. Same thing with all the passwords I have, link things that will make you think of the terms or definition
 
Do you watch How I Met Your Mother? Marshall made a song out of everything he had to remember :)

That could help?

DB's suggestion above is good too... I use this for my Auslan classes to remember signs... Eg the sign for fingerspelling I wrote "Mr Burns" cos it looks like when he does his "excellent" (if that makes sense?)
 
In grade school I excelled at memorizing. Poems cuz I would put it to a tune. How many people still remember the trig functions? You were. Taught to associate the cos tan. Cosine and all by setting it to.a dittty
 
Have you ever been assessed for a learning disability? If you haven't it might be worth looking into.
 
PrincessBetty1 said:
I have been studying more than I expected out of myself. I would normally study a week, nonstop until the day of the test and class. I've tried rereading it over it repeatedly. I've tried flash cards and STILL not remembering any of them.

My next method is write it all down repeatedly until it becomes natural to remember, but it's not fun to absorb.

So, what other ways are there to study? What's your trick/tactic? I'm trying to study smart, but nothing seem to click. Colors hurt my eyes, snack rewarding doesn't help much, and no study partner either. Never been exactly comfortable with studying others and discourages me a lot.

I enjoy writing, but I want it to actually stick in my head for once! I'm studying psychology and I really just want to receive a B+ for once. This teacher grades by 200 points...I try to mentally forget it and focus on what I remember, studying, and learned from class. I have read the chapters 3rd times now. I went over my notes. This is getting ridiculous for me now...I really need to get a B+ for once!

Any ideas?
Click to expand...


You've just described my entire academic career...imagine feeling like this for every single course. Not sure what you're hearing level is like, but I also used to record my classes...not that that helped much either....

Laura
 
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