Some college students drink, others are straight edge, some hook up, and others do not…but the one thing that we all have in common is that we have to study. Energy drink fueled all nighters have become the college norm when it comes to studying, but how does this actually affect our efficiency? What can you do to ensure you are getting the most out of your study time? Luckily science has the answers (as always!)
Short Term
The following section will encompass what you need to be doing right before studying and during studying to ensure you aren’t wasting your time. When it comes to studying, many of us put it off until the last minute and then cram as much knowledge into our head as we possibly can. This, as it turns out, is a highly inefficient way to study. Your brain will encode the information into your synapses much better if you break the study session up into several smaller sessions (lasting about thirty minutes each) instead. This is the same reason you don’t learn to play guitar or baseball with one super long practice session. The famed all nighter is also an incredibly inefficient way to study, as it can actually affect your ability to reason for several days after. If you set a specific time during the day to study, the routine will actually make studying easier. This is because your brain will become trained to be more active during that moment of the day.
Another popular study method is highlighting important sections in books and re-reading those passages to memorize them. Studies have shown this to be an ineffective means of studying, writing the information down on flash cards and using those to study is a more effective method. When studying, it is also important not to overdo it. Studies have shown that studying one aspect of a subject at a time makes learning easier overall. “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it.” This age old saying actually bares some truth! In a study, half of the participants were told that they would be tested over the information they learned while the other half were told they would have to teach the information to a group of people. In the end, both groups were tested, and the group that thought they would have to teach the information scored higher. When you are expected to teach something, your brain naturally organizes the information in a more logical and coherent way, thus it can be effective to think about how you would teach the information to another person.
Most people hate practice tests, or find them tedious at the very least. However, practice tests have actually been shown to improve confidence, on average, which can have a positive impact on actual test taking. Not to mention, it can also help to identify areas you may need more practice in. Do you listen to music while you study? Some studies suggest that the average persons performance decreases if they listen to rhythmic music while studying, especially music with lyrics. Classical music, on the other hand, has been shown to improve overall performance. This may seem pretty obvious, but text and social media notifications have also been shown to impair studying.
