Take Notes by Hand

Taking notes by hand actually cuts down the time needed to study. The muscle memory of writing out the physical letters improves your retention ability more than typing on a keyboard. Wouldn’t you prefer to remember it all the first time instead of reviewing it four times at the last minute? This lets you retain information far more effectively with comparatively little effort.

Taking notes by hand also lets you take free-form notes. This means that you can incorporate graphs, charts, and visuals into your notes to record material in a way that a word processor simply cannot accommodate.

Do Quick reviews everyday

Few people love the idea of putting in even more study time after a full day of school—but what if it meant never cramming for a test ever again? You might put in more time doing this over the course of several months or a year, but you’ll never notice if it’s just five or ten minutes per day.

It’s easy, too! At the end of the day, you’re not learning new concepts and trying to wrap your head around some new conundrum. You’re just reviewing familiar content in order to reinforce what’s already fresh in your memory. This is how to study the smart way, not the hard way. There will always be times when you need to study the hard way, but it won’t matter unless you train your brain to remember school material on a daily basis, one bit at a time.

Short daily reviews put it in the long-term memory banks rather than the short-term one
You’re paying money to be in school, right? Don’t just flush it all down the toilet after the test! Keep that information stored in your head so that you can call on it at a moment’s notice.

The trick is to cut down the time you need to invest all at once by drip-feeding the info into your brain at a steady pace. Even quick career programs require some methodical studying!

Use study groups only to quiz each other

People approach group study all wrong. They think that they can answer any question with the combined power of four or five brains. While that is (hopefully) true in the study group, it doesn’t hold up in a real test scenario. Do we write tests in groups? We do not; we write them individually! That means that you need to be able to call on that knowledge and comprehension as an individual. You simply can’t rely on groups to carry you through any program.

So why do people participate in ”study groups” so often? It’s social by nature and gives people a sense of security. Even if you feel overwhelmed by the material, people feel more comfortable knowing that they aren’t alone. This is still the wrong way to go about studying.

That’s why you need to do most of your studying in relative solitude. You need to cement that material in your own brain before joining up with other people.

Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to graduating from your quick career program!