In this blog post we will focus on the absorption phase of the study routine. It involves what we typically understand as studying.
The first thing that needs to be discussed is how to muster up the courage to actually study. What I always tell my student is to start slowly. Your first goal is to sit at a desk with the material that you wish to study. Begin by turning the pages of the book and going to the first page of whatever it is you want to review. Commit to just reading for one minute. If after you read for a minute you don’t feel like reading further, just commit to sitting at the desk. Actually this is the only commitment that is required for you. If you have committed to an hour long study session you must sit at the desk for that duration of time. What you will find is that in order to alleviate boredom, you will begin to start reading the material. This will build momentum and you will find that you will move from 1 minute of reading to 5 minutes and so forth. You repeat this process for each study session until studying becomes your routine.
Once you’ve built your study routine, then you must focus on how to get the most out of your study session. Simply reading the material is not enough. The sad reality is that we forget most of what we read. However we can retain a bit more by interacting with what we read. When reading, read for understanding on your first read through. It is in this first read that you want to get the gist of what the author is saying. On your second read you want to interact with the material, by making notes in your own words and making jottings in the text as you read (if the text has been rented from your school then ignore this instruction). Once this is complete and you have done everything in your power to understand the material, then it’s time to close the book and try and summarise the main points of the content that you read. The focus here should not be regurgitation but you should try to summarize in your own words what you understood from the content that you read.
The final step is to create a one page concept diagram. This will include the main points of the content and how they are connected. It is important to add colours in your diagram. This can be referred to in the future to give you a snapshot of the underlying concept.
Within any discipline there exist jargon specific to that discipline. It is important to put these unfamiliar words to memory along with their definitions. This can be done with the use of flash cards that can be reviewed repeatedly to ensure that these new words become embedded in your pre-existing vocabulary.
Finally, what you want to do is practice interleaving where you review the content that you studied in a particular session about three days later and continue revisiting the material in two or three day intervals. This will cause the content to be cemented in your mind and will cause you to be far more familiar with it.
Once you are familiar with the content – to really make it stick – you must practice retrieving it by quizzing yourself. It is here that output becomes important and this will be the focus of the next blog post.
Unleashing your true academic potential 