College Strategies

Lesson 4: ESS: Effective Study Strategies

Assigning yourself Homework

There are going to be plenty of assignments and projects you will have to do in college that will be graded. Those always have a priority sticker attached to them.

Nevertheless there are also even more assignments that are not graded; the so-called “homework”. Many students do not even bother with it, they feel like they do not have time after completing everything that has an actual deadline, so the first time they even start looking at the material is right before a test or an exam. Obviously that is not the smartest thing to do. There are suggested problems you have to do, just because they are not graded does not mean they are not important. In fact; they are graded! Don’t you get similar problems on your exams as assigned in class? So basically you need to do the assigned problems to be able to do well in the exam.

Putting it that way, homework gets an instant “priority label”. It is a more ‘long term’ priority, so if you have a major paper due the next day you will not bother with some exercises when the test is three weeks away. If you can at all though; it is very important to do at least one exercise a day; that way you stay on top of the material. One exercise does not have to take longer than 5-10 minutes. Given that time commitment for each course, you will be done doing one question in much less than an hour, and you are still on top of everything.

With regards to major projects and papers (this also counts for tests); starting the night before it is due is a guaranteed recipe for failure.

There was a girl; let’s call her Lisa, who would always start on her physics reports the night before they were due, mainly because she didn’t feel like it throughout the week, but also because they were not that long and it was not a problem getting finished. One time however, as she was writing, she noticed that she missed a vital piece of information. Without it she was not able to calculate anything and draw any conclusions. Her lab partner did not have the information either and both failed that report. They received a 30%.

Next time she started earlier. Now when Lisa discovered something was wrong with the data they still have enough time to go back and look at the experiment again. For that report they received an A. This is a true story, and I have known Lisa and many other Lisa’s a similar thing happened to. You will meet some Lisa’s as well in college, and they are usually smart students, but have poor time management skills.

With a lot of major projects or deadlines, you usually know far in advance. At least two weeks. If at some point (this has actually happened), you have two tests in one day and 5 things due for the same or different courses. You do not have a choice but to start preparing for it early. Schedule what you want to have finished by when, and stick to it! The biggest mistake made is not sticking to your own rules!

Example : You have two term tests in one day, a large paper due, a problem set due, and two lab reports due. The term tests are 20% each, the paper is 5%. The due date is two weeks away. What would be the best way to divide your time?

Term tests are the items that are worth the biggest chunk of your mark, so you will have to spend time on that accordingly. If you are lucky and one or both are easy topics, then obviously that will leave you more time for everything else. However; plan an hour each day for the first week where you will study for each test. In the second and last week increase that time, but by then hopefully you will have finished everything else!

One lab report will be due that you have not done the lab for yet, so you cannot work on that for the moment. First complete whatever costs the least amount of time; it will probably be a lab report and/or the problem set. Schedule it such that you have two days to complete those.

Work for an hour every day on your paper, and try to finish it within one week. If you need more time, then type for two hours a day straight and finish it in one week. It is crucial that you leave time in the last week to study for your tests, so you need to finish everything else before that. It will take an enormous weight off your shoulders. Generally, the actual day will be much less stressful than the time leading up to it, and it will be over before you know it.

First you have to make sure you are as prepared as you can ever be! So now after one week you only have to finish studying for the tests, and do one more lab report. Make sure the report is done (if possible) at least two days before the due date, so the last few days can be completely focused on your test material. If you adhere to these principles and prioritize, you will have no trouble no matter how large the workload is.

When you assign priorities however; you could have given your tests top priority and studied for those first. Then in the end though you would be reaching a crunch time where you would have to finish everything else. The stress would cause you to forget most of what you studied for those tests. The reason you only study an hour a day for the tests (or adjust that to your own capacities accordingly) two weeks in advance is because you will not be storing any of that in the short term memory you might need in the end. You are making yourself familiar with the material and storing in your long term memory. In the last week and the last two days you will have the opportunity and the time to focus on the more difficult things, and do a general review.

You have to assign yourself homework; the list of suggested problems is not going to solve itself, and you need to write down in your day planner when you want to have a certain set of exercises done. By giving yourself a deadline you are more likely to actually do it. A good way of planning this deadline is to see if the course has a tutorial; if it does often practice problems will be discussed.

You will get much more out of the tutorial if you have done the relevant problems and know where your weak spots are. You also have the opportunity to ask questions about those problems then, and take notes. So schedule your homework such that it should be done in time for your tutorial. If you are having a really stressful week (maybe as described above) at least pick one question and do it, so you know how you stand in the topic. When you see someone work out the problem it is so tempting to think “I can do that”, but on the exam reproducing the same thing without your own practice is impossible. Just looking at the answers is not going to give you the right answer eventually.

This also leads me to my final comment; if you have an answer book use it wisely; do not look at it before having worked out the entire problem. It is meant as a control, to see if you did it right, it is not meant to be looked at before attempting or before putting in a lot of effort. Just because you are not getting to the answer right away does not mean you should look at the solutions manual; not even for just a hint!! You will end up seeing the entire thing, and just copying it down is not going to bring you anywhere at all.

It is very important to stay on top of things; because it is much harder to catch up than to keep up!

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