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Ideas on "how to study" in the context of an educational environment fail on the outset because that environment is often the greatest influence that you really

Ideas on "how to study" in the context of an educational environment fail on the outset because that environment is often the greatest influence that you really can't control. Studying ability often becomes a factor of prior exposure, time availability, fluid intelligence, mental stability, and a bunch of other random factors that all need to align reasonably well. For a small fraction of the population, these things will align. For any given person, they're not going to align all that well. For some people, they're not going to align well at all, and they may not make it. What ends up happening is that the person can't truly properly keep up, so they end up surviving instead. And they may succeed in doing just that, but learning will be damaged. Most studying techniques fall short because they do not properly account for this survival mode and are not really the techniques that help someone, well, survive. Proper learning is not rushed and hyper competitive, but what the average student encounters is. Taking very dense notes, for instance, can easily backfire if it takes too much time and if it's not truly needed. Knowing what to learn, how to learn it, what not to learn, etc., are all separate skills, and not everyone has them. And it's not something that can easily be summarized because it's more of a skill than a piece of knowledge, and most of it comes down to your personal strengths as well as weaknesses. There are plenty of successful students who have broken all of these rules and I'm sure we all know a few.

dhimes 10y ago
Despite the fact that you can't control the environment there are definitely things you can do to deal with that environment. The environment isn't random; in fact, it's been honed for quite some time. You are quite correct that students have individual styles- strengths and weaknesses. What works for me won't work for you and vice versa. Moreover, what works for me with math won't work for me with psychology. But there are things that are more valuable to do than other things simply because of the way brains work. Rewriting notes, for example, is a waste of time. Re-organizing notes, however, is priceless. This is one professor doing his best to help, and I appreciate that. But there is better information out there.
- projektir 10y ago
  > Despite the fact that you can't control the environment there are definitely things you can do to deal with that environment. That's not really how things like this work. Competitive, live-or-die environments will always have a group that will not be able to survive those environments. It's in the definition. If you create an environment which requires a near-perfect alignment of factors, there will be many people who do not have that alignment and those people will be at risk. > You are quite correct that students have individual styles- strengths and weaknesses. And some people have more weaknesses than strengths. For those people to survive, they need to have access to something other people do not, which is unlikely. Professors should stop trying to help, and should instead ask struggling students, as well as students who used to be struggling but stopped, and vice versa. But I've never really seen anyone listen to a struggling student, they're usually just labeled lazy and ignored. Advice on studying coming from people who likely had very little issues with it due to the good alignment of factors is near-useless to people who do not have such an alignment. It's much easier to do your homework every time when you can quickly understand the material due to prior exposure or good fluid intelligence. It's a different story when it takes you 5 hours to solve problem #1 and there are 10 total. Something's gotta give. Advice on how to study better is not needed. Studying better requires time, a nurturing environment, time, good pedagogy and/or structure, and time. It is known, it's just not done, because it's not the priority. There are techniques, yes, and different approaches, but they themselves require time to figure out, and time can smooth over such problems. When you take away time from people, you must admit the goal is less about teaching people something and more about trying to figure out who to toss aside. And you will notice also that in such an environment, the students can get better at studying all they want, and the filter will just get more stringent and narrow. The problem is the environment. If you ignore the environment, all you will see is better and better coping strategies combined with a mysterious lack of improvement of the overall situation. And this is coming from someone who had it pretty all right compared to some people I knew.
  - mbarq 10y ago
    Really appreciate your self awareness. I come from a lower-middle class family. I sleep on a couch in a small crowded house with a 3y/o niece constantly screaming at the top of her lungs. The libraries near me are all really just rec-centers, my uni is a 70min bus ride away, so having a place to just "study" is incredibly difficult. I still manage, but I can only imagine what having one's own roon must be like and the time saved from travelling to and from school...such is life. Thanks for the reply, puts into words a lot of what I've been thinking about lately.
sjg007 10y ago
Right but ask for help and attend office hours.
cJ0th 10y ago
> Proper learning is not rushed and hyper competitive, but what the average student encounters is. Exactly. Unfortunately, I was way too idealistic during my studies. I was a "real" learner, meaning I had no problems actually explaining concepts to my fellow students. But unlike them (who often couldn't) I didn't focus my energy on "hacking" the GPA. I once witnessed a fellow student getting almost full points on a task for simply writing down a only slightly related exercise he memorized (including numbers not mentioned in the actual task!). I wouldn't have thought of that! Another time I lost points for using my own words to give an answer. I asked the TA how what I wrote was wrong. She said it was actually correct but not noted in the sample solution and thus: no points. Naturally, as a result of things like these my GPA is pretty mediocre now which makes job hunting a pain. :(
- tomsmeding 10y ago
  That sounds more like a bad school (/ bad teachers) than a bad study attitude, to be honest.
mirekrusin 10y ago
I have this random thought that there's something very important and often overseen in what you've said: "(...) knowing (...) what not to learn (...)". We live in hyper-information times where there are multiple options for pretty much everything. This often leads to too-much-choice-paralysis. Learning how to deal with it may be very important skill. For new programmers "simple" things like the choice of programming language, framework, style, whatever - can be overwhelming. It seems to me that often people go for dogmatism as a "tool" of choice for fighting over-information. Learning how to evaluate things quickly, making a choice without falling into dogmatism hole, being open to other ideas and above all making steady progress are becoming, imho, essential skills.
bordercases 10y ago
Sounds like there is a complimentary skillset involved that takes bounded rationality into account.

dhimes 10y ago

Despite the fact that you can't control the environment there are definitely things you can do to deal with that environment. The environment isn't random; in fact, it's been honed for quite some time. You are quite correct that students have individual styles- strengths and weaknesses. What works for me won't work for you and vice versa. Moreover, what works for me with math won't work for me with psychology. But there are things that are more valuable to do than other things simply because of the way brains work. Rewriting notes, for example, is a waste of time. Re-organizing notes, however, is priceless. This is one professor doing his best to help, and I appreciate that. But there is better information out there.

projektir 10y ago
> Despite the fact that you can't control the environment there are definitely things you can do to deal with that environment. That's not really how things like this work. Competitive, live-or-die environments will always have a group that will not be able to survive those environments. It's in the definition. If you create an environment which requires a near-perfect alignment of factors, there will be many people who do not have that alignment and those people will be at risk. > You are quite correct that students have individual styles- strengths and weaknesses. And some people have more weaknesses than strengths. For those people to survive, they need to have access to something other people do not, which is unlikely. Professors should stop trying to help, and should instead ask struggling students, as well as students who used to be struggling but stopped, and vice versa. But I've never really seen anyone listen to a struggling student, they're usually just labeled lazy and ignored. Advice on studying coming from people who likely had very little issues with it due to the good alignment of factors is near-useless to people who do not have such an alignment. It's much easier to do your homework every time when you can quickly understand the material due to prior exposure or good fluid intelligence. It's a different story when it takes you 5 hours to solve problem #1 and there are 10 total. Something's gotta give. Advice on how to study better is not needed. Studying better requires time, a nurturing environment, time, good pedagogy and/or structure, and time. It is known, it's just not done, because it's not the priority. There are techniques, yes, and different approaches, but they themselves require time to figure out, and time can smooth over such problems. When you take away time from people, you must admit the goal is less about teaching people something and more about trying to figure out who to toss aside. And you will notice also that in such an environment, the students can get better at studying all they want, and the filter will just get more stringent and narrow. The problem is the environment. If you ignore the environment, all you will see is better and better coping strategies combined with a mysterious lack of improvement of the overall situation. And this is coming from someone who had it pretty all right compared to some people I knew.
- mbarq 10y ago
  Really appreciate your self awareness. I come from a lower-middle class family. I sleep on a couch in a small crowded house with a 3y/o niece constantly screaming at the top of her lungs. The libraries near me are all really just rec-centers, my uni is a 70min bus ride away, so having a place to just "study" is incredibly difficult. I still manage, but I can only imagine what having one's own roon must be like and the time saved from travelling to and from school...such is life. Thanks for the reply, puts into words a lot of what I've been thinking about lately.

sjg007 10y ago

Right but ask for help and attend office hours.

cJ0th 10y ago

> Proper learning is not rushed and hyper competitive, but what the average student encounters is. Exactly. Unfortunately, I was way too idealistic during my studies. I was a "real" learner, meaning I had no problems actually explaining concepts to my fellow students. But unlike them (who often couldn't) I didn't focus my energy on "hacking" the GPA. I once witnessed a fellow student getting almost full points on a task for simply writing down a only slightly related exercise he memorized (including numbers not mentioned in the actual task!). I wouldn't have thought of that! Another time I lost points for using my own words to give an answer. I asked the TA how what I wrote was wrong. She said it was actually correct but not noted in the sample solution and thus: no points. Naturally, as a result of things like these my GPA is pretty mediocre now which makes job hunting a pain. :(

tomsmeding 10y ago
That sounds more like a bad school (/ bad teachers) than a bad study attitude, to be honest.

mirekrusin 10y ago

I have this random thought that there's something very important and often overseen in what you've said: "(...) knowing (...) what not to learn (...)". We live in hyper-information times where there are multiple options for pretty much everything. This often leads to too-much-choice-paralysis. Learning how to deal with it may be very important skill. For new programmers "simple" things like the choice of programming language, framework, style, whatever - can be overwhelming. It seems to me that often people go for dogmatism as a "tool" of choice for fighting over-information. Learning how to evaluate things quickly, making a choice without falling into dogmatism hole, being open to other ideas and above all making steady progress are becoming, imho, essential skills.

bordercases 10y ago

Sounds like there is a complimentary skillset involved that takes bounded rationality into account.