Most Effective Study Tips: How I graduated Summa Cum Laude
Jamila Musayeva
Summary
The speaker, a Summa Cum Laude graduate and teacher, shares ten practical study tips focused on understanding personal learning styles, leveraging course materials, and optimizing one's physical and mental state to achieve academic excellence by studying efficiently rather than just for long hours.
Key Takeaways
- Identify Learning Channel: Determine your primary medium for information assimilation (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic/hands-on) to adapt study techniques for faster and better understanding. 4:49
- Leverage Study Guides & Presentations: Print out study guides or "schemes of work" provided by professors to understand learning objectives and use them for exam preparation; similarly, print presentation slides (preferably 6-9 slides per page) to mentally reduce perceived revision load and consolidate notes. 7:16 10:58
- Strategic Note-Taking: Print lecture presentations before class to take notes directly on them, using blank spaces or the back of pages; handwrite notes for technical subjects with graphs/formulas, but type notes for narrative-heavy, fast-paced lectures like history or international relations, then print and attach them to slides. 12:00 13:06
- Combat Forgetting Curve: Revise new information within 24 hours to retain up to 80% of it, and then again within a week to achieve nearly 100% retention, saving significant effort. 14:09 14:39
- Master Skimming & Sleep Learning: Learn to skim academic articles/journals (read intro, first/last lines of paragraphs, conclusion) to quickly grasp main ideas, but avoid this for technical subjects where every detail matters; for memorizing new skills or information like poems or foreign languages, try "sleep learning" by having the material read to you in a half-asleep state, especially through audio. 16:08 18:41
- Prioritize Sleep & Environment: Avoid pulling all-nighters, especially consecutive ones before exams, as sleep deprivation significantly impairs concentration and can lead to trivial mistakes; cultivate a stimulating study environment that suits your focus needs, whether it's a clean, minimalist desk, studying alone, or in a quiet public space where others are also working. 20:17 21:52
- Optimize Diet for Focus: Aim to study on an empty stomach to maximize concentration, as eating diverts blood flow to digestion, causing sleepiness; avoid snacking while studying and instead take dedicated breaks for proper meals, away from your study area, to maintain focus. 23:58
