When I was in high school, I relied on flashcards to study. In 10th grade, I took a History class where my teacher, Ms. M. Vanderkooy, taught us how to write effective notes. She taught us how to incorporate definitions, examples, and fun facts. She taught us how to create comprehensive notes that can be easily studied from.
I held onto this skill, and in University, when I learned that flashcards alone were ineffective, I brought it out. Still, it wasn’t until a third year Genetic Engineering course that I really used this skill to study.
My instructor, Professor. V. Grbic repeatedly encouraged the class to “play the game.” Initially, I didn’t understand what it meant and treated it as one of those ‘things’ that teachers like to say. She was very insistent on encouraging us to engage with the course content. For this course, that meant drawing up transgenes and the elements associated with them. This way, we could really understand how and why the different elements go together.
This one encouragement changed the way that I studied. Instead of writing notes and simply reading them over, I treated them as an outline and created my own practice questions. I began using the whiteboards on campus to study for EVERYTHING.
I went through practice questions on the whiteboard, I drew out diagrams on the whiteboard, I practiced calculations on the whiteboard.
Her encouragements pushed me to actively construct meaning by writing out processes and connecting them to each other. Essentially, I took my note-taking skill and used it as the foundation for “playing the game.”
More often than not, this involved sitting down with my friends and discussing why the lesson material made sense by making connections between different concepts. By studying with friends, we could ask questions and bounce theories off each other. We could work together to make sense of the lesson content to ensure we weren’t just memorizing information, but understanding it. And of course, we USED THE WHITEBOARD!!!!
To summarize, these experiences have shaped the way that I study. I continue to engage with lesson content in a way that really cements the concepts into my head. I am so grateful for the influence that Mrs. Vanderkooy and Professor. Grbic had on me, and I have created a 5-part guide to share that influence. Hopefully I can also help people learn “How to Study” :):)
**may need to check spam folder for subscription link**
Lua's World 