I have exams this week, but have been ill for the last two or so, and haven't been studying as much as I should have been, so I'm basically going to be spending the next two days cramming, and I was wondering, what memory tricks and study tips does mene have for me?

This thread is going to be productive procrastination at its finest.

How do you study for exams? Are you an organised note taker and flashcard maker, or are you more like I was in High School, making almost everything up on the fly?

ALL THE FLASHCARDS!

That's how I got through grad school - I'd read through the material so that I could identify the important points, read through it again while copying those points onto flashcards, then flip through the cards dozens of times until it was memorized.

The process of writing things out always helped me learn. Making flashcards was 90% of the battle. Once I took the time to actually write out the words, I was so much more likely to remember them. It was just incredibly time consuming.

I remember last year when I was studying classics I wrote my notes on post-its and stuck them all over my wall like so...



It worked, too. I should do something similar for my Kanji study, but it takes so long...

Study in small chunks. According to my Psych 101 professor, some study was done that found that people who read chunks of text best remembered the first and last things they read, with the stuff in the middle getting hazy. So if you cut down your chunks to be smaller, you therefore are more likely to remember more stuff. So read a few paragraphs, then look away for a moment. No huge breaks, just maybe a potty break, get a drink, check facebook. Stay away from something too distracting, like tumblr, though. What I do is just stop every time I start to feel like the words are no longer making sense and are just... going in one eye and out the other?

Another tip is to use the fact that your sense of smell is the strongest one tied to memory. Find some perfume or lotion you rarely wear, put it on while you're studying, then wear it again the day of the exams. Smelling it will put you back into the mindset you were in while studying and can help you remember.

And finally, this site is excellent background noise to help with focus. I recommend putting it on brown with an oscillation. It'll help keep other noises from distracting you and it'll quiet down your background thoughts so those don't distract you either.

Do not do massive last minute study. You will never remember much that way. Record all of the important information that will be on a test. Record the information in the way for best memorization for you. For me, I record information in poetry/haiku. The feeling is grand as I remember scientific facts thanks to memorized haiku.

That's a really interesting technique, acobjum! I've never heard of people doing that before, but now I have no clue why I haven't since it makes sense.

I don't know how helpful it would be for things other than just lists, but I use a memory palace if I can. Or some other kind of mnemonic device where I link two things that are similar and make one ridiculous.
I don't have to do much studying for exams so I can't relate that way.
The site I use to study kanji uses mnemonics all over the place.
Like for this kanji: 上
It means up/above.
The on'yomi they give is じょう.
So in order to remember the meaning and the on'yomi reading, they give you this

The toe sticking up above the ground is just a little thing... You go up to poke it and then you realize that the toe actually belongs to Joseph (じょう) Stalin. Joe doesn't like people messing with his toes, so you slowly back away.

Omfg, I know that kanji, but that is the most fabulous thing I have ever read for it. I just remember that it's pointing up.

What I do, is I take each unit or section, and I write down only the important/key points from all my notes from that unit onto one or two separate pages. Or in other words, study notes. By the time you've done this for all the sections/units, you've only got maybe 10 pages to study from, which seems a lot less intimidating.

Or, if you're a visual learner like myself, I like to colour code things. For example, in my kinesiology class, we had to memorize so many bones and their bone markings. I took diagrams of each bone, labelled it, and coloured each part.

Just a couple tips that might help you, they helped me. :)

Originally Posted by Bearzy

I remember last year when I was studying classics I wrote my notes on post-its and stuck them all over my wall like so...



It worked, too. I should do something similar for my Kanji study, but it takes so long...

I just wanted to say: I SEE MISS A YOU ARE A MISS A FAN?
[I'm done now. xDD]
That is a really cool studying method. I always crammed at the last minute. Made decent scores.

Unfortunately I never had to study throughout high school, so when I reached college and there was so much more material with so much less time to cover it all, I found my brain struggling to hold it all in. I am very disorganized by nature, but that is a habit you just have to break if you want to develop good study habits. Take good notes and look over them periodically whenever you get the chance. Make flash cards if it helps you. I like to use different colored pens and draw pictures in my notes. It helps me organize on the page and in my brain, and everything seems easier to remember when it has a visual representation! It's easy to forget this, but the end goal of your classes is not so much to get good grades as it is to actually learn things, and you don't learn anything by simply cramming right before the test.

Cherry, your suggestions are interesting! I think the spacing idea and the primacy-recency effect come from Ebbinghaus, though I've never really thought to apply it to studying for some reason. Taking breaks makes a lot more sense in light of that! The perfume idea is interesting too. The theory behind it would be that since your brain would store the information you study along with the sensory/environmental information, priming it with the latter would help you retrieve the former. It's definitely worth a try, but I wouldn't count on it being especially helpful without good study habits.

Originally Posted by Pistachio_Moustache

I just wanted to say: I SEE MISS A YOU ARE A MISS A FAN?
[I'm done now. xDD]
That is a really cool studying method. I always crammed at the last minute. Made decent scores.

I am! Miss A are so good, my favourite song is I Don't Need a Man. It's super catchy.

Also you guys have some of the best suggestions. I really need to invest in some cool coloured pens.

I like Bad Girl Good Girl. It's so catchy!
I should check out the song you said. Maybe I'll like it! :D
[I only have coloured pens for work. I love me some coloured pens. xD]

Originally Posted by Cherry Who?

Another tip is to use the fact that your sense of smell is the strongest one tied to memory. Find some perfume or lotion you rarely wear, put it on while you're studying, then wear it again the day of the exams. Smelling it will put you back into the mindset you were in while studying and can help you remember.

That is a very interesting idea! I've also heard that chewing gum can help you focus better...

For studying vocabulary words for languages and stuff I made flash cards. Other than that I didn't really use them much. I would just look over my notes and maybe jot down alternative notes on another page that simplified the ideas. For the stuff I already knew, I only jotted down the minimum to help me remember and for the stuff I didn't really understand, I would make more detailed notes. Basically I made my own review sheets that allowed me to more easily cover everything quickly. So in the end I condensed maybe a chapter of coursework (maybe 10 pages of notes?) into two pages. The action of writing the information down helped me to remember it better and then I had the shorter review sheets to look over before the test for one last-minute refresher.

I usually didn't study for exams more than a day or two in advance really. At the last minute my mind set is usually "either I know this by now or I don't". You can sometimes really confuse yourself at the last minute by freaking out and trying to cram everything.