Throughout my ‘student life’, which I am still living
currently, I’ve never had stable academic performance. If you plot my Percentage VS Time(in years) graph, it will appear as good as a randomly drawn zigzag
line. But what matters is I’ve survived and surely will continue to.
There are many batch mates, seniors and juniors who have
been just awesome in their performance and are quiet consistent too. I’ve
tried to be like them, well who wouldn’t want to right? But thinking like that
was my undoing. I've come to a realisation that being inspired and motivated by
someone is fine, but trying to be them and following what they do isn’t the
best way to go about it. There are many people who try to imitate or be someone
else, sometimes it’s rewarding in some way or the other, but being your true
self, being authentic, being original, that’s what counts! Let me tell you
about a standard or rather a basic procedure a student should follow and then
ill tell you about how I go about it.(I’m not the perfect student myself,being an engineering student, its all about ‘Jugaads’)
I do not remember from where I got this info, It maybe some
article online or some TED talk from where I’ve collected some points and
written it down. The topic is “study less, study smart”. It says that typically
a student can concentrate fully on something for around 25 minutes. So if you
plot a graph of Efficiency VS Time (in minutes), you’ll see a drop in your
efficiency to understand the thing you’re reading after around 25 minutes time.
So if you continue beyond this 25 minute mark, you would just be reading and
not actually following and not understanding it enough to remember the concepts or whatever
it is you are reading.
Now, how do you tackle this problem? Seems kind of obvious right?
You just stop studying hehe. Well yes,
you do stop studying but then it requires you to be back at your study table or
study area to continue from where you had stopped previously. It means you need
to take a break of around 5-10 minutes to do something fun, get your mind of
the studies, but with a promise that you’ll be back to your books or notes
soon. The idea is to celebrate and treat yourself for your effective study time
and further to refresh your mind for the remaining part of the study. So what
we observe in the efficiency VS time graph is a small drop, a 5 minutes break
and then continuation of the efficiency graph as before or maybe at a lower level, depending on how much effective fun you have hahaha.
Additionally I’ve written about two more important things,
first being the concept of SQ3R. This pneumonic simply means: Survey, Question,
Read, Recite and Review. It tells you about how a student needs to approach a
study material and should follow that exact order. Second is the importance of
proper sleep. We as engineers do a lot of procrastination and end up staying up
late nights before exams and then feel sleepy while answering the paper, and
surely it’s not the best way to approach an examination. In relation to the above
mentioned theory, we are studying effectively for a very less time during late
nights. Hence we find ourselves with very less concentration power in the
morning for the paper (the fear does help us boost the concentration XD but that’s
because we have no other choice but to store as much as we can in the last
minutes before the papers).
Now let us consider my approach towards this problem. It
includes the SQ3R approach plus something I call “intentional procrastination”.
Our engineering studies require us to practice drawing graphs, diagrams,
equations, and a lot of solving. From the SQ3R approach I first take the S,
where I go through and try to understand what I need to learn, then I go to Q, here I do not ask
questions to myself or generate questions expected from the students as per the
theory, but I simply refer the past Q papers and write them down at one place
with the frequency at which they have been repeated denoted by a star mark. In engineering
we have papers in form of modules which further helps in categorising these questions.
Then I go through d questions and get a grip of what I am to learn from the already
surveyed notes. Then I read it again properly, now with respect to only the
questions I’ve written down. Hence now I have a good understanding of the lesson
or chapter. Next step is writing stuff, the things I’ve mentioned above. The numerical
can be done from the question papers later when you are done with the theory or
concepts.
By intentional procrastination it means that I do procrastinate but
in a planned manner. We usually have gaps between our semester papers of some 3 to 4
days. So before the whole semester exams season starts, I do the S and Q part of at least 2
modules of each subject. So when those 3 to 4 days gaps come, I’m ready for the
remaining part. Hence I manage to complete the portion in time without the need
to stay up late nights beyond my capacity.
Well, I’m not the best person to take advice from, nor am I qualified
to teach you how to study, i just wanted you to know how I approach exams. The advantages of the above approach are proper sleep, better grip of the topics because
of multiple surveys of the chapters and decent marks (above average). The disadvantages
are that I start finding subjects interesting and then I realise that the exams
are in 2 days and then I’ll never be studying it further, kind of sad, but then
I further realise that I have to concentrate and follow the same procedure for the next
paper hehe.
