Hello everyone!
As we near the end of September, we get farther into the school routine and closer to finals *gasp*. I’ve personally already had lots of tests and assignments, but I’ve still been working on fine-tuning my study routine for each class. I wanted to share my current study tips that have been helping me get good grades while also balancing my long list of random activities/extracurriculars, so here you go!
- Quizlet. That’s it. I’ll never stop advocating for Quizlet because it’s a life saver for anything you need to memorize.
- Making my own study guides – I usually do this for history classes and English classes, but I’ve done it for math too. Write about all the important concepts/people/dates/etc. and then when you’re done, use it to quiz yourself. It also helps if you give it to a friend or parent and have them quiz you.
- Rewriting notes – I never used to do this because I thought it was a waste of time, but it’s really worked for me recently. In my AP Euro class, my teacher usually just does lectures and he’s a super fast talker, so we’re always scrambling to write notes. This results in very messy notes, so a studying method I’ve used has been to rewrite the notes neater since it helps me remember the information as I’m writing it all again, but it also gives me neater notes to study off of when I’m done.
- Reading the textbook after lectures in class – People often say to read the textbook before covering the topics in class, but I think depending on the subject, reading it after might be more beneficial. My teachers tend to give a more general overview of topics in class, breaking them down to make sense. Textbooks have all the details and give a lot more specific information; once your teacher has outlined a lesson and you understand the gist, read the textbook section to get a deeper understanding and reinforce what you learned.
- Redoing homework/finding practice material – This is mainly for math, but you can do it for any subject. I like to redo any math problems I had trouble with on homework assignments throughout the chapter to make sure I could get them right if they were on a test. For other subjects, I’ll usually ask my teacher for practice material or find practice tests online (especially for books in English- look up tests!!).
Once you start enforcing good study habits, they’ll become natural. Carving out extra time to study on top of actual homework can feel like wayyyy too much school in a day, but I promise it’s worth it. I’m still working on getting better study habits myself- it’s all a long journey. Good luck with your studying and any tests coming up, you got this!
-Brooke
adventures of a typical high school student 