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How To Become A Straight

Straight-A students focus their efforts in short, intense bursts of work rather than long stretches of low-intensity work. They schedule their time efficiently using calendars and to-do lists. The document provides tips for managing time effectively in 5 minutes a day by planning tasks on a calendar and list. It also gives 5 plans for declaring war on procrastination, such as keeping a work progress journal and building routines. Finally, it recommends studying early and choosing focused locations to be most productive.

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Rajsukh Mohanty
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100% found this document useful (2 votes)
249 views16 pages

How To Become A Straight

Straight-A students focus their efforts in short, intense bursts of work rather than long stretches of low-intensity work. They schedule their time efficiently using calendars and to-do lists. The document provides tips for managing time effectively in 5 minutes a day by planning tasks on a calendar and list. It also gives 5 plans for declaring war on procrastination, such as keeping a work progress journal and building routines. Finally, it recommends studying early and choosing focused locations to be most productive.

Uploaded by

Rajsukh Mohanty
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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HOW TO BECOME A STRAIGHT-A STUDENT

By Cal Newport (C.S. professor at Georgetown


University)

PART 1- STUDY BASICS


 Straight-A students fear pseudo-work.
 One skill, most important in becoming a straight-A student is: Ability to get work done
quickly with a minimum of wasted effort.
 How to achieve this goal? – TIMING is a big part of the solution.
 Gaining efficiency by compressing work into focus bursts.
 Replacing long, low-intensity stretches of work with a small number of short, high-
intensity sessions.

Simple formula: WORK ACCOMPLISHED = TIME SPENT * INTENSITY OF FOCUS

 Not the whole story behind their success (straight-A students). What to actually do in
these short bursts is also crucial- technique is just as important as timing.
 How to accomplish this transformation? - Overcome your urge to procrastinate, choose
the right locations, times of day, and durations to study. Because, scheduling your work
is meaningless if you don’t actually work in the time you set aside which requires self
motivation.

Step 1: Manage Your Time in Five Minutes a Day (should meet the following criteria)
1. Requires no more than five to ten minutes of effort in a single twenty-four-hour period.
2. Doesn’t force an unchangeable minute-by-minute schedule on your day.
3. Helps you remember, plan, and complete important tasks before the very last moment.
4. Can be quickly restarted after periods of neglect.

What You Need?


1. A calendar (something that you can reference every morning that has enough space to
record at least a dozen items for each day).
2. A list (some piece of writing material that you have to carry around with you to update
throughout the day).

The Basic Idea (in three easy steps):


(1) Jot down new tasks and assignments on your list during the day.
(2) Next morning, transfer these new items from your list onto your calendar.
(3) Then take a couple of minutes to plan your day.

Update Your Calendar Each Morning (serious time management thinking skills
required):
1. Record all of your to-dos and deadlines on a calendar which becomes your master schedule.
Each morning figure out what you should try to finish that day and jot it down on your list in the
“today’s schedule” section. Throughout the day, when you encounter a new-to-do/deadline put
it in the list in the “things to remember section”. Next morning transfer the new stuff from your
list onto your calender And we’re back where we started.
2. Don’t be tempted to copy all of the tasks from your calendar into your list which you can
never accomplish. Simply move the remaining items onto the calendar entries for future dates.
3. Do instead: Be honest and reasonable about how long things really take and then, label each
of your to-dos for the day with a specific time period during which you are going to complete it.
Don’t plan to read two hundred pages in one hour. Group many little tasks (errands that take
less than ten minutes) into one big block and leave plenty of time for breaks. Give yourself an
hour for meals not just twenty minutes. If possible end your day at an appropriate hour; don’t
try to fit in work right up until sleep time because you need to be able to unwind and relax.
4. In general—though it may seem counterintuitive—be pessimistic (tending to see the worst
aspect of things). The equation is simple: If you overestimate your free time (which is the main
reason for breaking down you to-dos into time slots), then you are likely to put off work until
it’s too late.

Use the List During the Day:


1. In general, if you’re completing most of what’s on your list at least five days out of seven,
then you’re as productive as any student realistically needs to be.
2. During the day when you encounter new to-dos and deadlines, jot down a quick reminder on
your list, in the Things to Remember column. Tomorrow morning when you do your only time-
management thinking for the day, see the reminder and record the appropriate steps in your
calendar. Because of your list, the deadline will not be lost. It will be scheduled.

Restarting After a Period of Neglect:


1. You can successfully follow any time-management system without interruption for longer
than two months (which happens during the few days following a really busy period) which is
totally normal. Don’t fear these occasions, or let them make you feel like a failure as, these
lapses temporary.
2. If you skip a few days, all you need to do upon restarting is to dump all the to-dos and
deadlines free floating in your mind onto a sheet of paper and then push these back onto your
calendar for future dates.

Step 2: Declare War on Procrastination


Without some control over your schedule, you cannot be a happy and successful student—no
matter how good are your intentions. Follow these five anti-procrastination battle plans which
are not theoretical but, exhaustively used by real students to beat down procrastination again
and again.

Procrastination Battle Plan #1: Keep a work progress journal:


1. Keep a work progress journal (cheap spiral notebook) near your calendar. Each morning,
when you work out your schedule for the day, quickly jot down in the notebook the date and
the most important tasks that you are scheduled to get done. At the end of the day, jot down
all of the tasks which you have completed. If you failed to complete some tasks, record them
along with a quick explanation.
2. It might be easy to tell yourself a few weak excuses for putting off tedious assignments but,
after seeing all of those excuses pile up in your journal, there will be no escape from reality and
their foolishness will be exposed (which is especially true if you continue to delay the same task
day after day): You are being lazy! Your ego won’t like this truth, so it will kick-start your
motivation in an effort to avoid it.

Procrastination Battle Plan #2: Feed the Machine: Low energy breeds procrastination.
1. Drink water constantly. Hydration increases your energy, masks boredom-induced food
cravings, and staves off sleepiness. Don’t worry about the inevitable side effect of so much
drinking, as “Frequent bathroom trips keep you awake.”
2. Monitor your caffeine intake carefully. While a caffeinated beverage can heighten your
concentration, too much caffeine in a short period will make you jumpy and unfocused. If
you’re a coffee drinker, start off with a strong brew to jump-start your mind, but switch to
decaf, tea, or just water for the next hour or two before returning to another strong drink.
3. Treat food as a source of energy, not satisfaction. Try vegetables, fruit, anything whole
grain, lean proteins, peanuts, or natural granola bars. Refined carbohydrates, such as sugar and
white flour, will provide only a quick energy rush followed immediately by a damaging energy
drain and increased appetite. If you follow rule one, your frequent water consumption will dull
the cravings for specific foods, making it much easier to stick with healthier fare.
4. Don’t skip meals. Snacks alone are not enough to fuel your mind for long periods. Hunger,
and the corresponding low blood sugar, will rob you of your ability to concentrate and set you
up to succumb to procrastination. So keep your meals regular even on the busiest of days. If
you’re pressed for time, eat fast. Grab a sandwich from a less-populated dining hall and sit
alone, or bring part of the meal back to your study location.

Procrastination Battle Plan #3: Make an event out of the worst tasks:
1. Find an out-of-the-way restaurant, coffee shop, or bookstore café and set a time to bring
your work there.
2. As always, the hardest part is beginning. But once you start slogging through your
assignment, the pain of the horrible tasks, thoughts of which can send chills down your spine
will slip away, you will hit your stride, and before you know it, your ride will have arrived and
that once terrifying task will be safely completed.

Procrastination Battle Plan #4: Build a routine:


1.Build a routine (out of every free hour) in which you use the same reserved time slot each
week/weekday to do the same thing, with the goal of transforming slices of work into a habit,
something you no longer have to convince yourself to do.
2. This simple good habit can greatly reduce the effort required to launch a productive day.

Procrastination Battle Plan #5: Choose your hard days:


1. Hard days are unavoidable but controllable.
2. Plan them in advance(to reduce their negative impact)and don’t wait until the deadlines are
so close that you’re caught off guard by this sudden burst of intensity and have no choice but to
buckle down. Instead, scout out one or two days to preemptively designate as “hard.”
3. Try to plan relaxing, nonacademic activities immediately before and after these days to ease
their impact. Prepare yourself mentally or it would be embarrassing, after all, to talk up your
upcoming hard day, garnering sympathy and support from friends, and then be discovered that
afternoon, still in your boxers, experimenting with the use of your toes as an alternative to your
missing remote control.

Step 3: Choose When, Where, and How Long


The little things count. The right answers to these questions will boost your productivity,
allowing you to squeeze more work out of even less time. The wrong answers will slow you
down and make this process more difficult than it needs to be.

QUESTION: When is the best time to study?

ANSWER: Early.
1. Don’t fear a fractured schedule in which there are a few continuous stretches of free time in
the morning and afternoon. Bring your materials with you throughout the day, and mentally
prepare yourself to fill in any small patches of free time with productive work within seconds.
2. Avoid your dorm room or other public places as much as possible during the day to separate
your work mind-set from your relaxation mind-set and, to not let a potentially productive work
period slip away at the expense of a mundane conversation.
3. Remember: “Work hard, play hard” is always better than “Work kind of hard, play kind of
hard.” By taking advantage of daytime study pockets, you’re freeing up valuable nighttime
hours to go out and have the sort of fun that defines the college experience.

QUESTION: Where should you study?

ANSWER: In isolation.
1. You need multiple locations for two reasons. First, it’s nice to always know of a nearby
hidden study spot (isolation of which is important to shield you from distraction)—small
libraries in the buildings of student organizations, a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, or the local
public library are all potential concentration gold mines.
2. Second, changing locations prevents you from burning out at any one place.
3. If you give the little procrastination devil on your shoulder (who is an incredible salesman)
even a glimpse of an alternative to your work, then he will close the deal. To neutralize this
devil, isolate him. Don’t let him see your couch, the cute girls tossing Frisbees on the quad, or
your friends chatting in your dorm room lounge. These mind games are not trite. Don’t
underestimate the importance of psychology in becoming an effective student.

QUESTION: How long should you study?

ANSWER: No more than one hour at a time without a break.


1. Your break needs to be only five to ten minutes, but it’s important that you take an
intellectual breather (to find something which you can concentrate on (other than the work
that you were completing) like, reading a newspaper article or sending a few emails) during this
period which should be enough.
2. This disengagement helps refresh your mind and facilitates the process of finding new angles
and insights when you begin your work again.

PART 2- QUIZZES AND EXAMS


 Here’s a simple truth: Most college students are terrible at studying.
 There are two problems with this approach. First, there’s the timing, Pseudo-work-
the unfortunate habit of studying in long, low-intensity, fatigue-saturated marathons
of pain. Second is the technique, Rote review-the reading and rereading of
assignments and notes as many times as possible.
 The idea behind this strategy is that somehow, if the material crosses before your
eyes enough times, the key ideas will stick around long enough to be later
regurgitated during the exam. Occasionally, this approach earns him an A-, but, for
the most part, he remains wearily ensconced in the world of Bs and the occasional C.

Step 1: Take Smart Notes


1. First things first: Always go to class! The importance of this rule cannot be overemphasized or
negotiated. It doesn’t matter whenever or wherever your class is or if you’re tired, hung over,
or, extremely busy—wake up, get dressed, and get to the lecture on time.
2. A class attendance is so important, because it saves you time and will significantly cut down
on the amount of studying required to do to score high grades.
3. Just going to class isn’t enough by itself. To reduce your study time, you have to also take
good notes once you’re there.
4. Note-taking is an art form and there is no better place to look for expert guidance than real
straight-A students. Here are their proven note-taking strategies.

Gather the Right Materials:

1. Use your laptop because, you type much faster than you write and also, it will allow you to
record more points in more detail which will make it easier to study come test time—and that
should be all you need to hear.
2. If you don’t have a laptop, have one notebook for every class and a pen that you are
comfortable with to write clearly. For technical courses pencil, paper and notebooks are
acceptable.
3. Have one folder for each class in which every piece of paper or problem sets you receive
during a lecture— outlines, assignment descriptions, reading excerpts— should be dated and
put, which will make it much easier to find materials when you need them later for review.
4. A lot of “experts” recommend needlessly complicated additions to this basic material list like,
using multiple colored pens, special notebooks, and organized class binders equipped with
portable three-hole punches. Real straight-A students ignore this nonsense.

Take Smart Notes in Nontechnical Courses (What’s the Big Idea?):

Format Your Notes Aggressively:


1. When you first arrive at the classroom, date your notes and record the title of the day’s
lecture, if it’s available. If you’re using a laptop, create a separate notes directory for each class,
save your document in this folder with the date in the file name which will make it easier to
organize the material when you review.
2. When it comes to formatting the text, the basic rule to follow is that anything that makes the
information easier to read is fair game. When using a pen and paper, underlining, indentations,
drawing boxes around ideas, and bullet points also help structure the information. If you’re
defining a word, make it bold. If you’re writing down an exception to the last observation you
recorded, start with: “HOWEVER:…”

Capture Big Ideas by Using the Question/Evidence/Conclusion Structure:


1. Don’t record the lecture verbatim. You can’t write that fast! And you will end up expending
too much energy capturing exact words as opposed to identifying big ideas. Instead, remember
the following structure: Question Evidence Conclusion.
2. Consider, for example, the following question from a literature class: “Who was the greatest
novelist of the twentieth century?” A simple conclusion might be: “Hemingway.” And the
evidence, in this case, might be several points highlighting the influence and originality of
Hemingway’s work.
3. The more classes you take, the better you will become at summarizing a complicated
conclusion. In the beginning, don’t be afraid to ask questions to help figure out if your
conclusions are correct or not. If you’re shy, go up to the professor after class or become a
regular during his office hours.
4. Take full advantage of lulls in the lecture. Record conclusions, clarify questions, and add
illustrative formatting to pieces of evidence.
5. If you’re not rushed, spend five minutes after class to polish your notes before packing up.
These little moments and adjustments will make a big difference when it comes time to review.
6. Finally, remember that the number of questions presented in a discussion can vary
significantly, depending on the class. In general, there is no right or wrong way to break up a
particular lecture into question/conclusion pairs, so just find a structure that more or less
works.

The Discussion Exception:


1. Nontechnical courses will occasionally make use of the class discussion format (which will
help jog your thinking and offer interesting ideas for upcoming paper assignments), in which
the note-taking strategies described above will not fit as, you will end up with a lot of random
observations and not neatly packaged ideas surrounding the occasional gem.
2. So in this circumstance: Clearly label the topic of the discussion then, If a student makes a
point that strikes you as insightful, jot it down then raise your hand and offer it to the class
(participation keeps you focused), if you feel something is mistaken or irrelevant, just ignore it,
and most important, if the professor chimes in, write down what he says and underline it
several times.
3. By the end of class, you will be left with a topic followed by a relatively short list of
interesting insights. This approach to note-taking focuses on that goal by identifying only
interesting insights and encouraging you to synthesize your own.

Take Smart Notes in Technical Courses (Where’s the Problem?):


1. The key to taking notes in a technical course is to record as many sample problems as
possible and the steady stream of examples provided by your professor, which will prove to be
your most important resource.

Don’t Read Your Assignments, but Do Keep Them Handy:


1. Most technical courses have assigned reading (textbook chapters focusing on a specific
technique or formula), which you should bring to class. Don’t do this reading. Why? Because
the exact same material will be covered in class. If you don’t understand a topic after it’s
presented by the professor, then you can go back and use the reading to help fill in the blanks,
which is much more efficient.
2. Smart students follow the professor’s examples with their textbook open which significantly
improves your understanding of the techniques the first time they are presented, and helps
sharpen your questions when you get lost.

Prioritize Your Note-taking:


1. Don’t expect to capture every single problem discussed in class as well as every single answer
and the steps in between. Professors move too quickly for you to record all of their examples,
so you must learn to prioritize your note-taking.
2. First priority: Record the problem statement and answer.
3. Second priority: Question the confusing. If you can’t ask a question, then clearly mark where
you got confused. Write a bunch of question marks or circle the line in your notes; this will help
you later when you study. Remember, however, the more questions you get answered in class,
the less legwork you will have to do later. So raise your hand, be confident, and ask away!
4. Third priority: Record the steps of the sample problem.
5. Final priority: Annotate the steps.

Step 2: Demote Your Assignments


1. Most students spend way too much time on reading assignments and problem sets, causing
them to feel constantly overwhelmed by their work. If day-to-day assignments dominate your
schedule, then there is no time left to prepare properly for the bigger exams and projects.
2. This chapter details the strategies for powering through readings and problem sets with a
minimum of stress and your assignments will be reduced from a source of energy-draining
tedium in manageable tasks you can actually learn from.

Work Constantly:
1. If you have a problem set due every week, complete one problem a day, one hour at a time.
Don’t spend five hours the night before. The same goes for reading assignments—knock off a
chapter a day and you’ll never find yourself spending a lonely night with a textbook and a six-
pack of Red Bull.
2. Even if you get caught up on all of your assignments for a given class, you should continue to
work. But on days where you happen to be ahead of schedule and you have already put aside
time to work on a certain class, take advantage of this fortuitous situation to get ahead.

Don’t Read Everything:


1. Sometimes you are simply given more pages to cover than you have hours in the day to
complete. Therefore: Don’t do all of your reading. Straight-A students follow this simple
hierarchy: Readings that make an argument are more important than readings that describe an
event or person, which are more important than readings that only provide context (i.e.,
speech transcripts, press clippings).
2. Always read the assignments from favored sources (a textbook or a course reader, that
provide the basic structure for the course by outlining key facts and arguments in a condensed
form).

Confirming Your Decisions:


1. Always use the lecture itself to confirm your choice about what to read and what to skip. If
the professor emphasizes the importance of a work that you dismissed (which will happen
occasionally—this system isn’t perfect), then make a note that you will need to go back and
cover this reading in more detail before the next exam.
2. If you find your professor is discussing certain assignments in a lot of detail, then use this
input to scale back how closely you are reading at home.

Take Smart Notes on Your Favored Reading Assignments:


1.To refresh your memory, te core of this strategy is that all big ideas can be reduced to a
question, evidence, and conclusion. This approach can work wonderfully for reading
assignments as well. When you’re done, your notes should contain a clearly labeled question
followed by a half-dozen or so bullet-pointed pieces of evidence, then a clearly labeled
conclusion.

Don’t Work Alone on Problem Sets:


1. Even with a smart schedule, you will probably still get stuck occasionally, therefore the most
important rule for taming the problem sets assigned in technical courses is to work on them
constantly(to concentrate on one or two problems a day).
2. Use all the available resources (collaborating with your classmates, taking advantage of office
hours) to help you get unstuck. It’s important to have at least one day before handing in the
assignment so you can review all of your answers and fix any small mistakes.

Solve Problems on the Go:


1. Hard problems don’t care about your schedule.
2. First, set aside a little block of time to familiarize yourself with a couple of problems to make
sure you understand exactly what is being asked.
3. Second, review your notes to re-familiarize yourself with the relevant concepts, if needed.
And then, try to solve the problem in the most obvious way possible, which probably won’t
work, because most difficult problems are tricky by nature. So, put away your notes and instead
of trying to force a solution, think about the problem in your head and start thinking through
solutions in between other activities (saves your valuable free time otherwise).
4. More often than not, after enough mobile consideration, you will finally stumble across a
solution. Only then should you schedule more time to go back to the problem set, write it down
formally, and work out the kinks. It’s unclear exactly why solving problems is easier when
you’re on the go, but, whatever the explanation; it has worked for many students.

Write Solutions Right the First Time:


1. Record your solutions, for problem sets (formally) the first time you write them down, which
can save your time and you can cross the assignment off your list. Many students first jot down
their answers informally and then return later to reformat them into something neat enough
for submission. There is no good reason to include both steps.

Step 3: Marshal Your Resources


1. Most straight-A students don’t think “studying” is a big deal. They realize that the bulk of the
work required to ace an exam has already been accomplished through identifying big ideas in
lectures, extracting arguments from reading assignments, and solving problem sets. By the time
the test date rolls around, all that’s left is a targeted review of the ideas that they have already
mastered and internalized.
2. Smart students understand that if you’re studying hard, then you’ve done something wrong.
Preparing for a test should not be painful. And it should not require a lot of time. If you have
been taking smart notes and handling assignments effectively, studying should not be a big deal
for you either.
3. Organizing your material properly is not a difficult task, but it is important that you do it right.
Build a Study Guide (Organizing Nontechnical Course Material):
1. For a nontechnical course, find out which lectures and reading assignments are fair game for
the exam, print out the corresponding notes that you’ve typed up or gather the pages you’ve
written on (don’t be afraid to deconstruct your notebook). Cluster these pages into topic-
themed piles (chapters). Clearly label each of these piles with its topic and fasten them together
with a paper clip so you can easily transport them without mixing up the pages.
2. Your final study guide, therefore, should contain a chapter, consisting of reading and lecture
notes, for each general topic that might be covered on the exam.

Construct a Mega-Problem Set (Organizing Technical Course Material):


1. Your problem set assignments are the key to your review process. Start a pile for each
problem set that covers material that might appear on the exam. Next, you’ll need to
supplement each problem set with sample problems from your lecture notes.
2. For each lecture relevant to the upcoming exam, do the following:

a) Match the lecture to the problem set that covers the same material.
b) Copy sample problems from these lecture notes onto a blank sheet of paper. You don’t have
to copy the steps or the answers, just the questions.
c) Label the blank sheet of paper with the date of the lecture. This will help you later figure out
where these problems came from (and more important, where their answers can be found).
d) Fasten this sheet with a paper clip to the problem set you matched it to in step one.

3. Finally, you must augment your mega-problem sets with technical explanation questions (to
understand the underlying concepts).
4. One last note: If your professor makes a practice exam (great review tool) available, then
print out a copy of it and store it with your mega-problem sets.

Prepare Memorization Aids:


1. Both technical and nontechnical courses sometimes require you to do some memorization—
formulas, chemical equations, artwork, dates, or chronologies— and the most efficient way to
do this (rote memorization) is by using flash cards.
2. Buy a stack of index cards; put the prompt on one side and the answer on the other (start
this long, time-consuming task early).

Schedule Your Organization Wisely:


1. A crucial tactic used by many straight-A students: Don’t try to organize and study in the same
day. When you review, you want your brain at full power. If you organize your materials the
same day that you review, (which requires your brain at full power) your brain will be too tired
to accomplish both effectively. So keep these two tasks separate and you’ll end up working
more effectively, which reduces the total time spent and produces better results.
Step 4: Conquer the Material
1. It’s time to get down to business. All of the work you put in up to this point was meant to
make this one step as small and painless and insignificant as possible. So don’t worry. There are
no all-nighters in your future.

2. What follows are quick and powerful techniques for taking your imposing piles of study
material and imprinting the key ideas on your mind as efficiently as possible. Use them with
confidence. They get the job done fast.

Trust the Quiz-and-Recall Method:


1. Whether it’s philosophy or calculus, the most effective way to imprint a concept is to first
review it and then try to explain it, unaided, in your own words. If you can close your eyes and
articulate an argument from scratch, or stare at a blank sheet of paper and reproduce a
solution without a mistake, then you have fully imprinted that concept.

2. The same is not true if you merely read over something. Passively reviewing a concept is not
the same as actively producing it.

Using the Quiz-and-Recall Method for Nontechnical Courses:


1. You first need to construct a practice quiz for each chapter in your study guide. Fortunately,
the questions for these quizzes already exist, since, if you’ve followed the advice that, all of
your notes should be in a question/evidence/conclusion format.

2. If your notes contain some really broad questions, break them up into several smaller
questions that, together, cover all of the relevant points. On the other hand, if your notes have
a bunch of really small questions, you can combine some into larger questions to save space
and time.

3. If you can answer all the questions, then you understand all the big ideas. Don’t do this only
in your head! If you’re in a private location, say your answers out loud using complete
sentences or act as if you’re giving a lecture on the subject. Be creative. Studying doesn’t have
to involve long hours sitting at a desk. However, if you are forced to review with other people
around and you need to be quiet, then you can write out your answers. If you don’t say or write
it, don’t consider it fully reviewed.

4. Next, put little check marks on your quizzes next to any questions that you had trouble
answering. Glance through your study guide to remind yourself of the right answers to these
questions. Take a quick break. Now, repeat the first step, except the questions that you have
already answered and repeat the step if the problem persists. Once you finish a round without
any more check marks, you’re finished, and not a minute is wasted. The quizand-recall method
is powerful because it does not depend on multiple reviews of the same information. Once
you’ve articulated an answer out loud in complete sentences, or recorded it clearly with pencil
and paper, it will stick in your mind.

Using the Quiz-and-Recall Method for Technical Courses:


1. You already constructed your mega-problem sets; now you simply need to solve them. Start
with the technical explanation questions—thinking about the general concepts first will make it
easier to solve the specific sample problems that follow. Again, don’t do these in your head.
Your solutions don’t need to be as detailed, but they should clearly demonstrated. If you can’t
explain exactly how you got from the question to the answer, then you don’t yet understand
this problem. Be honest with yourself.

2. As before, check mark the questions that give you trouble. Review the solutions for these
questions. Take a break. Then repeat the process, except the questions that you already
answered. Follow this method until you finish a round with no checked problems.

3. In this case, wait until after you finish your quiz-and-recall, and then try to complete the
exam under timed test taking conditions. Consider this a final check that you understand all of
the needed concepts. If you have trouble with a few questions on this practice exam, review
them carefully. If you have trouble with a lot of questions on this practice exam, then
something went wrong with your previous review, and you need to go back through the
material.

Memorize over Time:


1. If you have material that must be truly memorized— dates, artists, chronologies, formulas—
keep working with your flash cards until you have no trouble providing the right answer, even
after you shuffle the cards into a random order. Separate the task of memorizing from your
other review. Spread the work out over many days, and never dedicate too much time to any
one sitting with your flash cards.

Step 5: Invest in “Academic Disaster Insurance”


The first question on the test is easily solved, you still have plenty of time, and everything feels
good. Then, you see a question that you have no idea how to answer and leaving it blank will
torpedo your grade, and as you sit and stare, the time to solve the other questions quietly slips
away. The good feeling is gone, and in its place, panic creeps in. The insurance policy is:
Eliminate your question marks.

Eliminate Your Question Marks:


1. During a semester a few topics slip past your attention in class, and you end up with a
handful of question marks in your notes, which are dangerous. The key is to start this process
well before the exam. The following four tactics, if used regularly, will help you achieve this
goal.

• Ask questions during class. If a topic slides by you, raise your hand and ask for a clarification.
The more question marks you eliminate on the spot, the less work you will have to do later.

• Develop the habit of talking to your professor briefly after class. Take advantage of the time
when professors stick around for five or ten minutes after the bell and see how many of the
question marks of the day you can get eliminated.

• Ask classmates. Send an e-mail or corner them in the hall soon after the lecture. If they
understand the topic, it will take them only a few minutes to explain it to you while it’s still
fresh in their minds.

• Come prepared to exam review sessions (if offered). Go to the classes that offer a formal
review session the week before the exam. Before you arrive, jot down all of the topics from
your notes that you are still unsure about. Then, during the session, try to get all of them
answered. If, however, despite your best attempts, some of these unclear topics persist until
your review, your last-ditch defense is to skim. But this situation can still be dangerous, so
follow the first four strategies to reduce the topics you don’t understand as much as possible
before your studying begins.

Step 6: Provide “A+” Answers


The final step of the straight-A process is actually taking the test. Many students incorrectly
believe that preparation is the only thing that counts. The potential pitfalls during an exam are
numerous, but the most common are: (1) running out of time and (2) providing answers that,
although detailed, don’t fully answer all parts of the question being asked. Follow these five hey
strategies rules on every exam.

Strategy #1: Review First, Answer Questions Later


1. For any exam, your first step should always be to review all of the questions, which also help
you to relax. Months of effort have led up to this single moment, and you have only a scant
hour or two to prove what you know and secure your final grade.

2. By taking the first few minutes to carefully review the exam, you break this mounting
tension. You’ve seen the questions, and (hopefully) none seem impossible. You begin to say to
yourself: Okay, maybe this isn’t all that bad. Your confidence rises, your heart rate lowers, and
your stress begins to dissipate. Now you can turn your full attention to providing standout
responses.

Strategy #2: Build a Time Budget


1. First, take the time allotted for the exam and subtract ten minutes which provides a safety
buffer to double check. Next, divide this amount by the number of questions. The result is how
long you have to spend on each prompt.

2. For an exam with a small number of questions, mark right on the test pages the time when
you should begin and finish each one. For an exam with many questions, divide the exam into
equal fourths, then jot down the time you should begin and end each section.

Strategy #3: Proceed from Easy to Hard


1. The most effective way to tackle an exam is to answer the easiest questions as you can focus
your energy on the questions you know the most about, and also gives you a better chance of
conquering the more difficult ones.

2. For the difficult ones, you might not know the best answer, but you can spend some time to
devise a reasonable answer, as you have nothing else left to finish, you can spend the
remainder of the time polishing this answer, thinking, and re-polishing.

Strategy #4: Outline Essays


1. When facing an essay question, your first step should be to jot down a quick outline. To do
so, use the margin of the exam to jot down all of the points you can recall that are relevant to
the question.

2. Usually, you can underline and isolate three or four mini-questions from a single essay
question, which will help you flesh out your outline and avoid an incomplete answer. Record
only a few key words for each point to save time and space. Next, go back and check the
question parts you underlined in the first step. Make sure each is adequately addressed by the
points you just noted in the margin.

3. When you’re sure that you have identified all the relevant information for the essay, number
these points in the order that you want to present them. Now you can follow your outline and
begin writing your essay.

Strategy #5: Check Your Work


1. If you have extra time at the end of the exam (may you be so lucky), go back and check your
work. You will be surprised by how many times this final review turns up a mistake in a
technical problem or an important concept that you forgot to mention in an essay.

2. If there is a problem you feel particularly shaky on, use this time to go over it in detail,
augmenting the answer wherever appropriate.

3. Don’t worry about using carets and arrows to add in new phrases and facts to your essays, or
to point out added steps in your technical problems. Neatness doesn’t count on exams; it’s the
content that matters.

4. Finally, double checking your work up to the last minute can make the difference between an
above-average student and an academic star.

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