What worked for me was having a couple good friends in my degree program, and always doing the homework together on campus. I never did homework actually at home, and that did wonders for my concentration. I was able to say “if I’m on campus, I’m doing my coursework. If I’m home, I can do whatever I want”, which really helped mentally.

Hi. This is a very good question. I am a professor myself, and all of our students are now required to take a course with a name like “Learning to Learn”. You are not the only one worrying or thinking about this. Most of your cohorts and peers will be in the same boat as you.

20 years ago when I was a student, my first year at uni was a waste of money and time. By second year I had it figured out:

• Take notes, by hand. It will hurt at first, but that will pass. Some schools copy the Cornell method
• Do homework as soon as possible so the theory from class is still fresh.
• Read notes out loud when you can, as if you are practising a speech.
• Don’t cram or study until the last minute.
• If you are very serious, be prepared to lose sleep (I had 38 hours of class and 4 jobs that added up to about 50 hours… I slept 3 hours a night) or get a new rhythm like going to bed very early and getting up before everyone else.
• Use the library as a study place, or a café. Seeing others work helps you get in the mood.

My students have the same troubles I did, but with the added distraction of phones! Mute them, airplane mode, whatever. Study time and school come first if you actually care about grades. Weekends are the worst for distractions, but don’t feel bad for having fun.

Search YouTube for Justin Sung and watch a bunch of his videos.

If you made it through HS by paying attention in class, turns out you were doing that part right. Rapidly switching from watching a lecturer to trying to write everything down in shorthand is not necessarily better than just focusing on the lecture in the moment and processing some form of notes afterwards.

Many university classes provide lecture notes / digital versions of the slides and/or allow you to record audio during lectures. Pay attention in the class, then later that same day go over the slides again with some sort of system that works for you (sketch notes are good due to double encoding).

The biggest mistake many students make is assuming that rereading the textbook the day before the test is a good way to study. It’s one of the worst. Good reviews involve application/ creation. Try writing and answering what you think the test might ask.

TLDR: Watch Justin Sung’s channel.

Always take notes by hand! It’s okay to type them up later, but don’t just sit there and type a lecture word-for-word…your brain focuses on typing instead of “learning” or analyzing what is being said.

Also, learn to academically read. Basically, read the intro chapter. Then read first and last paragraph in following chapters. Lastly, any summaries/conclusions. Note what’s discussed and where. You generally want to get the main ideas and where to locate the details when you need them. This technique can work for individual chapters, papers, or even while texts. You’ll get a feel for it. The key is if you have the time, feel free to read it all. Else, it’s about learning how to find the info you need when you need it. I had one class that required 30 books. The assignments covered 3-5 books at a time. It was unmanageable, along with other classes, if you didn’t follow the above flow. That ended up being the “point” of the class. Oh, depending on the book, I adapt this technique to read the first and last sentence of each paragraph. That works well too.

I always went overboard with studying but I always got top grades so I think it was worth it. Best to do the below by hand.

• First do a mindmap/brain storm of everything you know about the topic- use stick men and drawings to visualise concepts and link them with different colours

• Once you’ve done that, get an A5 card and distill what’s on the mindmap into one or two sides of the card only. The idea behind doing this is so it imprints on your memory.

• Next, take a different A5 card and write yourself some questions based on the topic. Build up a few and then once a week/ every few days write out the answers to the questions (repeat as needed until you don’t need the card to remember the answers).

• I would also gamify revision. So if there were terms that I needed to remember the definitions I would write out the term on one bit of paper and the definition on another and flip over and do a matching game. When you find the right pair, write down the term and definition.

• Also come up with songs about the topic. I remember coming up with a couple of verses about the history of medicine to the tune of the Copacobana. Then in the exam the tune gets stuck in my head so I remember the words.

In case you’re wondering, no I did not have a social life. It genuinely worked though.

Other tips- make a playlist of instrumental music or music in a language you don’t know. Rainymood can be good as well. Do it in small chunks and treat yourself after completing each one (I had a cup of my favourite tea).

Also I made posters with pictures and one or two words that link back to a topic, then stuck it in my room. Post its with terms on in places where you go regularly as well.