“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were lying bricks every hour.” (John Heywood)
Many of the skills and things I can do today, things I’m proud to show and can use at a moment’s notice wasn’t something I learned and mastered instantly. Getting strong, being good at art and music, and tons more took years of learning, experimenting, and really enjoying what I do to lead me to be able to accomplish what I can today. Even now, I’m working hard to make my skills even better and even picking up on even more new things to learn, an ever growing list I’m proud of having.
We finally reached the halfway point of our first ever college quarter! But along with that celebration comes the second worst test of each quarter, MIDTERMS. Like everyone else, I heard how much harder it would be then high school and how much I should prepare for it, but I barely scraped by from my first test. Having little homework to do, class times to attend, or notes to take, most of it being optional anyways, the midterm was definitely a wake up call to change my study habits.
Like many people in high school, I’d say that most of the assignments were very 1 dimensional, easy and simple to solve. Tests were often an exercise of how much you memorized of the subject, how much info you could absorb during class to regurgitate on paper. College courses and tests however, is nearly a different league altogether. AP test gave an insight into college would be like, teaching that unlike memorizing, its more of application. It’s easy to memorize, it matters now on what now can you do with what you learned, what can you develop from it and what deeper meaning can we get from it. And because of that I need to make a deeper method of studying to match.
Even starting from week 0 I’ve been going down a list of different methods of studying and note taking, trying and experimenting to find the best way for me to study and review. And finally, after nearly 2 months of testing and practice, I have the routine I really stick with. After listening and using dual encoding during a lecture, I work with the note taking app Notion using a bulletin point style of note taking, making sure to hit all the important topics and details of what I’ve learned and make sure to develop questions and later answers for visiting teacher’s office hours. Reviewing the notes every few days, I lead up to what I’ve learned recently, as well as things I’ve learned a while ago. Finally leading up to a test or quiz, I do a final review using a concept map to draw down all that I know and how all the topics connect with each other in a huge web of knowledge on my tablet or whiteboard. And although this is very effective for me, something else might work out even better for you. So feel free and experiment, find what really makes you an academic weapon. Just remember to SPACE OUT YOUR STUDYING, ask questions whenever you don’t understand, and get tons of sleep and food before your test.
Best of luck on your tests,
Nicholas Chou