How to Study 101 by Caroline

How to Study 101 by Caroline - May 2016 Scholarship Essay

When it comes to studying and absorbing information, everybody is different. Therefore, there are multiple studying techniques that can help any student succeed. In comparison to high school and college, college classes and exams are much more complex and in depth. Picture this; You’re sitting in class a few weeks before the semester is coming to a close. Finals is coming up and the teacher has listed off about a million and one different pieces of information you need to know. What do you do? Panic! No you do not. You go to the library, sit down, and start to sink all of that semesters worth of information into your brain in order to be able to get a stellar grade on that exam. How do you do this? It varies from flashcards to reading, to making up your own test to studying with friends. Some tactics could even be as strange as rewriting a word and definition over and over again until you understand what it truly means.
My favorite technique from all of those is, in fact, the strange one. As silly as it sounds, this idea of rewriting helps me out the most. It submerges into my brain until I don’t even want it to be there anymore. There was a time in high school that I had a class I really did not enjoy; European History. It did not interest me one bit, but I knew I had to study hard for every exam taken in that class. I would use my studying technique for terms that I just couldn’t remember. To this day, I will always know what the Protestant Reformation is and the Edict of Nantes. Throughout my first year at college, I have been working hard studying at each exam I’ve had. For finals last semester, I had used my technique for all of my classes. This technique proved to work; I received no less than average on all of my exams. As my last semester is coming to a closing, I have gone right back to this technique and will continue to use this technique when studying for major exams such as midterms and finals.
As said by Tony Robbins, “It’s what you practice in private that you will be rewarded for in public”. With this quote in mind, it goes to show that no matter how strange or uncommon a study technique is, it only matters to who that is using it. Even the most bizarre techniques can help a student succeed.