Studying Smarter.

It's safe to say fun time's over for students who will be getting their not-so-willing selves back to school. Honestly, I always feel so bad for teachers during the start of a new schooling session, because students are literally going back to classes with dummy heads, so to say. All that vacation and holidays, I doubt students even open a page of their books to study, or maybe a few of them actually do, but it's a tough one. Anyway, I envy those who got a break from studies, I can't relate. I've been doing this course on Mobile App Development for four months now and we haven't been spared even a day of rest. Sitting down and paying attention in class is one thing, studying is another, and that in fact is a nightmare for most students.

It's not like I've actually made it big in the world of studying, the essence of this post is to share some of the study tips that have proven helpful and effective for me. Just yesterday before our classes started, my Tutor was like 'I want everyone to show me the notes they've made from June up to this point, and I mean hardcopy notes'. It was just so random because she has never made a big deal about writing in her class. I know the reason she stressed on the 'hardcopy' aspect was because every of our learning materials were soft copies, textbooks and all. Thankfully I had my notepad presented and phew! That was it.

Making my notes notes has to be the most powerful thing I learned to do. I don't why but no matter how much I read from a soft copy textbook, it doesn't register in my head as it would if I made my own notes. The funny thing is the point where my mind tricks me into believing that I can actually remember every single detail about anything I read, only for me to forget it at a time I needed it the most. The truth is, things are always different when I make my own notes.

The things I write are according to how I understood a particular topic, the language and style I use are more personal, so when the time comes to use the knowledge, it isn't so hard because I wrote it myself. This is one of the reasons why it's a struggle for me to read someone else' note and understand it well enough. My classmate picked up my note one time and kept smiling all through while reading it. When I asked what was funny, she replied "you write notes as if you're writing a diary". I'm sorry but that's the only way I can register it in my head.

Few weeks into when I started this course, I knew right away that textbooks and lectures wasn't enough for me to catch on, especially as a beginner. At some point, I was always lost in class or totally disconnected from the lecture.That was when I concluded, I need more sources of information and extra help. My first thought were videos and that was how YouTube became my best friend. After each class, I go home and dig for videos about whatever we studied. It gave me a deeper level of understanding as I was able to see and hear the course material. For someone with photographic memory, it was such a huge plus for me because I never forget what I see in videos or charts or wherever.

Later on, I got the course on Udemy thanks to my cousin, everything just felt so much easier. I even got to learn how to do more things from the course videos on Udemy in addition to my classes. Visual aids are great learning tools in whatever form they come in. You wonder why kids nowadays are smarter? From their tender years, they have all those ABC songs and CocoMelon and the rest of them on videos. For students too, it helps to keep one active in class regardless of how tough the course seems to be.

A few people joined our class midway after we started, each of us were assigned to help the newbies catch up with us. I practically started teaching other people what I knew already and like magic, I noticed that it was like I automatically became a pro overnight the way I even answer their questions and help them understand the concept of the course. Previously when I get errors while writing my codes, I usually take them to my Tutor to help me fix it. Never did I imagine that I'll be helping someone else fix their errors. Sometimes, when I look at the person's work, I already know what he's doing wrong. The more I helped people learn, the more I understand what I'm learning. After classes and I come back home, my family will always ask how the class went and I tell what exactly I did, how I arrived at the results I have and all that. They don't always understand the whole thing, but it helps me register the things I know in my head.

Different students have different study tips that work for them. For me, these are my basics, the moment I'm get it right in all of them, I know I'm step ahead.
Cover Image here
Image 2 is mine
Image 3 is from my screenshots