by Xypher Pino

As the end of the semester quickly approaches and final exams and projects pile up, it is totally normal to feel anxiety and pressure during these stressful times. You are not alone – everyone is worried about how these final assignments are going to impact grades. Luckily, there are many ways to alleviate these stresses – one of these ways being the optimization of your studying. By focusing in on your study habits and making sure you are studying efficiently, much of your stress surrounding school will significantly decrease and you will feel much more confident with your upcoming exams.  

The first part in studying optimization is choosing the environment in which you are going to study. Accomplished businessman W. Clement Stone once said: “You are a product of your environment.” This is absolutely true – you cannot be productive in an environment that prevents you from being productive. For example, if you are studying for your upcoming mathematics exam, you cannot expect yourself to study effectively in the same place that you watch TV and play games in. You must choose your environment wisely and be at a place where you will be able to best attain your objective.   

There are many places at GC where you could study. The library is the first thing that comes to mind – it is a quiet place with plenty of chairs and tables to occupy and you are surrounded by people who most likely are trying to study for their upcoming tests as well, which by itself can tremendously increase your productivity. There are also numerous study nooks in the library stacks which provide perfect seclusion and privacy that can be used by all students. You can also choose to study in empty classrooms in Proctor East, Proctor West and Cowan – I have done this multiple times and sometimes, I even find myself studying more efficiently as I am in the same environment that I am learning the information in. If you do this, just make sure you ask permission from your professors beforehand and that you leave before security locks the building doors. There is no perfect place to study, and each person has different preferences, but as long as the environment you are in is a place where you can study consistently at a high level and have limited distractions, you are in the right spot.  

Speaking of distractions, it is important to limit outside influences when studying. If you find a place that perfectly suits your needs, it will not matter if you are unfocused. As we all know, it is easy to get distracted by phones and social media, so when you are studying, make sure your phone is away from you or that you have your notifications off. This is much easier said than done, but if you dedicate a certain time to studying, this will be much more feasible. As notable author James Clear once said: “To start a habit, you must formulate a plan, dedicate time and intend to do the habit.” This is the foundation of habit formation, but this same concept can be applied to studying. Just by intending to do something, your mindset completely changes and you are more likely to perform said something if you expect it. It is important to allocate study time in your schedule and not rely on sudden motivations or other feelings to study. You will be much more focused on studying if you actually intend to study, resulting in less distractions and better studying efficiency.    

In terms of the actual study process, understanding the difference between recall and recognition is crucial. To put it in simpler terms, recall involves open-ended questions while recognition is multiple-choice questions. In recognition, there are many indicators and cues to help you remember something but in recall, you are given fewer cues and you have to work harder to remember certain things. When studying, it is crucial that you practice recall and not recognition. Do not get me wrong – recognition can be effective, but in terms of studying as efficiently as possible, recall is the way to go. To practice recall, refrain from reading over your notes and making questionnaires that have choices – these have numerous cues that assist your brain in memory retrieval. Instead, make use of study guides containing open-ended questions or one-worded prompts. For example, if you are studying for an upcoming test for anatomy, do not simply look over the notes that Professor Bostic wrote for you. Instead, make a study guide by using terms and only terms. This way of studying is much harder and requires more thinking, but doing this is precisely how you improve your learning and memory.  

Something that is equally important as doing recall is taking advantage of the spacing effect. Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist, was the first to coin this term. Through his extensive research and experiments, he found that memory is significantly enhanced when learning is spaced out over time rather than learning being done in one huge time period. To put it in our terms, to study efficiently, make sure you study multiple days before the actual exam date and do not try to study everything the night before. For example, it is much better to study one hour every day for five days before your exam than to study five hours the night before the exam. You are dedicating the same amount of time in both situations, but due to how the neurological wiring of how our brain works, spaced repetition helps us retain much more information than cramming sessions.  

To conclude, make sure you are studying ahead of time and making use of recall instead of recognition. Limit the distractions around you by dedicating time to study and choosing the best environment that fits your needs. Just remember that studying is not easy – it is a repetitive and almost-never-ending process of learning and relearning. Always keep your goals in mind and remember that you will need to dedicate time and effort to achieve said goals. Do not treat studying as a chore and make sure you enjoy the study process.