Not How Long, but How to
- April C
- May 31, 2025
- 5 min read
The Before
Your exams are tomorrow, and you’ve been studying for 10 hours straight. You are reading your notes, rewriting them, and losing sleep. Does this sound like you? What if I told you that there was a more efficient way to study? A way that will give you more time. A way that will allow you to still have a social life. A way that will actually let you sleep.
Studying for hours straight and just rewriting notes isn’t effective. You aren’t allowing yourself to fully process the information, and you aren’t applying the knowledge. Here are some ways to study and why it’s an improvement from before.
The During
What is the difference between passive learning and active learning? The University of Pittsburgh has given a list of examples for both.
Passive Learning:
Rewriting notes
Rereading chapter summaries and outlines
Memorizing theories
Rereading the textbook
Highlighting written material
Reviewing the highlighted material
Active Learning:
Explaining the material in own words out loud
Formulating and writing down questions
Answering practice questions
Relating theories to real-life examples
Developing a mind map to organize material
Breaking diagrams down into smaller parts and explaining each part
Participating in group discussions and group study sessions
While passive learning can be helpful to memorize terms and simple concepts, you’re not actually processing the material. While it may seem easy for me to just tell you to do active learning, how exactly can you do it? Well, a few steps have been studied to help you slowly introduce active learning into your studying.
Prepare
First, you need to prepare. Before your classes, see if any slides or materials have been posted before class. If there is, roughly skim through them to become familiar so you can better understand the lectures during class. By mentally preparing, you’re allowing your brain to already be in the state of consuming information.
Here are some ways that the University of Pittsburgh lists to help you prepare for classes:
Skim through topics for class lectures
Read summaries and required readings
Preview lecture slides
Write down questions and thoughts of inquiry
Reflect on questions and comments to ask
Prepare an outline for notetaking
SQ3R Method (will be explained later on)
Prioritize Wellbeing (will be explained later on)
Attend
You prepared before your class, but what about during your class? Well, it’s important to actively listen during the lectures to be able to consume the material and answer any questions that you had during the preparation. You should also engage with the professor and ask any questions that you have or make any comments about the concepts. This will help you immerse yourself in the information, creating deeper connections.
Finally, the note-taking. There are multiple ways to take notes, and it will depend on the class. All I suggest is that you do not write your notes word for word. Instead, take the key important information, which will be new terms, facts, concepts, and examples. This is especially if the information is all on the slides or textbooks.
Review
Lastly, you need to review after your lectures. This is where you will use active studying methods to help you process the information. There are well-known studying tips such as active recall, spaced repetition, etc. However, how exactly do you do those? Here are the studying tips that have been proven to be efficient, and how to do them. All these study tips are what help you do active recall.
SQ3R Methods
We have talked about this earlier in the article, but what exactly is it? It’s a five-step process that helps you retain the information from the material.
Survey:
Before reading everything, roughly skim through the chapters and take notes on any headings, images, or charts that have been shown
Question:
Formulate any questions around the chapter that you have from your skim
If it’s a content-heavy textbook (biology, law, history, etc), take a look at the practice questions (if there are any)
Read:
Read the chapter and look for the answers to the questions you created and have
Recite:
After reading a section, summarize what you just read in your own words
Identify and recall any major points made, and continue answering the questions
Review:
Once the chapter has been finished, that’s when you use active recall, which are the study methods that will be listed below to help you with processing information
Spaced Repetition
Methods such as the 2357 method work with the forgetting curve. Over time, we lose the ability to access information in our memory, so by studying concepts at certain intervals, we’ll end up memorizing the topics long-term. The 2357 method is where you review certain topics at intervals that become longer and longer. Basically, this works by studying right before you’re most likely going to forget it.
Day One: Review
Day Two: Review
Day Three: Review
Day Five: Review
Day Seven: Review
This is just an example, you can adjust the timing depending on the difficulty of the material and how you learn.
Feynman Technique
This is where you need to explain a concept in your own words. Here are the steps (which can be adjusted depending on how you learn) to use the Feynman technique.
Step 1: On a document or paper, write everything you know about the topics that will be covered on the exam.
Step 2: Teach it to someone and simplify it so they understand. If you don’t have anyone, imagine you are explaining to someone younger.
Step 3: Figure out which areas you could improve on. Which areas were you less confident in? Which areas could have a better explanation? Go back to the notes you wrote to see the correct answer.
Step 4: Review your notes. If there are some areas of the notes where it’s a bit too complicated for someone who doesn’t know anything about the subject, simplify it even more or add explanations for the terms.
Great Ways to Study Material
Flashcards (great for visual learners) - Quizlet, Knowt, Paper, Gizmo, Anki
Mindmaps (great for visual and reading/writing learners)
Roleplay (great for kinesthetic learners) - scenarios related to the subject
Verbal Repetition (great for auditory learners) - facts, key points, definitions
Blurting (great for reading/writing learners) - rewrite your notes from memory
The After
By studying effectively, you are giving yourself a deeper understanding of all the connections with your knowledge. This gives confidence because you processed the information. Not only that, but you’re spending less time studying, which gives you more time to focus on yourself. This allows a priority in mental health, such as rest, which gives you the preparation for tests.
Remember, study because you want to learn, not because you want the grades. While grades can be important, the main focus should be on your learning. With that mindset, you’ll end up getting high grades because you actually put your effort into learning the material. This guide is supposed to give you suggestions on how to study, but there are so many more ways. Try out some and figure out which one works for you. Remember, your health comes first, so use these study methods to get maximum rest.
References
Active study strategies | college of general studies | university of pittsburgh. (n.d.). Retrieved 10
How to revise with the blurting method. (n.d.). Birmingham City University. Retrieved 10 May
Mozafaripour, S. (2025, January 14). 10 effective study tips and techniques to try this year |
usahs. University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences. https://www.usa.edu/blog/study-techniques/
Prep, F. C. (2023, August 4). Study tips for different learning styles. FLEX College Prep.
Spaced repetition and the 2357 method. (n.d.). Birmingham City University. Retrieved 10 May
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