How I Raised My Grades by Studying Less
As a marathon college student for the last ten years I can easily say I have learned my lessons the hard way. I have practiced all-nighters, avoidance, and extreme planning followed by procrastination. Here are some tips I have learned to maximize my time and energy. I hope they help someone else study less while achieving more!
Plan less. As a natural planner it gives me great joy to sketch my tasks down to the minute and gaze at the glory that is my organized color-coded schedule. However my extremely over-planned programs were rarely ever followed. I realized that when planning my day to cover so many different things I was creating anxiety when I didn’t complete a single task before I inevitably fell behind. Instead I set out a general expectation of what I would like to get done and then leave the actual time variable. If I wake up and feel like moving my body and not sitting at a desk I head to the gym or on a walk. In the past if I planned my morning to study I would be sitting there tapping my foot and feeling distracted. This way I enjoy my exercise and study sessions so much more.
Go to bed. All-nighters are a staple of college life aren’t they? A pot of coffee brewing at midnight, sugary snack wrappers littering the desk, and crashing after the exam only to repeat the process next semester. I have had many of these nights myself and almost feel nostalgic at the thought of them. While the nostalgia is amusing these study tactics did not produce the best results and were also hard on my body. As I have creeped into my early thirties I feel like my sleep is much more valuable and I understand the best way to use it. I must say that while all-nighters are notorious the real magic lies in the morning. The best advice I could ever give a fellow student is when you have an 8:00 a.m. exam do yourself a favor and just go to bed. I am not saying sleep will bring all the answers that would be awesome but ridiculous! What I do recommend is that you attempt to go to bed around 8:00 p.m. or even 7:00 p.m. (if possible) and wake up around 3:00 a.m. This is the best change I ever made and I actually prefer it now. I am generally my most productive in the mornings and this way I take the 8:00 a.m. exam feeling refreshed and warmed up!
Do what feels the most fun. Self-studying for the MCAT is not an easy task, especially with so many different subjects to make it through. The test contains questions from biology, chemistry, physics, psychology and verbal reasoning. I tried the approach of setting out exactly what I would do to stay on task and realized I was moving much too slow for the schedule. This was because I was fighting through the subjects I wasn’t in the mood for. Personally I tend to enjoy chemistry more than biology so when studying biology if I needed a palate cleanser I would chisel some of the chemistry or math content review off even if it wasn’t scheduled. I have a master list of all the chapters from each section and cross out whatever I get done whenever it did. This way I moved much faster and enjoyed the process. Bottom line, if you don’t want to do something….don’t. I know that may seem counterintuitive but this way you are the most productive when studying. Now remember that there is a difference between procrastinating because you want to binge watch television and stopping a particular study session because you are fighting yourself. When I feel I am forcing it I let myself take a break, do something else that interests me, and then I return to the task feeling refreshed and ready to tackle it.
When something doesn’t work, change it. I will never forget when I took a Summer Anatomy class from hell. Each day contained an enormous amount of deep detailed information with little time for studying. I recall spending 10+ hours one day studying the muscles (origin, insertion, action, etc.) on flash cards to prepare for an upcoming exam. I woke up the next day to realize I could barely recall any of the information. I was furious at what felt like a huge waste of time. It was also shocking because I have always used flash cards with success. I knew I had to make a change and decided to start from scratch. I started to point out the muscles on my own body and go through the information out loud with a classmate. Don’t be afraid to adapt and try something new.
Find where your heart is, and then follow it. While landing a killer high-paying job is the goal for most, it is also important to remember that your forever job should be enjoyable and interesting to you. Fresh out of high school I decided to go to ground school for aviation in the hopes of becoming an Air Traffic Controller. I was unsure of my future path and I heard that was the highest paying job without a Bachelor’s Degree. I always loved airplanes so I thought, “why not?”. It is easy to see this was not a passionate decision and the grades I earned definitely reflected that. I explored many different occupations and felt that most of them were a dead end. When you enjoy so many different things it can feel overwhelming to pick something to commit to for the next 50 years. For myself the closer and closer I got to medicine the more at home I felt. I was interested in anatomy and physiology so I started following this path. It was when I started working as a medical scribe in the ER that I found my passion. I was excited to go to work, leaped to look in on all different cases, and loved learning the language of medicine. That’s when I knew I was in the right place..