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Study Hacks Blog

How Allison Used Her iPod to Ace Biology

Contest Update: This Saturday I’ll be announcing the rules for the HP Magic contest. If you’ll recall, I’m giving away 5 brand new computers, a wireless printer, a bunch of free software, and more. While you’re waiting for my contest rules to be announced, check out this site for a list of the 49 other blogs also participating.

Post Update (4/8/09): Stefan from the Dutch School Kid blog has posted an article summarizing his experience trying to use this technique to study for his own biology course. 

iTunes Notes

Panic Mode

It was two weeks before her biology final, and Allison, an undergraduate at McGill University, was starting to panic. She had been trying to review her class notes but found the process increasingly tedious. Her concentration would not hold, and the material was not sinking in.

Allison knew she was more an audio than a visual learning, but recognized early in the semester that David’s technique of recording entire lectures to review later would be too inefficient. (The lectures were loooonnng and dddrrryyy.) She needed something more punchy.

That’s when she noticed the iTunes icon on her computer desktop and hatched a clever plan…

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How to Ace Essay Questions Using the Three Minute Rule

Blue Book Phobia

Blue Book

As we tumble toward final exams, I’d be remiss if I didn’t address one of the most dreaded denizens of the season: the blue book essay exam. Nothing strikes more fear into the heart of a liberal arts student than seeing that big blue book, full of empty, lined pages, just waiting to be filled with paragraphs pregnant with novel insight.

These exams are tough. But in this post I will teach you a devastatingly effective trick for squeezing out the most possible points once you sit down for the test itself. Of course, this advice assumes you’ve done smart preparation (see last week’s post on exam prep mistakes for some pointers on this topic). But assuming you know your stuff, this advice will teach you how to strut it.

It all comes down to the three simple minutes…

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5 Mistakes to Avoid During Finals

Post-Thanksgiving ScrambleExam Hall

It’s the week after Thanksgiving. For most students this means finals are rapidly approaching. If you haven’t begun thinking about how to tackle this upcoming challenge, now is a great time to start. With this in mind, I want to review 5 common mistakes that students make during this period.

Read what’s below before diving into your own final-driven scramble and you’ll increase your odds of making it to Christmas vacation unscathed by an academic disaster.

Mistake #1: Not Having a Clear Schedule

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Case Study: How I Got the Highest Grade in my Discrete Math Class

A Hallway EncounterMath!

During my sophomore year at Dartmouth I took a course in discrete mathematics. The tests were not calibrated to any standard scale, so it was difficult to judge how well you were doing. On the midterm, for example, scores around 50 to 60 out of 100 were at the top of the class, whereas for the final those would be failing.

Rewind, then, to the end of the winter quarter, and imagine my surprise in the following scenario. It’s the day after the final. I’m walking through a hallway when I encounter the TA:

“You…got the highest grade,” he said.

“On the final?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

“No, for the entire course.”

This was hard to believe. The course had 70 students. Three of them were from Eastern Europe where, educated in the old Soviet-style talent-tracking system, they had already studied this subject in high school!

I didn’t think of myself as a math person. Before this class, I had shown no particular talent for the subject. I was trying to just hang in there with a decent grade. My victory, as we like to say here on Study Hacks, was tactical.

In this post I will explain how I achieved this feat, and how following similar strategies can help you dominate even the most thorny technical courses…

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Q & A: Mastering Question Clusters, Breaking Up with Terrible Majors, Withdrawing from a ‘B’, and Debating a Two-Day a Week Course Schedule

From the reader mailbag:Questions and Answers

I have three questions about your focused question clusters study strategy.

  1. Is the list of rapid-fire questions for one test (with answers) supposed to be nearly as long as a textbook chapter?
  2. I’m confused — what exactly are they supposed to cover?
  3. Can one go about making them without spending several days’ worth at the computer or with a pen and pencil?

Cal responds:

  1. Hopefully much shorter.
  2. Everything you need to know for the test.
  3. Try to inline the question building with your note-taking in class and while doing reading assignments. Don’t wait until right before the test to construct all of your clusters from scratch.

From the reader mailbag:

I have two majors and a minor. I love one of my majors (Psychology) and my minor (French). Most of my stress comes from my other major (Business). I dislike my business classes and find them hard. I want to go to grad school for Psych after graduation. I am using business as a “back up”… but this “back up” is taking over my life!!! If I could have things my way, I would finish the psych major, apply for grad school, and graduate.

What do I do? I am too scared to not go the B-school route…

Cal responds:

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The Stable Mucking Method: A Freestyle Approach To Keeping the Annoying Little Stuff Under Control

This post is a companion to last week’s essay on using a plan.txt file to organize your work. Both are inspired by my freestyle productivity philosophy. However, whereas last week’s post focused on handling the big stuff, this week’s post focuses on keeping up with the small.

The Cost of FocusManure

Here’s a problem I’ve faced recently: my obsessive focus on a small number of important project causes me to fall behind on the annoying little administrative stuff that pops up on a daily basis. I’m not talking about the regularly occurring minutia, like cleaning my apartment or working out: these can be easily handled with an autopilot schedule. I am referring, instead, to the random, unexpected productivity lint that regularly clogs my inbox and emanates a powerful aura of procrastination-inducing annoyance.

Over the past year or so, I’ve tried several failed strategies to rectify this situation, including:

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How to Ace Calculus: The Art of Doing Well in Technical Courses

Tangent Troubles

Calculus is easy. Or at least, it can be. The key is how you digest the material. Here’s an example: when you’re first taught derivatives in calculus class, do you remember it like this…

Derivative

Or do you intuit this image…

Tangent

As I will argue in this post, for any technical course — be it calculus, physics, or microeconomics — the key between an ‘A’ and a struggle comes down to this distinction. Below I’ll explain exactly what I mean and reveal how top technical students use this realization to consistently ace their classes.

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