Going into varsity after my matric year, I always had a rigid mind-set in terms of the approach I took when it came to my study method and attaining information in lectures, I thought the system at the time was what worked for me in high school so surely I would see the same benefits if I had applied this in varsity. My system looked pretty much like taking a text book and forming thick summaries of the entire chapter worth of work, this was until our textbooks became more than 500 pages long and I was piled with 7 modules within a single semester.
During my second year of study, in my second semester the marks I had obtained frustrated me because they did not reflect the tireless, long nights I had put in trying to make thick summaries of my entire textbook, they instead reflected how much time I had wasted making thick summaries and having no time to go through past papers, tutorials, listening attentively while making notes during lectures, form a conducive study environment for myself, essentially study smart and not hard and this was when I got my aha moment!
After much trials and error with exploring different study methods and approaches that were both less time consuming and ensured I was gaining adequate preparations in time for my exams and tests, I found a particular method that has worked in my favour which I applied through to my final year.
This involves working with past papers, assignments, tutorials and attaining extra material on the internet. During my lectures I would listen attentively, make notes and ask questions where I felt I didn’t understand, I did the same during tutorial sessions, I answer tutorials as though they were tests or exams and I always think of it as a cheat test because you get to ask if you do not understand a particular question. The questions I thought were difficult, I would write in a separate book and look at them in times leading up to exams.
Past papers became my best friend! To be frank I spend most of my study time looking at past papers rather than the actual concepts or material because this was covered thoroughly in my lectures, and if you pay close attention most past papers have sort of a trend in terms of the types of questions lectures ask and how they ask them, taking that and working through each question carefully, if there are conceptual questions I do not feel confident in, I simply utilize my textbook or lecture notes to go over these and answer them as stated in the material. Calculation questions too, I try break them up into steps that I can follow, with breaking these up I use the marking allocations as a guideline.
Finally, I make sure to gather all these past papers, notes, tutorials etc. in one file, I like to put everything into its respective sections so for example I do question 1 of every past exam paper in one section then move onto question 2 of every exam paper then 3 and so forth, this helps see that trend and realise which key areas to focus on.
I wish I had applied this much sooner but I am grateful that I have found this learning and study approach at the time that I did because it has saved me tremendous amount of time and made studying for some reason a lot more fun.
In terms of my environment and working space, I am a visual person and always need to have constant reminders, visual manifestations of what it is I am trying to achieve, so I will have a post card of a mark that I want to achieve for a certain module up my wall where I can see it clearly when studying for that module and this has worked miracles for me, I advise you to do the same.
Mapontsho Ditsela,
4th year Chemical Engineering student at the University of Witwatersrand
