reflection of the study methods i used in my fall semester
When first starting university, I was initially very worried about the workload that I would have to manage. I remember being stressed out thinking about lecture notes, discussions in class, and all these types of assignments that I never really practiced in high school. When I found out that a course I was taking would help me manage this stress, and help me learn how to deal with such assignments with ease - I was a bit skeptical at first. But now, I am here, about to write a reflection on how this course helped me address pretty much every single goal I set out, and link this to how I can use this in my second semester. I will first start by addressing what I felt my challenges were, and outlining the goals I referred to above. In linking the goals to an action, I will then discuss how well I believe the methods I found worked to solve the issue I was facing, as well as what I learned from the experience, and how this bettered me as a student. To summarise all of the work I did in UCS160, I will then reflect on my overall progress and note the take-aways I hope to employ for my next semester’s study sessions!
To start, I outlined several goals, but three of them seemed to link back to how concerned I was with time management, and the organisation of a schedule. Though I knew I needed to have a good review schedule that was frequent and consistent, I struggled to remain on this schedule and wanted to find a solution to this. In addition to this, I was also concerned about the concerns I was having when studying! I found myself noting the stress and anxiety I would face from not meeting standards when it came to studying so diligently like the people around me. From these two main concerns, I believe that the rest of my goals were focused on the nitty gritty details of the two main concerns. As an example I was worried about how much time to allocate for review on one assignment, and in addition to that, I wanted to learn how to manage my frustration when it came to not achieving that goal of being on point with my study schedule. However, I found that despite these concerns of a consistent review schedule, whenever I would sit down to review something (mainly in a rushed manner), I would achieve the results I wanted, but not in the less stressful and overwhelming time frame. This is why I looked forward to finding some study methods to help increase consistency.
After reviewing the module presentations, and the reflections I handed in each week, I was really happy to see the progress I made thanks to the course. I found that the initial study methods I spoke of were the ones that didn’t work for me. Particularly, when I wanted to address reviewing and having more efficient study sessions with course material, a suggested note-taking method was the Cornell Method. I found that when I used this I would struggle to write everything I wanted to about a presentation, as an example, and I would end up simply worrying about fitting what I wanted to write about onto a piece of paper! Instead I found another note-taking tool to be more useful, particularly the brain dump method - because this allowed for me to write every single thing I needed to, and then review this web of ideas, to summarise the key points I wanted to remember. This helped ease the concern of fitting exactly to a guideline to note taking. Similarly, I found a solution to limiting the extent to which I felt overwhelmed when studying for a quiz, through using the previewing method. After learning about suggested times for me to study (before the lecture, after the lecture and reviewing the overall notes to help gain a better understanding), this helped me feel more prepared, without having to stress about spending copious amounts of time on sitting down to review. However, I found another method I tried that only worked for a short amount of time was the use of flashcards, For this method I actually tried both paper and electronic flashcards, but I found that when I got used to them or knew what each definition and term meant, I simply got bored using them over and over to review the terms. Instead, I found that using past questions to quiz myself into associating definitions with case studies was more useful. This helped me address the goal I had to make sure my study methods were effective and organised well enough across my schedule. I was able to link the above mentioned study methods into one big schedule through using yet another method, the 5 day study cycle. I found that this method addressed all of my goals, because it helped me organise each step of my study process (note-taking, review, and quizzing myself) as well as helped me manage my emotions through how much control I could have over the cycle. I found that the only downside to the method was that 5 days did not sound as realistic for each course I was taking. This would mean that I would only be able to apply the long-term day cycle for courses with really heavy course content (as an example, my sociology course as opposed to my computer science course). From all of the study methods I went through, I found that it helped me learn a lot about myself, and how much I could tangibly use for my next semester.
I found that my experiences across the various study methods was a common link that I get overwhelmed pretty easily!!! I think that the amount of methods I tried showed me that I was able to find ways to effectively manage my stress across the review process, which was something I assumed needed a lot of time (disproportionate to most other tasks that needed to be accomplished). In this way, I think I learned the most about myself as a student, when I found out how deadline- oriented I am. I found that especially in using the 5 day study cycle, I just needed to get to work (and accomplish the actual action of starting a task) to help rip the band-aid off and minimize procrastination. This gave me a lot of study methods that I could use for my next semester, and take care of the issues I ran into this semester.
As a summary of what ended up working for me when studying, I think that the bulk of the effectiveness of my review process lies in the planning of each step across an assignment. As an example, for me to complete this essay, I examined the guidelines in advance and took note of what I would potentially write about for each paragraph, and following this process, when the deadline approaches I would already have a skeleton to my essay. Alternatively, for a more exam/quiz oriented task, I would apply the previewing method, and braindump note taking methods to develop all of the content notes, so that by the time two weeks before the exam, I would only need to review the content notes and practice exam questions. Additionally, I would also continue the Pomodoro technique and the removal of distractions from my workspace, seeing as this really addressed my goals of minimizing the procrastination I face when starting a task.
Overall, I am really excited to start planning for my next semester and get to use all of the great methods I used this semester.