Studying and homework tips and tricks

Hi all! Today I thought I would share some tips and tricks I learned from experience and from some of my (numerous) psychology classes I took in college! All of these can be applied to either high school or college!

1. My first tip is to be relatively relaxed when you are studying. It is much harder to focus and absorb what you are reading when you are stressed out and anxious. I know lighting a candle helps me to relax and even listening to calming music (which I will get to next).

2. When you are studying, listen to music without words. Listening to music with words more heavily engages the Wernicke's area of the brain and can confuse you if you are trying to memorize things or write a paper. But you should definitely listen to music, many research studies have found that listening to music while performing cognitive tasks increased recall (aka improves your memory)

The numbers correspond with numbers on a separate piece of paper

3. This one is a bit of a "duh", but none the less I'm going to mention it! If your teacher gives you a study guide (some do, some don't) DO IT!!!

4. The best way to study it to set aside 15 minutes (per subject) each day to review.

5. In conjunction to number 4, make up essay questions (2 or 3) related to what you studied that week, answer them and do that every week, chances are by the time the test rolls around you will have probably touched on nearly everything that could possibly be on the test.

6. Now the most important tip is for every 45-50 minutes you study take a 10-15 minute break. Studying for long periods of time with no break will fatigue your brain and thus your ability to process, memorize, and eventually recall the information you are studying will be significantly hindered.

Haha! I didn't realize I picked the section about memory from biopsychology to photograph!

7. Take detailed notes during lecture! Personally for me I have better recall if I hand write my notes, but that is not always practical. It also helps if you write down questions you have about the material in the margins or if something in the lecture reminds you of something else put that down in the margins as well. The more real life connections you can make the easier the material will be to remember!

I just realized how alarming this could look! Don't worry its just from the Forensic Psychology class I took!

8. Draw diagrams and pictures (relating to the material) in your notes! In the picture of the conscious and unconscious iceberg I drew a duck swimming in water and what was above water was the conscious and what was below the water was the unconscious (I did not include the duck because I am terrible at drawing, which you can tell on the iceberg). I also draw arrows to connect related information.

9. Use a different color pen for important words. I learned that in the study skills class I had to take in 7th grade, that's about all I remember from that class. You could also highlight them, but I liked using different colored pens.

Pro tip: Don't take biopsychology online, its super hard haha

10. Now this last tip is more of a specialized tip, meaning it likely will not work for everyone. Planners do not help me, at all. I would use them for the first month of school and then I would forget about it until the start of the next semester. Even when I would use the planner I would still be overwhelmed with what needed to be done, so at the beginning of each semester I would look at the course schedule on the syllabus and write down what day everything was due. However, when it got close to the end of the semester I would write down everything that was left to be done all on one page in order that everything was due (if that doesn't make sense look at the picture below).

I hope these tips will help you in your studies!