College students have a long list of responsibilities that they have to satisfy in order to succeed, many of which are relatively new to most students who are out on their own for the first time. It’s important to quickly learn exactly how to balance all of these obligations in a responsible manner. One of the biggest priorities to be addressed by all college students is to develop proper study habits. If this is a difficult one for you, here is how to develop good study habits in college.
- Keep a strict schedule.
When you are in college, it’s important that you develop a detailed schedule that allocates time for all of your academic, extracurricular and social activities. Semesters move quickly and before you know it you will be studying for midterms and finals. If you want to make sure that you don’t fall behind, then you have to make the time it to attend all of your lectures, designate time for independent work, like studying and writing papers, and you have to commit to being as productive as possible.
- Do the reading.
In high school, you may have been able to complete all of your assignments and pass all of your classes without actually doing all of your required reading. However, when you’re in college, your professors won’t be reviewing each chapter to make sure that you completed the work and understood the content. While you may think can get away without reading all of your assignments, in reality you will just be creating much more work for yourself come finals time. So make sure that you do all of your reading throughout the semester, whether you’re earning your law degree at Harvard or University of Maryland’s mba degree online.
- Take thorough notes.
In addition to doing all of your reading, it’s absolutely imperative that you take thorough notes. Your professors will be going through their lectures quickly and they will cover a lot of ground. That’s why it’s important that you write as much down as you can, so that when you go to study before the test you’ll have plenty of pertinent information to review. Plus, it will be easier to find others who are willing to share their notes if your notes areof a high quality.
- Create chapter summaries.
If you’ve done all of the reading and taken thorough notes in class, then you should be able to summarize each chapter or unit pretty well. If not, then there’s a good chance that you’re still missing the big picture, which is a big problem. So be sure that you give yourself a check-in by taking the time to summarize the main points of each chapter and you will have a much easier time studying for finals at the end of the semester.
- Find good study buddies.
Developing good study habits is not just about the work that you do individually, but it’s also about making the most of your study time by teaming up with other high achievers. It’s important that you find people that are seeking other hard workers such as yourself so that you can share notes, compare your understanding, and encourage one another to maintain those good study habits.