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Colleges and Universities across the country have started or will be starting this week. Many of you have already experienced the dreaded lecture hall. Lecture hall classes are usually a good culture shock for incoming freshman, as most have never had to deal with this in a high school setting. So what do you do when faced with these lecture halls? Here’s a few tips that I use to help me get by.

1. Read the chapter before the lecture. Reading the material before you have the lecture should make sense. It allows you to get a basic understanding of what’s going to be covered and formulate any questions you’re going to have so you can get answers during the lecture. If your questions don’t get answered during the lecture, be sure and ask them. Every professor I’ve had encourages questions and discussion during the lecture time, don’t be afraid to ask.
2. Outline the material. I like to do this in stages. While reading the material before the lecture I read it one section or topic at a time. After I’ve read that topic, I go back and outline the key points, then move onto the next section. If I have questions, I write them down so that I can ask them during lecture.
3. Type your outline. After you’ve had your lecture and have all your questions answered, you should have a pretty good outline or set of notes. I wait until the end of the week to type up all my outlines and notes. That way it gives me a little refresher of what I’ve learned that week.
4. Start studying for tests BEFORE the day of the test. Cramming doesn’t work. Just face it. You need to be in a constant state of study to be successful at test time. You’ll be surprised at how much information you retain when you simply glance at all your outlines once a week, and you’ll remember it longer. A week or two before an exam go back over the outlines a little more in depth, focus on what you know will be on the test. You need to do this in three to five separate sessions to be effective.
5. Keep your notes. Your classes are meant to give you knowledge you’ll use for the rest of your life, and other classes. So keep your notes and study aides, you’ll almost definitely use them later on down the road.

Yeah, I know this sounds like a lot of work. Hey, I just spent the last 2 1/2 hours outlining my one chapter for biology. College isn’t supposed to be easy, but if you’re going to be paying for it, you might as well succeed!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 9:55 am and is filed under College.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.