Life Kit - Study Strategies That Keep You From Getting Overwhelmed

Episode Date: September 1, 2020

No one teaches you how to study. Laptop or paper notes? Highlighter or flashcards? And does music help? Here's how to take better notes and study so that you remember what you've learned — without getting crushed by college stress.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Alyssa Nadworny, an education reporter at NPR. Let's start first with an often controversial topic. Which one do you think is better to take notes on, laptop or paper? We're at a study camp in 2019. It's at North Carolina State University. And the students here, they're getting ready for college. They have a couple thoughts on this whole laptop versus paper thing. A student named Jack, he says paper. I think writing on paper is better because you're like writing in your brain too.

Mmm, good point. Anastasia agrees. I think paper is better because then it's easier to like draw diagrams if you need to. Another kid named Jack, he goes for the laptop. I think the laptop is better because I can type faster than I can write. This might seem like a pretty silly discussion, but learning how to study, no one teaches you that stuff, and a lot depends on it. It's a big problem for a lot of college-age students who maybe

either didn't need to develop good study habits when they were younger or who are finding that the demands are just now so high in college that they don't really know how to keep up. Natalie Murr oversees the study camp. And all the stuff they're talking about, that's what we're going to tackle in this episode. Practical ideas to help you navigate the academics of college, even if you're learning online these days. This episode was recorded before the coronavirus pandemic, but it's full of great tips. We'll help you avoid totally stressing out and what to do when all that pressure feels crushing. Because maybe you didn't learn this stuff, or

maybe you just need a reboot because you've spent a long time away. Don't worry, we've got you after the break. So you've picked your classes, you found a a place to live, you've got the books. Now it's time to buckle down and do college. Your academics and your knowledge of the material only get you so far, then you have to be able to demonstrate it. So to figure out how to demonstrate that knowledge, we're going to turn to Natalie Murr, a psychologist at NC State University, the woman behind that study camp. She's got takeaway number one. Learn how to take notes. First, she says, you got to know what to take notes on. To start, use clues from the professor to signal what's important and what's not. These clues can be verbal or visual. Sometimes it's really obvious, so they might say, hey, this

is going to be on the exam. Write this down, or this is really important. You can keep an eye on what the teacher is doing when they teach. This is the visual part. Do they get really animated or do they repeat themselves a ton? They might even write a few things down on the board. Another clue to what's important? Categories and numbered lists. Be on the lookout for the ways that professors will organize information.

You know, here are the categories of X. There's three categories. Here's number one, number two, and number three. If, after all of this, you're still unsure of what you should be learning, it's best to talk with the professor. They're the ones who will know what the course objectives are and they'll know what's on the test. If you're nervous about talking with them, we've got an episode about that. It's called Congratulations, You're in College. Now What? So when it comes to how you write all this information down, there are tons of note-taking methods. There's one that uses bulleted lists, another where you map it out by drawing circles

and lines, and another where you take notes in the margins of the book. But Murr says none of these are better than the other. There's no magic way to take notes. It doesn't matter if it's got a name or if it's just something you've created. If it helps you to organize something or if it helps you to wrap your head around something a little bit better, then that's the style for you. Research shows that simply taking notes, writing down our interpretation of what we've learned, it helps organize and consolidate that information in our brains. So if you write down information, that is as effective in terms of learning as reading the information multiple

times. And what about that laptop versus notebook question? Does it matter where you're taking the notes? Merce says, not really. So really what you want to do is focus on the quality of your notes, writing down only information that's important, not the superfluous stuff. She says typing notes on a laptop is far more efficient, but that volume can actually be a bad thing, because you're just writing down a bunch of information, and you're not focused on what is important. I think in this day and age, it's probably not realistic to say don't use a laptop,

but I would say make sure that you're focusing on, you know, short notes that are effectively summarizing information and on only the key information instead of just writing down everything the professor is saying verbatim. So you've got your notes, and now you've got to carve out some time to study. Managing your time is hard, especially when you're working, plus classes, homework, friends, all of it. So takeaway number two, get control of your schedule. Buy a planner and actually use it. Write down your classes, your work shifts. It will help you see when you have these small gaps in your schedule.

Because even a short window can allow you to knock out smaller tasks like write a short response or read a chapter of a book. You can put assignments in there too, deadlines and reminders. It's super helpful. Okay, you've carved out time in your planner to study. See, good thing you have that planner. But now, how do you actually study? To answer that question, I talked with Pooja Agarwal. I would call myself an expert on how people learn. She's a cognitive scientist at Berklee School of Music in Boston and the author of a book about how teachers can better help their students learn. We know from a lot of research that the most common study strategies for college students

are rereading textbooks, rereading notes, and highlighting. And all of that focuses on the short term and it focuses on getting information in. And this, she says, does not actually help us learn because learning is a two-way street with information coming in and information going out. And cramming, rereading, highlighting. It's only focused on getting information in. To demonstrate this idea of retrieving information, Agarwal throws out a quiz. Who is the fourth president of the United States?

Most of us probably know the first president of the United States, but the fourth president of the United States adds this little bit of challenge. To be honest, I don't really know the answer. So I know there's George Washington. Yep. I think maybe Adams. Maybe there's even two Adams. I don't know.

Jefferson? Thomas Jefferson? Yep. Honestly, usually I just Google this. So the fourth president of the United States you may have been trying to retrieve is James Madison. And that little struggle of retrieval is what helps boost that long-term learning. Takeaway number three. When studying, don't just put information into your brain.

Draw it back out. Agarwal's got a lot of great and specific ideas on how to do this. So get your notebooks or your laptops. The first is called the two things rule. What are two things I learned? What are two things from that lecture I want to remember? If I'm listening to a podcast, what are two things that are really important for me to keep in mind? So when you're done with a lecture or a reading, write those two things down immediately. Research demonstrates that when we engage in that process of overtly retrieving, we actually organize concepts and create a better structure for what we're understanding.

You can also try this with a classmate or your roommate. Here's Natalie Murr from NC State. If you understand information well enough to then turn to your roommate and teach it to them, then you've likely stored and remembered enough information to be able to then show that you understand it yourself. Another study technique involves flashcards, where one side is a question or a term, and the other side is the definition or answer.

So this is a strategy I kind of think like lather, rinse, repeat. So step one, lather. Try saying the answer out loud or writing it down before you flip it over to see if it's correct. So often we'll look at a flash card in the front and say, oh yeah, I know what photosynthesis is. And I'll flip over the index card and go, yep, I got it right. And what students don't always do is provide that time to think or retrieve. Step two is rinse. Reorder the deck. So we remember information more when we kind of shuffle it up. It adds that extra challenge to our long-term learning. Step three, repeat. Just because you've gotten the answer correct once doesn't mean you've actually learned it. So this research that scientists have conducted suggests that we should at least try to retrieve something correct three times. Okay, quiz time. Who was the fourth president of the United States? I'll give you a second.

James Madison. We've heard from a ton of students who have study tips. Some are quirky and maybe a little bit superstitious. And I wanted to get Argyle's take on some of these ideas. What about this idea of kind of like chewing gum or smelling a particular scent and then having that influence like what's going to happen on the test. I feel that based on a lot of research, what's most important is what you do while you're studying more than where you study or how you take notes or if you're chewing gum.

One popular method she does like, the Pomodoro, named after a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. It's where you study for a period of time, say 25 minutes, and then you take a break. Then back to studying. Then a break. And it's almost like an intentional forgetting, or a purposeful forgetting. By taking that break, you're letting things simmer a little bit, but not too long, and then you come back to it again. So you would give that a thumbs up?

Yes, I would give the Pomodoro technique a thumbs up. The other thing you may be tackling in college is really complex readings. And then you're probably gonna have to write essays about those texts. Hello. Since this can be a bit daunting, lots of colleges have writing centers staffed with reading and writing tutors. And in the pandemic, they've shifted a lot of that stuff online. I visited one of those writing centers in 2019 at Amherst College, a small liberal arts

school in Massachusetts. Welcome to the writing center. Cassie Sanchez works at the center and she's sitting down with Jada Jones, an incoming freshman. This is just an introductory meeting. It's meant to introduce students like Jada to college. Cassie wants to know about Jada's writing experience in high school. I think something that's been interesting is in my literature class, it's more like unstructured writing that we've been doing. So just like write for five minutes, and somehow like that writing was a lot easier. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. But that's a thing that you can incorporate into all of the different kinds of writing that you're doing.

If you have an assignment with a word count, maybe 200 or 500 words, Cassie says don't focus on the number. Just free write your thoughts. And then go back and edit through and cut it down rather than try to get the word count exactly on the first go. Another tip, Jada is reading from John Stuart Mill in her philosophy class. And no offense to the 19th century British philosopher, but it's a bit dense. Cassie's tip, even though it's written in English, see if you can translate it. Breaking the thing down into its component parts and then figuring out if there's a way in which you can translate that into something that makes more sense, right?

Rewrite a sentence so it's in your own words, using terms you actually understand. Maybe you can relate the main idea to the context of a TV show or a film or something you just understand a bit better. You can also try the two things rule that Pooja Agarwal, the cognitive scientist, clued us into. Another tip, and heads up, you might not like this one. Don't listen to music when you're reading. Silence is better for focusing. There's a study demonstrating that reading in silence boosts reading comprehension, almost doubles it compared to listening to music with lyrics.

Trying to do complex things in silence is a way to help us pay attention and engage with the material. If we're listening to music just to get through a boring textbook, then that might be more enjoyable, but that doesn't mean you're actually using your time wisely. You may not be remembering or learning anything at all. Of course, it can be hard to put these techniques into practice. Take it from Agrawal herself. In graduate school, she was literally studying the science of learning, and yet... I can distinctly remember sitting in my apartment cramming overnight.

For her statistics exam the next day, she was doing last-minute practice problems, rereading the textbook, cramming. I was positive. I'm gonna ace this exam. I have spent so much time focused on this. I've practiced it. I've got this. The next day, she took the exam. And I bombed it. I literally got an F on a stats exam in graduate school. But despite that F, she went on to earn her PhD. She's a professor, and she wrote a book. So that brings us to takeaway number four. Failure isn't the end. An F on a test or even in a class, it doesn't mean you won't graduate. Because you failed once doesn't mean you're a failure. Odette DeLeon is an advisor at Valencia College, a community college in Orlando, Florida.

Anyone can do bad in a class. We're not born knowing college material. That's why we go to college. That's why we're college students. We're trying to learn these things. One of her jobs is to work with students who have gone on academic probation, where their grades dipped so low they were at risk for losing their scholarship. You want to do everything you can to avoid that position.

But Odeth says even if it happens, it doesn't mean it's the end. It's okay if you didn't do good your first semester or if you did bad in a class. The world is not over, and for sure your college career is not over. You have to continue until you finish because you have a goal. And you're going to meet that goal if you just push through. It's always hard to hear negative things about yourself, and bad grades are no exception. But being hard on yourself can just make it worse.

Sometimes you need to rest your body and your brain. Nearly everyone I talked to suggested one secret recipe for college success. It's takeaway number five. Get some sleep. We know that students who are lacking in sleep or are sleep-deprived show many of the same symptoms and difficulties as students who've been diagnosed with attention disorders. That's Natalie Murr, the NC State psychologist. She says if you're not sleeping well, you can have trouble paying attention and focusing.

And that makes it harder to write down the information when you're in class. And then, of course, if you don't write down the right information you don't have it then to study and and recall later. You're not going to be able to do the things we've talked about here very efficiently. The same is true for emotional well-being and mental health. Moore explains we only have so much brain capacity. You know if you're really sleepy or if you're really struggling emotionally there's not a lot of motivation to get up and go to class or do your work or put the effort in that needs to be done. So they can really kind of take up space in the brain that would otherwise be open for learning. To understand a bit more about how to handle your mental health while in college,

I called up Bea Hibbs and Anthony Rothstein. They wrote a book called The Stressed Years of Their Lives, all about mental health on campus. And they said a lot of students, they mix up, like making a mistake or getting a B as catastrophic. Bea Hibbs got the idea for this book because of her son. I learned many lessons from a pretty scary crisis that he experienced. When her son came home from school from a break freshman year, he told her he was having suicidal thoughts and he was scared to go back. At first, Hibbs wasn't sure how seriously to take this, but she trusted what he was saying.

Eventually, her son took a leave of absence. What I would also say to parents is if your student calls and is in distress, listen, don't judge, be supportive. That will allow them to continue to share issues and problems. When her son came home, he was treated by Dr. Rothstein and eventually he went back to college. Their book, they say, is just another way to talk about how pervasive mental health issues are on college campuses. So that's our takeaway number six. When it comes to mental health, let go of the stigma. One out of two Americans over their lifetime will have a diagnosable mental health disorder.

They're highly treatable. It's not something to be scared about. She says if you have a cough, you get cough drops or cough syrup, a sore ankle, maybe an ace bandage. Just like we treat a physical problem, why should we treat our brain any differently? Takeaway number seven. Are you stressed or depressed? You gotta know when to reach out.

Cause stress in college, let's face it, adulthood, it's like this weird badge of honor and we throw the term around willy-nilly. That can make it really hard to recognize if all that weight you feel in your mind isn't normal. A lot of times the onset of this is so gradual and the use of stress, I'm stressed out, is so common that kids don't recognize, oh, this is actually a clinically treatable anxiety or a clinically treatable depression. Most mental health disorders pop up between ages 16 and 24. Dr. Rothstein suggests some warning signs to look out for. Having trouble sleeping, having trouble waking up, not eating, low energy, feeling like you're just worthless, extreme sense of guilt. Hopelessness is the number one warning sign.

Hopelessness that not only are things bad, but they're never going to get better. And then coupled with that, the thought that you'd be better off dead. If you're experiencing thoughts of suicide, you can call 1-800-273-TALK. That's 1-800-273-8255. Or you can text the word START, S-T-A-R-T, to 741741. That will put you in touch with someone who can help. The Jed Foundation is also a great resource. They specialize in supporting teens and young adults as they transition into adulthood.

And Jed actually has a website called uLifeline.org. That's the letter U, then the word Lifeline.org. There, you can search more than 1,600 colleges to find out what their mental health resources on campus are. Other warning signs to be aware of are drinking beyond your limits, blacking out, having lots of random sexual partners, not being able to stop playing video games. If you have a trusted adult, they can be a good resource in this moment. When Dr. Rothstein was struggling with depression in college, he went to go see his college dean, who was also a psychiatrist, and a man he really trusted. And he looked at me and he said, you know, you really need to take better care of yourself. And I started to cry and say, I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't want to be in college.

And he really gave me what I think of as a life preserver by saying, well, why don't you find something you'd like to do? On that dean's advice, Rothstein ended up taking a break from college. He was in a much better place and had developed tools to stay healthy by the time he returned to get his degree. If we're not sure how to establish a relationship with a mentor or adult on campus, we've got a bunch of tips in the first episode of this guide. The other important resource on campus is the counseling center or the mental health facility.

If you're feeling intimidated about going in there, Dr. Rostain has this advice. Going in with the attitude of, I want to get some help with X, a specific problem I'm encountering, to make it very concrete. Like, I'm having trouble falling asleep because I'm worrying all night. Before we do our recap, one more question. Who was the fourth president of the United States? Okay, final answer. It's James Madison. Come on, you knew that.

I know you did. It's locked in there. Takeaway number one. Learn how to take notes. In class, look for clues like categories or things that are repeated. Here are the categories of X. There's three categories. Here's number one, number two, and number three. Takeaway number two. Get control of your schedule. Buy a planner and actually use it. Takeaway number three. When studying don't just put information into your brain, draw it back out. When we engage in that process of overtly retrieving,

we actually create a better structure for what we're understanding. Takeaway number four, failure is not the end. We're not born knowing college material. That's why we go to college. That's why we're college students. We're trying to learn these things. Takeaway number five, take care of yourself and get some sleep. Takeaway number six, let go of the stigma around mental health. One out of two Americans over their lifetime will have a diagnosable mental health disorder. They're

highly treatable. It's not something to be scared about. You can ask, are you stressed or are you depressed? Look for details. What's going on in your life? For more NPR Life Kit, check out our other episodes. I've done an episode about how to manage your money when you're paying for college on your own. Also one about how to get stains out of your clothes featuring my mom. It's awesome. Both are really helpful. You can find those at npr.org slash life kit. And if you love life kit and you want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash life kit newsletter. And here, as always, is a completely random tip, this time from listener Josh Gordon. So my tip is if you are baking cookies and you want to spray Pam on the cookie sheet and you don't want the Pam to go everywhere,

you open up the dishwasher, you put the cookie sheet on the opened dishwasher and you spray Pam on top of that. If you've got a good tip, leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823. That's 202-216-9823. Or you can email us a voice memo at lifekit at npr.org. This episode was produced by Lauren McGaughey.

Megan Cain is the managing producer. Beth Donovan is the senior editor. I'm Melissa Nadlorny. Thank you for listening. I'm Guy Raz, and on NPR's How I Built This, how a simple splash of color accidentally launched Sandy Chilowich into a 40-year career as a designer, entrepreneur, and creator of the now-famous Chilowich placemat. Subscribe or listen now.