Introduction
Welcome to the fourth part of Learning to Learn. Now it's time to apply some theory and come up with a working model of how to study. While we're at it we'll find it necessary to incorporate some simple time-management principles and I can't think of a better place to do it.

Revision
We'll start with that thing timetabled immediately before examinations called "Revision". If you are like most students you will rely on this period to do the work you should have done throughout the preceding 10 weeks. So this is the time when you open up your file of lecture notes and spend the first half day wondering what the hell these scribbles were meant to mean.

Undoubtedly this leads to an outbreak of cold-sweat followed by that familiar tight feeling in the chest called panic. The situation isn't eased any when you discover that even notes taken the previous week are largely indecipherable rubbish. So you dig out the recommended textbook and, after opening it for the first time, start reading only to discover that a lot of what you are reading doesn't make sense. Still, you can always fall back on the old technique of cramming as many facts as possible into your short term memory in the belief that you'll be able to string enough of them together into a coherent sentence to fool the examiner. After all, it worked at school.

After two weeks of this followed by an incredibly stressful period of exams you are wrecked and no wonder. You promise yourself it is going to be different in future but, of course, it never is.

It need not be like this, believe me. With a modicum of honest toil and a decent system you will be able to relax during the revision period and sail through the exams. First let's take a look at lectures and then how to best use your time to do that studying thing you're supposed to be here for.

Lectures and classes
It is difficult to generalise about lectures because different teachers use them differently. However, it is generally true that your time in lectures is much better spent listening and taking sensible notes rather than trying to write down everything the lecturer says. Taking lecture notes is an art in itself and different people like to do it in different ways, whatever work best for you. If you have never read any advice at all about note taking then you might like to start here. If this doesn't sound like it might suit your particular style and you want to try something else, the web is full of advice. Try this, but remember to be critical of what you read and check the source of the material.

Lectures are optional. Graduation is also optional.
There are those who say that lectures are a grossly inefficient means of conveying information and we've all heard the saying that "Lectures are a means of conveying information from the lecturer's notes to the student's notes without passing through the minds of either". While this may be true, it is also true that there are such things as good lectures, I may even have given some myself, and like it or not, they are, for the present, a major means of teaching. Unfortunately too many students look on them as optional so I'll end this brief digression with another quote, this one from a chap called Bob Bickford who is reported to have said in response to such an observation "Yes, the lectures are optional. Graduation is also optional."

In lectures, listen
Anyway, by listening carefully to what the lecturer says instead of scribbling away like mad, you might actually hear something useful. It is better that you leave a lecture with a clear idea about the scope of the topic, in terms of what you will be expected to cover, than with a record of every word spoken by the lecturer. Often there will be some form of handout and a list of additional or further reading. When you leave a lecture you will then be carrying four things

1. your notes
2. the handout
3. a list of additional reading
4. your memory of what was said

Of these four things your memory is at once the most precious and the most ephemeral so you must do some work associated with the lecture as soon as possible to preserve it.

Adding value to your lecture notes
As soon as possible gather together the additional reading and the recommended textbook with your lecture notes and handout.

Read the handout
Read the additional reading
Read the relevant part in the recommended textbook
Do any required work (at least make a start)

Then, with the aid of your original notes put together a set of new notes, really an account of the lecture, incorporating material from what you have read, It is important that you do not just copy out your lecture notes. You would be surprised at the number of students who do this and even more surprised at the proportion who call that work. What you need to produce is a synthesis of the reading, your notes and memory.

Once you have done that you have my permission to call it work because what you have done is add value to your notes. Next, ask if you could bring yourself to throw away your original notes. If the answer is "No" then you must be thinking that they have retained some value. If this is true then you didn't do enough of a good job so go back and start again!

What you should be left with is a nice, neat, clearly written and legible account of the lecture which includes the information from the additional reading. It should represent everything you need to know from the lecture. File it with the handout, any associated work required by the lecturer and your original lecture notes.

And do it straight away
When you come to revise you will find this far more useful than scribble but read on because we're going to do something else with it. First though a warning. It is important that you do all this very soon after the lecture, certainly the same day but do not make a religion out of it, don't produce 15 sides of A4, you'll never keep it up. You should aim to crystallize the essential points. Write in note form because notes are easier to work from. Do not write an essay, you haven't got the time and anyway they are difficult to revise from. Diagrams are good so long as they are large and well annotated because pictures are an excellent way of summarising complex concepts. We've all heard that a picture's worth a thousand words and some people remember images much more efficiently than text. Lists are also good especially if you can display them in a way which improves your ability to remember the content such as alphabetically or in a way which lends itself to a mnemonic. You choose. Aim to produce an aide memoir not the definitive article because what we are going to do next is some of that real learning stuff.

If you do this for every lecture you will have probably done more work than the average student and once you make it routine you will become very efficient. Start now and use the study periods associated with each class to do it. If you get behind, don't worry. But don't get further behind by trying to catch up, leave a gap and fill it in if you have the opportunity.

Applying the test
You should now have two things.

First you will have a series of lecture accounts comprising a synthesis of the notes you took in the lecture, your memory of the lecture, the handout, the additional reading and any associated work.

The second thing you have is a test to discover what it is that you don't know, the mum-test.

Now what you need to do is start reading you lecture notes, starting with the first lecture, applying the test as you go along. Apply the test to words, phrases and concepts. Do not gloss over familiar words assuming you now their meaning. Maybe you think you can explain osmosis to your mum but what about osmotic pressure and where does an osmole fit in and what is the connection with osmotically active particles? All these have to be subjected to the "Mum-test" and if the answer is "No" or "Not sure" then add the word to your list.

Next, spend a couple of minutes organising the list. Put them in some kind of logical order and then assign each word, phrase or concept a level of difficulty, say easy or moderate or hard. Do not have too many categories or you will get tied up deciding in which category to place an item on the list. Three categories is plenty and your perception of the degree of difficulty depends not just on whether you are dealing with a concept rather than a simple word but also on your judgment about whether you would find it more or less easy to explain it to mum.

Working through the list
After you have read through each day's lecture notes you will have a list for each and to begin with this may seem formidable. I'll bet you never dreamed you knew so little! Do not panic, it's the same for everyone. What you must now do is start working systematically through each list.

To do this you will need notepaper, pens, pencils, a decent scientific dictionary, a regular dictionary, and some relevant textbooks. Gosh! You're going to do some work and you know exactly what it is that you're going to do and when you have finished you will have achieved something and even have a record of what it is that you have done. Wow! You are now task oriented.

Some of the words you have on your list will need nothing more than a quick search in a dictionary. Make a note of their meaning next to the word on your list, tick it off and move to the next word. The phrases may take a little longer, say 5-10 minutes and the concepts longer still, say 15-20 minutes. No task should take longer than 20 minutes at the very most. If you think it might, then use the salami-slicing technique to break it down to a number of smaller tasks. Remember that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

It's not as hard as you think
This may sound like an awful lot of work and I can not deny that it is, at least to begin with. At first you will be horrified to discover that you are unsure about the simplest of scientific principles and as for those regular English words that you thought you understood! But as you proceed you will certainly discover that very quickly it all starts to get easier. The reason for this is that you will be getting used to the system and working more efficiently but also that many scientific words and principles have broad application. You may find that "hypertonic" appears on three of your lists. In fact I can almost guarantee that this will happen with quite a number of words. Suddenly you will be working through the lists a bit more quickly than you thought might be the case at first.

You will also be delighted to discover that concepts such as, say, "Epitactic sites of collagen and mineralisation of dentine" suddenly do not seem so difficult as you originally thought. This is almost certainly because the reason for your difficulty in understanding was due entirely to a lack of understanding of the basic scientific principles involved. Once you have these to hand they need nothing more than a simple application and the difficulty you had evaporates.

Remember:

Application of Information leads to Knowledge

Finding time for the pub
At the beginning of this part I said that I would describe a method of work but also incorporate some time-management guidance. Well, now's the time for the time-management but please don't switch off because you'll find this very relevant and, I hope, extremely useful because I'm going to tell you how to take some time off without feeling guilty.

Mental power reduces during the day
Before I begin, however, you need to recognise that your capacity for mental work, concentration if you like, is not the same throughout the day. Capacity is high in the morning and wanes throughout the day reaching its lowest point in the late evening. Some people will swear that they work best at night, so-called "night-people". I don't believe it, I think they are kidding themselves for whatever reason. It is also well known, and there is good scientific basis for it, that your powers of concentration are reduced following a meal. It's connected with you blood-sugar level. Few reading this will disagree that however active you feel before Sunday lunch you rarely seem to have the energy to wash the dishes until after a good loaf on the sofa even if all the work that's needed is to fill the dishwasher. As for settling down for a good study session, forget it!

Life before breakfast
Try waking up a couple of hours before having breakfast and using that time to complete jobs that require the highest powers of mental concentration. If you have identified something which seems difficult, or something you have been struggling with, then your first task of the day might be to get to grips with it. You might surprise yourself how seemingly intractable problems are so easily resolved at this time of day.

Now I wouldn't want to give the impression that waking at 6:00am is an essential prerequisite for success at studying but it doesn't hurt to give it a try. No, really, it doesn't! Solving a hard problem and a couple of less difficult tasks before breakfast will give you an almighty sense of achievement which you can build on for the rest of the day but be careful not to feel too smug about it, the rest of the course has probably been doing it as well.

The adverse effect of eating
Note that your powers of concentration generally decrease throughout the day but drop sharply after a meal. The effect of food on mental capacity has been recognised for centuries and is the reasoning behind the many accounts of prophets, philosophers and assorted sages who starve themselves to improve their powers of reason and thought. Among the more familiar, at least for Christians, is the story of Jesus wandering in the desert for 40 days and nights.

And the message is
So the message from this is that you should sort your tasks and match their degree of difficulty to your mental state. It stands to reason that you have to use your time properly. Some jobs are easy and require little high-level thinking, others are harder and demand greater concentration, yet both are "work" and both need to be done. What you need to be able to do is divide the work so that each is accomplished at the most suitable time of the day. The best way of making this point is to use examples.

An easy task
Let's take a task which requires little in the way of concentration yet is critical to the whole study method I have been describing. The task I have in mind is reading your lecture notes and making your task-list. Without this list you have no tasks, but producing it does not require much thinking beyond "Can I explain this to mum?". With a little practice you could read through your notes and produce an organised list in about 10 minutes for each lecture. Say a total of 40 minutes a day, but when to do it? Without a doubt this is the kind of work to do when your mental faculties are winding down in the evening, after dinner.

If, to begin with, you use this time only to make your lists that's fine but later you might think you could do a bit of other low-level work such as looking up words in dictionaries and sorting out some of the simpler principles. You'll soon get a feel for how much you can comfortably get through but beware of slipping back into "time-mode" by saying to yourself that you must spend the next two hours working on your tasks. Better to say,

"I will accomplish the following tasks before calling it a day."

Then you can adjust the list of things to do to a number which will allow you plenty of time to visit the pub with your friends. You are much more likely to finish the tasks than you are to work for the full two hours when in "time-mode".

Difficult tasks do not evaporate
One final and important point. Do not postpone difficult tasks. This will only block your brain, reduce your powers of concentration and working capacity and sap your will to continue. Tasks rarely, if ever, get more pleasant by being postponed. If a task seems too big or too difficult then break it down into smaller tasks which are more easily dealt with.

Retaining the lists
As you work through your task list, your lecture accounts (the ex-notes you worked on, remember?) will grow a bit as you add the supplementary notes which explain all the information you have uncovered by working. That's OK and that's also the place where you should keep them. Fairly quickly you will have finished the list, each item ticked off.

Do not throw the list away, it's your record of the work you have done.

This isn't half as daft as it sounds. Some time in the near future, as you approach the exams, doubt will creep into your mind about the amount of studying you have done. If this happens, take a look through the lists for reassurance.

Before we move on, and there is a little more, there is one final tweek to this study model.

Keep on reviewing
When you first read through your notes asking yourself if you could explain this to mum you may firmly believe that your knowledge and understanding of cell biology is sufficient to enable you to explain to her what membranes are all about. However, as you progress with the course and your learning you may well discover that things are not quite as simple and straightforward as you originally thought. This will probably come as no surprise to many of you who have realised that much of what you have been taught previously is often a finely crafted story which ignores a lot of uncomfortable facts. I'm not suggesting that this is wrong, my 12 year-old daughter knows that membranes exist but it would be unreasonable to expect her to know about the arrangement of saturated and unsaturated phospholipids in them or about transmembrane proteins.

But you are now reaching the stage where you might reasonably be expected to be able to deal with uncomfortable facts and when you are exposed to some they have a nasty habit of upsetting some of what you "know". All you can do is readjust and carry on. You may, however, not readily realise that new facts have upset the apple cart so we must incorporate into our working model of how to study a means of reviewing what we think we understand.

This is quite straightforward and simply involves starting afresh with your notes every couple of weeks. This isn't going to be anything like as tough as the first time round but it will give you the opportunity to take a second and third look at material you may, at first, have assumed you were comfortable with. There is an added advantage of this reviewing process which I will come back to in the next and final part when we take a look at the use and value of study groups.

Part 5 Study Groups

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