Looking to cram your studying?
I had just finished a 3-day cram for 2 weeks' worth of homework and lecture videos for 3 classes... how did I do it? Follow these steps to manage this workload.
Step 1: Don't cram...
The first step in not cramming your work is managing your time efficiently and working throughout the week in manageable time increments to make it more efficient and memorable for future coursework. But sometimes things happen and you're unable to... so here is how you actually cram.
Really Step 1: Increment your time.
Try to increment your studying to 30-minute increments, then take a break for 5-10 minutes but NEVER go over the 10-minute mark. That is when it gets harder to get back to what you were doing and remember your last thought. If you can do this consistently, you will finish your studying (given it isn't an absurd amount of studying to catch up on) within a reasonable hour.
Step 2: Sleep!
Sleep is so so so so so important for an efficient study session. Try to get your 8 hours of sleep no matter what, because without sleep, your efficiency in retaining the information and learning is going to drop drastically and in turn cause you more time and trouble.
Step 3: Prioritize
Prioritize what is the most important task to finish or what is the most important test to study for. If you're an economist, this is also related to opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is what you are giving up for something else. Let's say I wanted to buy a car that could get me from home to work to school then back home and I didn't want to spend a lot of gas doing so. I could choose between a Prius or a Honda Insight. Let's say the Prius was $20,000 and had 53 miles per gallon and the Insight was $21,000 with 54 miles per gallon. My opportunity cost for buying the Prius is the Insight with 1 extra mile per gallon. My opportunity cost for buying the Insight is $1,000.
Step 4: Studying Techniques
There are many studying techniques such as using flashcards, pretending to teach someone else, or mind maps. Research some studying techniques to help you study more efficiently and implement those to the type of content you are studying accordingly. For my biology friends, flashcards are probably the best way to go since a lot of the content is memorization. For math lovers, practice problems are probably the best way to study for the upcoming test.
Good luck with your studies!!!
