How to Study

Know Your Teacher
You must know and understand the kind of teacher you’ve got and
his likes, dislikes, preferences, style, and what he expects you to get
out of the class. Depending on your analysis of your teacher’s habits,
goals, and tendencies, preparation may vary quite a bit, whatever the
topic or format of the class.
Take something as simple as asking questions during class, which 
I encourage you to do whenever you don’t understand a key point.
Some teachers are very confident fielding questions at any time
during a lesson; others prefer questions to be held until the end of 
the day’s lesson; still others discourage questions (or any interaction
for that matter) entirely. Learn when and how each one of your
teachers likes to field questions, then ask them accordingly.
How to Study
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No matter how ready a class is to enter into a free-wheeling dis -
cussion, some teachers fear losing control and veering away from 
their very specific lesson plan. Such teachers may well encourage
discussion but always try to steer it into a predetermined path (their
lesson plan). Other teachers thrive on chaos, in which case you 
can never be sure what’s going to happen.
Approaching a class with the former type of teacher should lead you
to participate as much as possible in the class discussion, but warn
you to stay within whatever boundaries she has obviously set.
Getting ready for a class taught by the latter kind of teacher requires
much more than just reading the text— there will be a lot of emphasis
on your understanding key concepts, interpretation, analysis, and
your ability to apply those lessons to cases never mentioned in your
text at all!
Some teachers’ lesson plans or lectures are, at worst, a review of
what’s in the text and, at best, a review plus some discussion of sticky
points or areas he feels may give you problems. Others use the text
or other assignments merely as a jumping-off point—their lectures or
lesson plans might cover numerous points that aren’t in your text at
all. Preparing for the latter kind of class will require much more than
rote memorization of facts and figures—you’ll have to be ready to
give examples, explain concepts in context, and more.
Most of your teachers and professors will probably have the same
goals: to teach you how to think, learn important facts and principles
of the specific subject they teach, and, perhaps, how to apply them
in your own way.
In math or science classes, your ability to apply what you’ve learned
to specific problems is paramount.
Chapter 5
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How to Excel in Class
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Other classes, such as English, will require you to analyze and
interpret various works, but may emphasize the “correct” inter -
pretation, too.
Whatever situation you find yourself in—and you may well have 
one or more of each of these “types”—you will need to adapt the
skills we will cover in this chapter to each.