How to Study

Avoid Distracting Classmates
The gum cracker. The doodler. The practical joker. The whisperer.
Even the perfume sprayer. Your classmates may be wonderful friends,
entertaining lunch companions, and ultimate weekend party animals,
but their quirks, idiosyncrasies, and personal hygiene habits can prove
distracting when you sit next to them in class.
Knuckle cracking, giggling, whispering, and note passing are just some
of the evils that can divert your attention in the middle of your math
professor’s discourse on quadratic equations. Avoid them.
Listen for Verbal Clues
Identifying noteworthy material means finding a way to separate the
wheat—that which you should write down— from the chaff—that
which you should ignore. How do you do that? By listening for verbal
clues and watching for the nonverbal ones.
Many teachers will invariably signal important material in the way
they present it—pausing (waiting for all the pens to rise), repeating
the same point (perhaps even one already made and repeated in your
textbook), slowing down their normally supersonic lecture speed,
speaking more loudly (or more softly), or even simply stating, “I think
the following is important.”
There are also numerous words and phrases that should signal note-
worthy material (and, at the same time, give you the clues you need
to logically organize your notes): “First of all,” “Most importantly,”
“Therefore,” “As a result,” “To summarize,” “On the other hand,”
“On the contrary,” “The following (number of) reasons (causes,
effects, decisions, facts, etc.).”
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Such words and phrases give you the clues to not just write down the
material that follows, but also to put it in context—to make a list
(“First,” “The following reasons”); to establish a cause-and-effect
relationship (“Therefore,” “As a result”); to establish opposites or
alternatives (“On the other hand,” “On the contrary”); to signify a
conclusion (“To summarize,” “Therefore”); or to offer an explana-
tion or definition.