Don’t think about studying smart
By now, you’ve heard about studying smart countless times. Feynman technique, spaced repetition, mind-mapping, and this list would go on forever. But I’m here to assure you to forget about all this.
(This article will be pretty biased and is my own experience. It’s mainly aimed towards people who are finding it hard to study.)
A little bit about me, I’m just an undergraduate student, experimenting with studying techniques and overall trying to survive through college. I’ve been trying to implement studying techniques and struggling for efficiency. But after all, these, watching online courses for studying, researching methods to study better, I’ve come to a conclusion. Studying smart is just another pain in the ass if you are struggling to study in the first place.
Especially given in these covid-19, it’s difficult to just study. This is primarily because of distractions. House-hold works, youtube videos, TikTok, Instagram… There are just so many of them. And because of all these, struggling to study, thinking about studying smart felt like just more work to do. Imagine this, you’ve watched this online lecture and now you are trying to do the assignment. After you have done these, you have to think about studying smart, by which I mean applying and implementing techniques you’ve learned. These might not sound that much of an ordeal to some of you, but it is to me. It feels like you have to spend more of your brain energy, not only to comprehend your studies and do the hard work but to go over them and do whatever technique you are using(or maybe I’m just lazy).
For people who have been doubting studying smart and struggling through their studies, I think, it’s much better to just study without thinking of all these “study smart” thingy. It’s by no means, I’m saying “studying smart” is useless. I’m just a big fan of one problem at a time. First, build study habits, enjoy your studies and after that, if you are feeling you are not being efficient enough and wasting too much time, learn and apply study techniques. There is no study smart without studying in the first place.
