Study Tips for Back to School

With fall weather comes school, and with school comes homework. After being a student for many years myself I have looked into what habits are the most effective for retaining more information and developed a short list.

1. Sleep: All-nighters are proven to be ineffective. You need sleep to convert your newly absorbed information into longer term memory by way of REM sleep. You should study the most important information right before you go to bed, researchers have named this learning method as “sleep-learning.”
2. Food: Just like you fuel up before a work out you should feast properly to prepare for optimum brain power. Eating the well-known healthy foods is always a good idea your body to run ideally, like; vegetables, whole grains, fruits, and plenty of water. Some more specific memory enhancing foods include; oily fish, sage, berries, tomatoes, eggs, and dark chocolate.
3. Exercise: We all know all about the benefits for exercise on the body as reducing stress and releasing endorphins. But did you know that it is suggested to go for a run or lift weights before you sit down to study. Exercising beforehand is known to increases your alertness and mood.
4. Get Help: There are so many resources available to the current student that it is a shame how many students struggle in silence. Some useful websites are Quizlet for digital flash cards, Anatomy Guy for a virtual tour of a dissected cadaver, and Tyler DeWitt’s channel on youtube for chemistry.Study
5. Time: Research has come up with a 24-hour rule for studying, in which a topic learned in class should be reviewed and studied 24 hours after you learn it. With the 24-hour rule 80% of the initial material covered is retained.
6. Self-Test: Re-reading material might be a good way to introduce yourself to the topic at hand but can also lure you into a false sense that you know the material. When you re-read the text, you feel like you know the information because it all looks familiar. Although what you are not using is any recall. Performing self-tests, like flash cards or testing yourself with a partner, is good because it makes you use recall.

Hopefully with these 6 small study tips the new school year will be more educationally productive.
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