How to Study in college?

Being a college student is stressful, but it's also the most fun and memorable time of your life. To make the most of your college life, you should hang out with friends but also work and study to get good grades.

When you want to leave your college, you want to have both things, good memories and a bright future waiting for you. This must make think about how to study in college and have fun all together? If you're having the same thoughts, don't go anywhere because many tips can benefit you.

Every student's level of understanding and way of studying is different, some students can sit in a cafeteria and prepare for the whole test, and others might find it difficult to focus in a noisy place. You need to discover your style to study in the best way.

Studying in college can become easy and fun when you know what you're doing and when you're using the right ways to do it. Below there are some tips that can help you study better:

1 Before the Class

• Make a Class Schedule
  To have a smooth semester, you need to create a schedule of everything relating to your studies, such as classes, assignment dates, presentations, and tests. Stick to your schedule no matter what; this way, you will be able to manage everything easily by the end of the semester. You do not have to create an extensive and tiring schedule; rest is also important. You be relaxed and not force yourself to do anything when your mind is completely somewhere else.
  Make an easy-to-follow schedule for yourself and be determined to learn. You can choose the medium of your choice for creating a schedule, such as a laptop, notebook, or your phone, and choose whatever works for you.
• Plan Ahead
  When you start planning everything at the start of the semester, then it becomes easy for you to focus, and you're not burdened with a huge stack of the syllabus at the end of the term. Having a good and workable plan can help you study and improve your grades.
  Set yourself a learning goal, like a lecture, ten pages, or maybe just a single page; you can choose it according to your learning capability and spare time you have. Learn a small portion of your syllabus every day; this way, you won't forget your lesson. You will only need to revise it before your exam and not learn and memorize it all over again.
• Keep Up with the Books
  Try to take a quick look at the lecture before the class, and you will see that you're able to get a deeper and better understanding, and it will also help you memorize everything in a short period. When you don't know what is going on in the lecture, it's hard to focus and even harder to understand anything.
  Think about the day after you come back from two days' leave, and you feel like the world has gone upside down at college, and you do not understand a thing the teacher is saying? It's the same thing when you do not keep up with your books, and the only difference is you realize that by the end of the semester, but then it's too late.

2 During the Class

• Be Alert & On Time
  Stay active and participate in your class; this way, you will know what is happening in your class and what the teacher is teaching, which will lead to a better understanding of the lecture and hence quick learning. Coming to class on time and staying alert will help you learn your course better; you will almost learn everything by the end of the lecture.
  You'll only need to read it once or twice after the class to memorize it. Remember, everything has time; you can have all the fun with your fellows, but when it's time for your study, you should focus on it completely. You can relax and hang out with your friends in your spare time.
• Understand the Study Cycle
  To learn how to study in college, you need to understand the study cycle, and it is an approach to studying in a better way. You need to be prepared for the lecture before the class, keenly attend the class, listen carefully, read your notes, review, and check them to learn better.
  These guidelines will help you ultimately; though it may seem quite difficult to do right now, it is not a lot of work; you just need to be in the moment and focus on your work. Your study cycle can be different as well, and as we talked about earlier, it depends on your learning capabilities and what works for you.
• Pay Attention to the Class & Take Notes
  Don't go all sleepy, hungry, or talkative in class; it is easy to get distracted in the class but remember, if you miss one important point of the teacher, you won't be able to understand the whole lecture, which is bad for your grades. Listen to everything carefully and note it down in your own easy words so when you read it again, it's so easily understandable that you do not have to go through all your lectures again to understand a concept.
  When you're listening attentively, you can ask your teacher anything related to the topic, clear all concepts, and know the answer to any confusion inside your mind. Take notes of what the teacher is saying in the lecture, too, because it can be important.
• Don't Be Afraid to Ask Question
  If you do not understand anything, then ask about it from someone. It's better to ask a question during the class so you won't stay confused the entire time, but sometimes when we are rereading the lecture or preparing for a test, a sudden question pops inside our mind.
  In this case, you can ask your teacher the question by testing them or via email, and if you do not feel like disturbing your teacher or do not clearly understand what they were trying to tell you, then you can always ask a friend who has a better knowledge of the subject. When your queries are cleared, only then you can learn the concept and memorize it.

3 After Class

• Review and Reorganize Your Notes
  Always review your work after the class to take a look at what you have learned today. When you review your notes, it makes you memorize and understand the lecture even better. You can also look for any gaps, like if you have skipped some information in the class, but you remember it now, then you can write it to create easy-to-understand notes for yourself.
  You can also take a look at someone else's notes and add the information so that you have all the answers to the confusion. Reviewing and reading your notes will tell you what to study in college and which topic is more important than the other.
• Practice More
  Every one of us knows the proverb, "Practice Makes a Man Perfect" we have been listening to this proverb since our childhood, but only a few of us do it. Everything needs practice; otherwise, you cannot improve; you did not start speaking everything at once when you were little, it took practice and effort, and you grew into it.
  You can't learn anything in one day, and it's the same with studying; you need to keep practicing and revising your work; otherwise, you will forget everything even if you have learned it before. If you want your lectures to stay in your mind like a fresh memory, then you need to keep revising them; this way, you will not forget any topic.
• Be Confident About Your Studies
  Have you ever written an answer but saw someone else writing something else and changed your answer as well, only to know that the answer you wrote was correct, but because of the lack of confidence in yourself, you lost your marks? No matter how much you study, the pressure of exams and watching the question paper can give you chills, and sometimes this confusion and fear can lead to bad grades because even if you know the answer, you are not sure about it.
  To save yourself from such chaos, prepare for your exam carefully and after that, be confident about yourself; know that you do not need anyone to help you; you're no less than your classmates.
• Rest for Yourself
  Do not get so much involved in your studies that you forget to make time for yourself. No matter how busy you are, always take time for yourself, get some rest, watch Netflix, read a novel, go outside or take a nap. Always give yourself some rest and stay relaxed because you cannot study with a tired mind even if you try for hours.
  So, take breaks in-between the studying for better focus and fast learning. When you study with a fresh mind, you can learn everything quickly and get free on time, but with a tired mind, it becomes difficult even to look at the first line, so don't ever force yourself to learn too much.

One effective, colorful, and easy way to study in college is by making concept maps. You can draw them to summarize the topic, or you can make a detailed concept map to understand the whole chapter. The concept maps can be represented as flowcharts, diagrams, tables, and other structures like that.

• Venn Diagrams
  You can draw Venn Diagrams to get a better understanding of the lecture. These diagrams are mostly used when there is a need to see a distinction and resemblance between two topics or two things.
• Flowchart
  Flowcharts are helpful when it comes to getting a clear understanding of the topic. You can draw flowcharts to show a process of something, and they can further expand to explain all the ends of the topic. You can get a clear image and a better explanation with the help of flowcharts.
• Comparative Concept Map
  The comparative concept maps can be used to explain a detailed comparison of anything like topics, people, games, and scientific methods. You can draw them to give an easy yet deep explanation of the comparison.

In this article, we learned how to study in college and improve the style of study to get higher grades. The article also brings about the idea of concept mapping for studying better and in a fast-paced way. If you want to make concept maps, then we would suggest you use EdrawMind for this purpose as it has got a range of templates with amazing options for presentation and lets you overview your work.

You also customize the background and themes for your mind maps to make them look more attractive using this tool.

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