The most underappreciated, yet most effective, study technique that saved my degree
In 2020, I was wading through the depths of the Borneo Jungle. It was hot, dark, and scary. Impossible to find my way through. I have also sometimes referred to this jungle as completing the third year of University online during the peak of a COVID-19 lockdown.
Dramatic for sure, but how else could I allure you to my bad writing?
The year was like a mental jungle: desperately clambering within a mental fog; ever-more difficult deadlines; work constantly looming around the corner, pressing on my neck constantly, just like tigers hiding among the trees.
I was at a wit's end, so I reached out to my sister, a medical grad and doctor asking her for advice. She scored in the top 10 out of 200 medical students in her class and did her post-doc at Oxford. All I needed to do was think about her achievements to put me in my place.
I thought I would be getting some advice on how to study, some specific techniques, and the ultimate productivity hack that was going to help me organise my weeks and days with astounding clarity. A light to help me wade through the fog.
"Study with friends"
Studying with 1-2 other girls for her entire degree was the most important factor, she said, to her success. Upon hearing this advice, I was equally as surprised as you might be.
"But where is the advice on how I can punish myself with endless time structuring and busyness?! 😖"
However, I wanted to share this advice and my experience with studying with others. It's advice rarely given, which is precisely why you shouldn't click away so quickly, looking instead for the ultimate productivity tool kit.
Rather I will argue a study partner can help you more than any specific technique in 3 important ways:
- Greatly improve your own understanding of the subject by (A) providing feedback on your understanding and (B) forcing you to explain something to someone else
- Save you masses of time
- Help you enjoy the subject and - ready for a scary piece of advice - make you a little bit happier
This final point is so key that it affects your grades and the entire experience in a downstream way.
I will tell the story of how I used a study partner to get the highest grades in my exam ever, cut down my studying time by half while receiving top grades, and have the most fun of my entire degree. If you like the sound of those things, you might find something useful here. Let's do it
Others push your understanding more than studying alone
In my third year of university, we had to do an exam where we wrote a 2000-word essay on Personality and Social Psychology (even if your subject is not essay/writing-based, I will give general principles that could apply to all studying)
We were faced with having to prepare multiple essays for 1 subject, in the hope of demonstrating 1 during the exam. Playing the classic game required by exams of learning lots of material only to immediately forget it afterward. Terribly useful for the future.
I sought out a friend with who we discussed we might experiment with trying to save some time and improve this essay writing by collaborating.
For the next 2 weeks, we managed to prepare 5 different essays, taking weekends and evenings off, and both got high A's in the exam.
Why was it useful?
Others provide feedback
We focused on a mock-specific essay question, and right at inception, we met to discuss how we would answer it.
Rather than I try and complete this full essay by myself, I tried to come up with an example structure, and then explain this to my friend - highlighting my ideas for what example topics might be that I would discuss.
This provided immediate feedback. I had no idea what I was talking about!
As soon as I tried to explain my answer to another person, I was greeted with the ever-so-joyful silence on the Teams call and a look that I could only describe as pained and confused.
My attempt was wrong, but we were in the game: I knew more clearly where there were gaps in my understanding.
It's harder to get feedback studying alone. You do your work, be it technical, creative, or otherwise, in solitary and only have a rough sense of how you are doing; studying with someone gives you the opportunity to try and explain your understanding of the subject.
Without having someone tell me where you explain stuff poorly, and hence where you don't understand the content, it's easy to fool yourself into thinking you understand your material.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
- Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize in Physics
By interacting with other people, and trying to share your understanding, you come to see quickly how much you really understand, versus being stuck in your musty room (I would not want to smell your room during exam season) bashing your head against a keyboard or notebook.
Explaining to someone else is the ultimate level of understanding
We spent respective sessions doing the work to try and get a grip on essay questions, go and meet back and try and explain our answers - therefore, we were constantly assessing our own understanding by trying to explain it to the other person and pointing wholes in their argument to do the same.
This is deeply valuable for any subject because it gives you constant feedback which continually reinforces where you need to direct your learning next, while your partner allows you to pull you more along and push you to explain it better.
This brings me to the second point.
Studying with others can save masses of time
Time can be saved in 2 important ways
(1) Directing study efforts
Firstly, as the previous points tried to say, badly, time can obviously be saved by using others to direct where you should study next, based on where your explained understanding is poorer. And, by expediting the understanding process too through teaching others.
But I know you'll be sick to death now from me hitting you over the head with the study-partner-improved-comprehension stick by now. Plus, learning with people might sound too revolting for you, because of course you are far too smart to try and get help from anyone else and don't want them to steal your precious ideas! I've been there too, and don't worry, we are never smart enough to actually explain those ideas well enough for someone to steal them.
(2) Using another's resources and thinking for your own understanding
Rather than focusing on the same topic, same academic paper, or resources consecutively, I and my partner sometimes focused on different areas. For instance, we had a similar question in mind, say "what studies are there on twins and personality?" and we could go off and find different papers and review them ourselves.
We could then come together, discuss the different stuff we found, and then go back off and understand each other's separate work and bring it to our own essay.
But isn't that cheating Mr. Oscar? University is about independent work, not copying off others!
Well done. You know how to read your course syllabus warnings of cheating well enough that you are deeply afraid of even sharing the title of your coursework let alone your work (barbaric!) with someone else.
What I am not suggesting is that you copy each other's works. Of course, collaborating on something like a hard science such as maths is more difficult because you get to the same endpoint. For writing-based subjects, your professors don't grade you on your ability to find literature or have loads of sources.
They grade you on your ability to utilize these sources and express your own thinking. Your study partner can act as a means for reducing the workload of getting to this point, and finding stuff you might not have found normally.
Don't be stupid and copy one another's work exactly.
Try as you may, I am also not blameworthy when if you do get caught cheating (although I'll happily take the royalties if you execute any advice well.)
We did this by making sure we never used the same writing. We both wrote our stuff but had some similar main ideas which we articulated differently, along with our own individual points that we could argue better ourselves anyway.
Of course, this sounds seamless and foolproof. However, we had several angst-filled calls seeking reassurance about whether we would get caught for cheating; what he said there and what I said here, and if we had similar writing. It's not a risk-free game compadre, but if you just focus on sharing ideas rather than specific work, you can try and reduce anxiety
Just a tad.
Studying with others is Fun
Finally, and I think one of the most important points, studying with someone is that you can simply enjoy it more.
When you get talking with somebody and allow ideas to flow you can get this feeling of not being so in your own shell and studying being such a chore. Because you're having a bit of fun! You're laying out ideas and talking about them, challenging each other to do better, and if it's with someone you like, doing it with a friend
Let's be honest, studying full-time, just like working, is hard enough as it is. It can be lonely - spending days at a time locked at a desk powering through the material with no accompaniment other than the grains at the bottom of your coffee cup; or your own sad tired expression staring back at you in the reflection of your screen when you flip between tabs or shut down your computer when you've decided its sapped the last bit of life out of you.
We know that expression more than we know anyone else.
So why not seek those opportunities to - dare I say - have a little more fun in our degree? It doesn't take away from how hard University is for us, but it can certainly make the ride a bit smoother. A bit easier on ourselves
Perhaps you don't go so rigid with the studying techniques I suggested with a partner - I didn't, especially for subjects where collaboration is more difficult. Even just talking through some ideas with another persona and reviewing some class content is still super-fun, even if it's not deeply focused on a course outcome.
The act of being around another person, with someone who is struggling equally, allows you to confide in a certain way that you don't get along. It allows one another to share in each other's pain.
Days before our final exam in 4th year, me and my friend were studying together, with only 4 days to prepare for an essay. We were both a bit fucked. Hadn't done as much as we liked. And we did work together, and help each other with what we could - and that was great.
But, what was more rewarding than the collective brain power was the acknowledgment that we were screwed together. It gave comfort to know someone else was going through it with us.
Being with other people, we get to share that drained, upset face of ours with another and whine to them rather than ourselves.
Go on, my fellow over-thinker. Don't feel you need to be on this journey alone. There are things that a friend and fellow student going through it that you, nor a professor, can offer. Be brave and seek help. Savor those times for all the fun it can be.