Some Tips on When to Study           

• Make studying a regular part of your schedule.  It should become routine like brushing your teeth or tying your shoes.  For example, decide on times that work for you and your schedule (e.g. 2-4:30 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 8:30 pm-12 am on Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays). 
  
  
• Find times and days that work best for you and allow you enough time to complete assignments on time. 
  
  
• Once you find a schedule that works for you, stick to it.
  

• Use daylight hours: Research shows that 60 minutes of study during the day is the equivalent of 90 minutes of study at night (Pauk 1989).
  
  
• Study soon after lecture: Aid retention and understanding by a reviewing your lecture notes immediately after class.   If you have questions or something is unclear, check with a classmate or the instructor to clarify what you missed; it may be something important that you need for your problem sets and might appear on an exam.

• List and do tasks according to priorities: Remember Parkinson’s Law that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion” (Retrieved from http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/workexpandst.html, 12 January, 2007).  If you allot two hours to read ten pages, it will probably take you the full two hours to complete this 30-minute task. 

• Start long or involved assignments ahead of time:  It goes without saying—avoid cramming and the resultant poor quality work.

• Determine how long you need to study to fully engage with the material you are learning.  The Online Subject Listing and Schedule provides helpful guidelines on the number of hours departments and instructors feel that you need to spend studying in order to effectively learn the material.  You can find this information by looking at the credit units (shown as three numbers separated by dashes), these three numbers added together represent the total units for the class and are divided as follows: 1) units assigned for recitation and lecture; 2) units for laboratory, design, or fieldwork; and 3) expectations for preparation.  NOTE: 1 unit=14 hours of work, so be prepared.

• Plan to study for blocks of time: Generally, studying for one-hour blocks is most effective (50 minutes of study with a 10-minute break).  Shorter periods can be fine if studying notes and memorizing materials but longer periods are needed for problem solving tasks, problem sets, and writing papers.

• Set an agenda for each study period:  Be specific, and plan ahead so that you know exactly what task you plan to accomplish during each study period.