Study Smarts: How to Learn More in Less Time

7. Be Class-Smart: Go Early, Stay Late

16 STUDY SMARTS LEARNING TIP 7 Be Class-Smart: Go Early, Stay Late The first five minutes of class are the next-to-most important . Teachers rarely jump into a subject without first either reviewing enough to put today's words into perspective, or previewing, summarizing the day's thoughts to come. Some lecturers do both. Grab that opportunity for your own review, or to prepare a tentative outline for the day's lecture. If you jot down the main ideas that are crammed into those first five minutes, they'll be among your most valuable notes. The last five minutes are the most important. The organized teacher uses that time to sum up the main ideas she just covered. Review along with her, and fill in the notes you missed. Often a teacher gets sidetracked and runs out of time. She may jam up to a half hour's content into the last five or ten minutes of the lecture. She may say it quickly and in little more than outline form-but she probably expects you to know it all for the next test. So work like crazy to get down that packed few minutes' worth. Stay after class, if you need to, to finish getting it down. It'll be hard, because people who are less savvy than you will be packing their gear away and putting on their coats, but it usually pays off better than an extra hour of studying. Listening in class is like riding a bike. Once you learn how, it's easy-but only if you stay sharp. If you don't keep awake on your bike, you may hit a pothole or run into a turning car. Most lecturers talk about ten times as slowly as students take notes. That's nine minutes of possible drifting time for Learning Tips 17 every minute of alertness, and once you drift you may miss the next important turn. Especially treacherous are the teachers who speak in monotone or unusual accents, or who mumble or race. The best defense is to sit up front so that you're forced to pay more attention. With foreign accents, decipher the problem sounds at the beginning of the course so that if Prof says, "The georagy of the Apparachians," you can train your ear to translate: "The geology of the Appalachians ." If you know you're not a good listener, you can train your ears by playing records and forcing yourself to memorize the words of songs with as few playings as possible, or by summing up the main points of TV news shows. But the best booster of listening power is the act of taking notes. ...