How To Learn And Have Fun (At The Same Time)

Posted on Jun 8, 2010 02:43:00 PM

For some unknown reason, tutors love giving endless exam materials for us poor students to learn in a short period of time.

Being sure that I am the most talented student ever, I used to think that if I read the whole material once (without bothering myself too much) I would do great on the exam.

So, before an exam I would just open my books, turn on my favorite music, put a bar of chocolate by my side and started reading. The time I spent reading was very useful, because I managed to make a few important phone calls, thought of what I was going to wear the next day and analyzed the past week.

Somehow this proved to be wrong, because at the exam I found myself unable to remember a single word from what I was supposed to learn. So I realized that my perfect learning concept was not that perfect after all.

Being the most talented student ever, I decided to find out what was the problem and moreover, how to solve it.

I thought I read the material, but in fact, my eyes ran over it, while my mind was busy with completely different stuff. This is not a thing to do. When reading something, you should think of what you read. Text is not just a string of words somehow connected to one another. Those words have a particular meaning, which is sometimes quite difficult to understand.

I developed my own technique of reading and understanding things. I first try to understand what the author meant by a certain sentence. Then I try to connect that idea to my life. It makes it more clear, and it’s also a great memorizing technique. When you link some information to your own experiences, you are sure to remember it.

Another good way for me to understand and remember things is by imagining what I read in colorful images– sometimes I even make up whole stories of what I learn.