webhak;48397 said:
I can appreciate that the physics, chemistry and calculus subjects will not be that easy to "power through." However, it is my understanding that the biology courses are mostly about memorization and for the sake of time, I thought a bit of "powering" through the material may be of some value.
Do what you can, certainly. And the more you can familiarise yourself with the material beforehand, the better off you'll be. "Beforehand" means either before the term starts, or before the lecture. Repeated exposure to the material, even if you're not following it completely, helps a lot.
webhak;48397 said:
I am certain that at some point over the next few years, at least once, I will have not had the time to study appropriately and will have to call on all of my Jedi skills
to get the job done with shortcuts.
I wouldn't advise it, but it is possible. But cramming an entire semester of work for exams is highly unpleasant, and yields poorer results. And for maths, once you slip, you tend to miss everything that follows.
A couple of general tips, from a lazy person.
The more senses you use to learn something, the more it will stick in your head. So for example, if you're trying to understand a calculus proof, if you read it out loud, checking yourself at each step to make sure you know how they got there from the previous step, you'll remember it better. You'll feel like a complete fool, but I'm sure that builds character.
Using a GTD approach will help, too. What I mean here is that you should always have an NA of "Do easy bits of assignment/questions/whatever". Make the most of the scant time available with teaching staff by doing everything that's easy before you see them: that way, you can get help with all the hard bits. Most students don't do this: they go along to tutorials without having done anything, and waste that time doing the easy stuff.
Also, much of maths and physics, and probably Chem and Biol, consists of technical terms. My favourite example of this was a Hydrodynamics question in third year: every year, students (including me, when I did it) flocked to the tutors for help. The question was only two lines and one graph, but no-one could do it. When the tutor went through it, we all felt very stupid, because it only required looking up about five definitions, then writing three lines. Easy. But you need to know how to attack, so remember, if a question doesn't make sense, look in your notes for definitions of terms and work from there.
Also, write as much as you can. So many students are reluctant to write more than the barest minimum, and more reluctant to write anything unless they know the whole answer. Don't be afraid: use as much detail as you need to, because you'll look back over it at some stage, and if you haven't explained everything that gave you trouble, you'll have to do it all over again. And start even if you don't know how to finish, and when you get stuck, write down what the stickiness is. This gives you a GTD-like point to resume your work, like a Next Action. It might be "Look up definition of differentiability" or it might be "Ask tutor about properties of esters" or whatever, as long as it lets you resume where you left off.
Also, don't throw away errors. Instead, slash a big line through it, and write down quickly why it was wrong. We learn more from our mistakes than we do from not making them.
That's probably more than enough for now, although I could wiffle on interminably.
Hope it helps.
), I'll be taking chemistry, biology, physics and calculus over the next three years...so these subjects will be a bit of a stretch for me.