College Study Tip #2: Make a Plan
Making a plan for college success is more than jotting due dates in your calendar. It's about working smarter to assist your learning, so you don't have to work harder.
This post is part of a 10-week series on study tips for college students. (Some of these tips apply equally well to high school students!) Look for one top tip delivered to your inbox weekly on Thursdays in March through mid-May.
Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash
We’ve all been there, myself included. You have a test or essay due tomorrow, so you pull an all-nighter to crank out that paper. Or you attempt to cram a month’s worth of information into your head in just a few hours.
But studying is more than cramming the night before an exam. As mentioned in Study Tip #1, even if you’re successful at memorizing facts, approaching studying this way won’t help get you from memorization to comprehension, a necessary first step before you can demonstrate true learning — which involves the ability to critically engage with a topic.
You need to make a plan
College success means embracing more than just “getting by” or “good enough.” It’s about actual learning, so that you can comprehend material and also think deeply and critically about ideas — whether in college or beyond.
This is why the study cycle is the foundation of good study habits. It’s a five-step process that involves taking and reviewing notes on the assigned reading; attending class; and studying in a series of short, focused sessions.
And it helps your brain go deeper — not just memorize facts, but comprehend and engage with ideas.
The same concept of “studying as a process” also works for writing papers. Just like you won’t really “learn” in one night of attempting to memorize some facts for a test, you won’t produce your best work on a paper in a single night. That’s because the best writing doesn’t happen in a flash of inspiration. It happens in revision.
The first time you sit down to write a paper, you want to simply get ideas down. Anne Lammot calls this the “down draft.” (Actually, she used the more colorful “shitty first draft.” But she explains it in her essay as a down draft.)
Essentially, you engage with the creative process by allowing words to flow in a stream-of-consciousness fashion. Then you go back and shape the raw material into an essay. And most of the time, it requires shaping again and again and again.
Any professional writer will tell you this. We don’t spit out brilliance in a single draft. Instead, we get to good writing by reworking our words and ideas over and over and over again — until we’ve said what we meant to say and achieved the effect we meant to achieve.
Even Ernest Hemingway, widely praised as the greatest writer of all time, famously said first drafts are always “shit.”
“Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing … I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times….The first draft of anything is shit.” — Ernest Hemingway
The writing process requires time— time for ideas to percolate below the surface before you ever sit down to write and time to edit and revise.
Photo by Marissa Grootes on Unsplash
How to make a plan
So what does all this mean in the grand scheme of things? To succeed in college, you have to make a plan.
More than just due dates, you must break down every assignment into manageable chunks. That means scheduling study sessions, breaking down essay assignments into multiple writing sessions, and ensuring you have a plan for each stage of the process when it comes to class assignments and projects.
Start with the due date for the completed assignment. But then, use a calendar or planner to work backward. For example, long before the exam date, ensure you’ve scheduled sessions to review reading assignments and concepts. To make it more fun, study in a group. But ensure you’ve scheduled time for those group study sessions in your calendar.
The same goes for a paper. Mark the due date and then work backward. Think about the ground you need to cover to reach a final draft: doing research, brainstorming ideas, writing an outline, writing a rough draft, revising your draft, and revising again. Then schedule in time for completing each step.
If you plan to use academic support services, like your university’s writing center, ensure you have time for that. Then, make the appointment right away so you have a guaranteed appointment when you need it.
The bottom line
More than any other tip, planning ahead may be the most critical key to college success.
First, it ensures you can complete the assigned work. Sometimes if we wait until the night before a project is due to start, things come up or we discover we don’t have time to finish it, even when we forgo sleep. (Believe me, I’ve been there!)
Additionally, planning ahead helps facilitate the learning process by ensuring you’re mastering the material. As a result, you won’t just “pass” exams and courses; you’ll understand the material — the foundation for real learning.
And isn’t that why we all go to college? Not to simply “get by” or pass courses but to learn what we came to learn so we can succeed in our future lives? After all, college is expensive. We might as well get our money’s worth.
Want More?
I have an academic planner specifically for college that I designed with input from college students. You can find it in my Etsy shop, Blue Dragon Swag. As a special “thank you” for being a subscriber, use promo code SAVE50 for 50% off.
And if you forget to plan ahead (or decide to skip this step — hey, this is a judgment-free zone!), see this Cengage blog on how to study if you only have 5, 3, or even 1 day until your exam.
What’s New?
Next week is my university’s spring break. So we’ll be skipping a newsletter next Thursday, March 16. Taking breaks is an essential part of the study process! The brain needs time to rest and “digest.” (It also helps avoid college burnout.) I firmly believe in the importance of breaks, so I never assign homework over the break. And this year, I’m taking my own advice. So go take a break! Have fun, and I’ll see you in two weeks.