#they’ll have them all read and thoroughly annotated by the end of the week

[veinsfullofstars]

📚 Quite the haul at the Library Turtle today, huh? 📚

(ID: Kirby series fanart of young Meta and Para Dee excitedly dashing by on a grassy plain, each carrying a tall, haphazard stack of colorful library books in their arms, eagerly looking forward to a long weekend of reading. END ID.)

Started 01/07/25, finished 01/08/25. | Childhood Friends AU Masterpost

[biopsychs]

Do you have any tips for learning on your own? I have a professor who is TERRIBLE, so I basically have to figure everything out myself, and I’m stressed lol

First of all, sorry for the late reply I was away for a few days and I wanted time to write a proper, helpful response :)

I definitely feel your pain. I had a horrible prof for introductory microbiology (and I love microbiology so much), so bad that his highest rated review on rate my prof simply says “run” . Buuut I made it through the class with a lot of self-learning and ended up with a decent mark!

Use any resources available to you at your university.

My TA for my microbiology lab was able to clarify some concepts for me (even concepts we only covered in lecture) and recommended some youtube channels that she used for understanding microbiology when she was an undergrad. 

Also, my uni has a math and science centre where students can go for tutoring and some course unions (e.g. chemistry course union) have upper year students hold office hours. Check and see if there are similar resources available to you!

Go to office hours and talk to your prof!

If they’re skipping from topic to topic in class or brushing over complicated concepts, ask them for clarification/help and try to give them constructive feedback (some profs are ridiculously oblivious and may not know they’re not allotting enough time for certain concepts). Try this even if your prof seems unapproachable – my microbiology prof was unnecessarily rude to students in class but apparently in office hours he was like a different person and was great at explaining concepts to students one-on-one.

Talk to students who have taken the class with that prof before.

If they’re really nice they may have old study materials they can lend to you. At the very least they’ll be able to tell you how they approached the class (and if their approach actually worked), outside resources they used for studying, how the prof tests, etc.

Use your time efficiently

I rarely ever skip class (maybe only a few times a semester, including any days I’m sick) but I ended up only going to maybe one microbiology lecture a week. This worked because my prof posted all of his powerpoint slides online. His lectures were a waste of my time because he would only read directly off the slides and he would go through ~100 slides all filled with writing during our 90 minute lecture. Even though I wasn’t going to lectures I would get up in the morning and study microbiology for at least the entire time I was supposed to be in lecture (basically just don’t treat a skipped class like free time, treat it like study time).

On the other hand, I attended every lecture and did quite well in my evolution and ecology class, whereas most people I knew skipped class because they found the subject boring and blamed the profs for their poor mark. Trust me I did not find the class too interesting either but going to class, putting in the extra effort to pay attention, and typing detailed notes with examples was worth it. Not going to class and taking textbook notes would have taken way more time and even then I couldn’t be sure that I had notes on everything we covered. If you find a class boring, sit in the front so you have to pay attention to the prof and sit with people who aren’t going to distract you.

^^So that’s two examples of when going to class is helpful or not helpful. I don’t know your specific situation so just do what you think will work best. When in doubt go to class (you can study on your own later). If you don’t go to class there’s no way to remedy that.

Make sure you prioritize! For some classes, the midterms and final are weighed so heavily compared to assignments that it’s better to put minimal effort into assignments and put more time towards studying (this also depends on the nature of your assignments – if the assignments help you understand lecture material then put the time in; if they don’t just get them done well but quickly). But if you have a class where a lab or term paper is worth a significant amount of your mark, put the time into that because it will help you boost your mark.

In terms of learning on your own,

Use your textbook and other resources

Before class, skim the chapter to get a sense of what you’ll be learning, get familiar with any vocab words, and review any concepts mentioned that you have learned in past classes. After class, take detailed textbook notes to supplement what you learned in lecture and draw out any important diagrams.

Alternatively, take detailed textbook notes before class and annotate them in lectures (highlight emphasized concepts, add anything new your prof mentions, star anything you still don’t understand). Whatever you end up doing, try to have a full set of notes within a day or two of class (you don’t want to just be adding info from the textbook to your notes a week later when the content is not fresh in your mind).

Also if your prof is all over the place and you’re not sure how to organize everything, use the textbook headings as a guide. The nice thing about textbooks is that they’re already organized in a logical way.

If your textbook is not written well or just makes things more confusing, you can always try to find another textbook for the subject. You can buy it or see if you can access it through your university! My uni’s library website allows me to access research journals and studies but I can also access some online textbooks that are normally hidden behind a paywall.

Use Quizlet! Quizlet is a website/app where you can make and study flashcards. Make your own or see if students in your class/past students have made flashcards. Also try searching for your textbook because a lot of universities will use the same textbook so students from other schools may have made flashcards sets as well.

In terms of resources available online, it really depends what you’re studying for (feel free to send me another message about what you’re studying for and there’s a chance I may know of some specific resources). Khan Academy and Crash Course cover a lot of subjects in their videos.

Record lectures

In my experience, a lot of bad profs simply go through content too quickly or test on things they’ve only mentioned once in lectures. If you can, record lectures so you can listen to them after class and add any info you might have missed.

Take good notes

This is kind of a given but I still find myself surprised sometimes when I see how disorganized other people’s notes are. This doesn’t mean your notes have to be pretty (although they can be), they just have to be functional. For me this means a typed study guide for each chapter that includes material from lectures and the textbook. I bold important/unfamiliar words and use one or two colours to emphasize certain things (if you type your notes you can do this on your computer or highlight a printed copy of your notes after). I bold and highlight anything my profs mention in class about tests (things like “this would be a good question for the final” or write down their answer if someone asks them how a concept will be tested [i.e. multiple choice, written answer]). Also make sure you include examples for concepts – if an example didn’t make sense in class, figure it out and write it down in detail. Organize your notes for each chapter in the same way (e.g. don’t change around colours or heading styles). Studying for finals is so much easier when you don’t have to worry about reading miscellaneous textbook sections to understand a concept

Form a study group

Chances are if you’re having trouble with the class/prof other people are too. Form a study group with people from your class and try to meet once or twice a week (I also want to add that it usually works best to only have a few people in a study group; too many people and you’ll all get distracted). Study a bit on your own before so that you have the basics/easy parts down and then work through understanding more difficult concepts with your study group. Go through your notes and any practice questions together, draw diagrams out on a whiteboard, and just be there for each other.

Also make sure your study group consists of people who won’t bring you down. Some people just want to constantly complain about something and this may only increase your negative feelings towards the class and therefore towards studying.. Yeah the class might suck and you can vent about it sometimes, just make sure this isn’t hindering your learning and studying.

Even if you can’t form a daily study group, try to study with friends before a midterm or have a group chat where you can all ask each other questions.

Don’t study last minute – make sure you have a solid understanding of new material learned each week

If you know your class is going to be difficult, don’t let yourself get behind! By the end of every week (or weekend) you should have thoroughly studied all the new material covered in lectures that week. Sometimes a class seem more difficult than it truly is if you’re trying to learn new material without understanding the old material (also review old content throughout the semester b/c it’ll help you remember content much better when it comes to studying for finals).

Anyways I hope that was helpful! If you have any more questions please let me know :)