I am in high school (Italy), and i have always had serious issues with studying. I literally cannot focus into anything for more than 5 minutes or so, before my vision gets blurry and i just stop understanding what i read. And because Italian schools decided to be unique, i need to study subjects i have no interest in, like physics or latin, which are basically impossible to get into my head. I tried many methods, namely: taking regular breaks, going somewhere without any technology, studying with friends, watching videos, listening to music; but it never worked out, i’d always just drop the topics I’m studying, and i’m kinda jealous of those who study 30 minutes and get the best grades, because i can never get to what they know even in infinite time. What can i try?
No one taught me how to study and I struggled for a long time too. Universities are getting better at it, but high schools still aren’t great in my experience. It is worth spending some time reading about how to study well. It pays off to spend a few hours studying about how to study, and then all studying will take half the time and stick better.
Learning scientists have some fantastic resources that really helped me. Their advice can take any form that works for you: make notes, make flash cards, learn and try to teach your group of friends, make exam questions for your friends.
It is important to see when you are not using these strategies. Understanding a topic and making notes yourself is one thing. Just seeing something online and copying it directly is absolutely not the same. Understanding a topic and teaching it to friends is good, just hanging out to waste time and skim through material and skip the parts you didn’t retain is no good.
The other thing to get around procrastination is to plan out so you know what you’re going to be studying. This makes is more manageable than thinking in your mind “I need to do all of physics”. Instead it becomes “of I could just read the 1st law of thermodynamics today”, then it’s a lot less of a scary mountain to climb. The school syllabus maps out your learning for you.
Part of the challenge is getting your foot in the door. If you’re struggling to start then start with something you can face without scaring you. “I’m going to read this specific topic for 20 mim today” is a lot less likely to scare you away than “I need to study for 8 hours today”. The process builds on itself. Once you start, you’ll find it’s not scary and easy to carry on. Once you know a couple of things and build on that to learn the next thing, then it is quite satisfying for it all to start making sense.
Good luck. It’s not easy. But intelligence you’re born with really doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is if you’re willing to work. There’s no such thing as people who study 30 min and get straight A’s. This is a myth people like to propogate to make it look like innate genius… It’s bullshit.
The amount of studying is dependent upon the percentage of the information a person retains per repetition. The average person requires 8-10 repetitions to remember 90% of the information for most subjects. Some only require 1-2 repetitions (rare). Some people require 30+ repetitions. These repetition amounts are not always uniform across different types of learning. So the same person can require 20 repetitions to learn a new word, but understand a math concept in a single pass.
Why this matters:
Well designed educational curriculum starts out with 8-12 repetitions built in. Then gradually shifts to less in-class repetitions with an expectation for the student to complete repetitions on their own (studying or homework) aka study skills.
For people with a higher level repetition requirement, learning study skills early on in the process is required for success. They often get very early intervention to help them acquire these skills.
For the average student, they are usually taught study skills in a gradual manner as the repetitions in class are reduced. This is part of the curriculum and “homework” design.
For people with a lower number of repetitions, they often don’t learn any study skills at all until college/university level. This is when the student is expected to do all of the repetitions after less than a single pass of instruction in class. These students usually breeze by classwork with “no studying” at lower levels only struggle when they eventually need to learn how to study.
I second this, but this post reads a bit messy imo.