How to study Biology?

Biol­ogy is not that hard. It is just about read­ing fast, under­stand­ing deep, mem­o­riz­ing, and mak­ing notes. Obviously, everybody knows this. Yet, many peo­ple, includ­ing me, cannot do these sim­ple skills effi­ciently. Then, how do the smarts study and be flu­ent in this sub­ject? As I said, the answer is those four skills.

Because I am also a non-supersmart-geniustic-student, I want to write this arti­cle to myself as a cat­a­lyst for study­ing and as well as to my fel­low stu­dents. lol.

Time is Gold!

Read­ing the Table of Con­tents is Important!

My study­ing skills were totally wrong because I never paid atten­tion to the guide­lines — the con­tents. I know that those table of con­tents are there to guide me what chap­ters and what sub­jects I am read­ing on, but I did not know their real importance. So far, I just ignored them and started right on the chap­ter title and first para­graph. Now, I real­ized that the table of con­tents are so impor­tant because they give me a blue­print of the chap­ters, save my golden time. When I read the table of con­tents, I can draw what sub­ject realates to another, and what prop­er­ties belong to another. I now think the con­tent as a map of the book. With­out a map, it is hard to find what I really want to find.

Some of the law stu­dents in Korea, for exam­ple, mem­o­rize all the con­tents because they have to read and under­stand and even mem­o­rize some parts of hun­dreds and thou­sands of pages in a year or two.

Read Fast and Briefly for once 1/3 

Do not try to under­stand the mate­ri­als! For the first lap, just read and be com­fort­able not with the sub­jects but with skim­ming. I know it sounds not so smart, but trust in your­self and me so you can con­quer study­ing before try­ing another method and fail in this time­less sit­u­a­tion. It is because we, as a students, need lots and lots of con­fi­dence; read­ing the whole book ahead will give a heck of a con­fi­dence against the final, midterm, chapter exams; so, Skim the book through briefly.

** Don’t for­get to start from the Table of Contents!

Under­stand Deep!

Read very Thor­oughly in Sec­ond Read­ing 2/3

Although it takes time to find the knowl­edge, I can­not find the trea­sure inside the book unless I dig deep. I could start by read­ing the whole book after know­ing the content, yet I might not under­tand any­thing out of it. Then, how do I under­stand the con­cept thor­oughly? As I said, dig the holes and find the trea­sures. Dig­ging, as far as my what I am mean­ing, is read­ing until I get the con­cept. I do not have to know how to explain here or have to mem­o­rize, but I need to have the con­fi­dence of know­ing the mate­r­ial. I should be able to say, “I know the mate­r­ial even though I can­not explaing to you per­fectly right now.”

Read and Read and Read

Some of the con­cepts, even it is the sec­ond read­ing, are hard to under­stand. Yet, read­ing over and over again will give you the answer. It’s that sim­ple. Oth­er­wise, there are so much sources out in the inter­net. Use’em.

Note, Sum­ma­rize!

Briefly or with your own taste, make a note­book which sum­ma­rizes and notes what you really have to know. Write the note­book as you are mak­ing a cheat sheet for the exam; write clearly, with short­ened details.

Mem­o­rize!

There’re sev­eral ways to mem­o­rize things such as vocab­u­lar­ies, con­cepts, etc. If I have fol­lowed all these steps, I would not need much effort to mem­o­rize things, thus, I read and read more the sum­ma­rized note­book. Yet, if there is no time to make a note­book, “How to mem­o­rize med­ical ter­mi­nolo­gies effec­tively; pre­fix, word roots, and suf­fix?” will give you some choices to use effectively.