Studying may be a difficult task. You can do everything right, including buying yourself treats, carefully planning your time, ensuring your room is well-ventilated, and having your chair properly adjusted for your back, and still feel like you're counting down the days until the end of this study period, or until you leave school, or – quite possibly – until you retire. So here's the question: how can you make studying not just bearable, but enjoyable? Many individuals gain this talent only when they enter university and begin studying a subject they are passionate about.
When you're still studying things you dislike and wish you never had to study again, you have to enjoy yourself despite the subject, not because of it. You could grow to appreciate the courses you despise now, but it's unlikely to happen while you're preparing for exams. Here are some of our favorite methods to have fun while learning, regardless of the subject.
Everything is more fun when it's put to music you enjoy, which is why this is a classic study tip. Others people have the ability to focus even when listening to songs with difficult and intriguing lyrics; some even can complete an essay while singing along. Before you begin searching for your favorite music, think about if you are one of those folks.
Be careful; you don't want to wind up writing anything like, "The importance of this soliloquy in Hamlet is that it indicates how Ophelia has flown from the other side, I must have called a thousand times..." Even if you're not aware that your music is distracting you, skipping a song that irritates you or spending a long time trying to locate the ideal playlist might eat into your study time more than you realize.
However, if you can make this advice work, it will be quite beneficial. For the most part, music without lyrics is preferable. That doesn't have to mean Mozart - film soundtracks may be entertaining and motivating, and you can believe you're in a training montage while studying. A solid soundtrack also lasts a long time, decreasing the amount of time you'll have to spend locating the perfect tune.
Puzzles, quizzes, and flashcards are all study aids that make use of the fact that we learn better and are more motivated when we play games. Have you ever spent hours on Sporcle attempting to obtain perfect grades while the task you're meant to be doing goes unattended? Then you'll understand how breaking something down into a measurable and achievable goal makes it a lot more enjoyable.
The type of game you make will be determined by your hobbies and subject matter; for example, history lends itself better to a lengthy 4-hour board game than statistics, where you may instead apply what you've learned to real-world events like sports. It may take longer to come up with a game than it does to play the game, but as long as you're engaged with your subject and going over what you need to learn as you go, it'll be worthwhile.
It's a bit of a minefield studying with pals. It may be inspiring and beneficial since you can discuss ideas that you would not have considered on your own. Or you might wind up having so much fun that you don't get any homework done.
Turning studying into a game with friends could well be the ideal method to mix learning and fun for the maximum amount of both if you can make it work (possibly if you have one extremely rigorous buddy in the group who keeps you all on track). "Invent a game and play it with your friends" is a prescription for wasting far more time than doing the same thing alone, so keep it simple.
One option is to use quizzes and treasure hunts (where you obtain the next clue once you've worked out the solution to an exam question). If you're looking for a more difficult game, consider a study-themed truth or dare, in which your pals ask you adequately difficult questions for the 'truth,' and if you can't respond – or get the answer incorrect – you must undertake a dare. Just make sure that daring doesn't appear to be a better alternative than attempting to solve the problem. You might make study-related dares; for example, if you can't come up with a quotation to support a certain argument for truth, you must write two paragraphs centered around that point for the dare.
Are you an aficionado of stationaries? If you are, you will know: If browsing in Paperchase appeals to you more than browsing at Topshop; if the pleasure of browsing in Paperchase appeals to you more than the thrill of browsing. If you have more blank notebooks for use on some future special occasion than full notebooks that weren't quite exceptional enough to keep, August is the time to get new materials for September.
If you have a desk full of beautiful pens, pencils, notepaper, notebooks, stickers, and who knows what more, now is the time to put them to good use and enjoy them. If using a nice fountain pen seems like fun, go ahead and use it; it's not a good idea to use it on the exam, but forcing yourself to slow down while taking notes while studying could help the material soak in better. If you use stickers to cover your notes, you'll be more inclined to revisit them. After all, why bother accumulating gorgeous stationery if you're not going to utilize it when you have crucial homework to do?
One method to get your mind around any subject with tales and characters — Theatre Studies, English Literature, and History are obvious examples – is to pretend to be one of the characters and roleplay as them for a time. What kind of meal would Henry VIII order? What would Marianne from Sense and Sensibility do with your living room? Would Othello be delighted or dissatisfied if he was abruptly placed into your body?
Unless you consider walking from your room to the library and back, studying might get monotonous because you don't get a change of scenery. Sunburn, glare on laptop displays, and ants may all make studying outside in the summer difficult, but if you can locate a shaded area in a garden or park, it can make the whole process feel less stressful, as well as make you less envious of others who get to enjoy themselves outside.
You might be anywhere in your house if being outside isn't an option. Although we do not recommend taking your laptop into the bath, you may read a book or textbook there. Because some people learn better by association, you could assign different subjects to different rooms and make sure you study in each one. After all, if it helps you learn, nothing is ridiculous.
It's important to pace yourself during studying, just as it is when working out at the gym. Don't demoralize yourself by taking on more than you can do; instead, take things slowly and steadily, taking regular pauses to ensure you can endure the long haul.
Isn't that, however, really boring?
It's not a good idea to push yourself to do stupid things in the gym because you risk long-term harm. However, you are not going to shatter your brain because you attempted something too difficult. If you're bored to tears going over the same notes and concepts – but you have to study them, so you're stuck with them - attempt to find motivation by turning it into a competition.
You may test yourself on how quickly you can compose a two-page essay or answer a Math problem in three-quarters of the time allotted. Don't make the challenge insurmountable, but making your studying difficult enough to need adequate brain engagement can assist to make it less boring.
Countless tunes may have been composed to assist you in your studies. Consider the Elements song by Tom Lehrer or Flanders and Swann's First and Second Law. Not just through the final piece, but also through the process of writing your poetry or song in the first place, putting anything into rhyme, or setting it to music aids much in remembering it.
If songs aren't your thing, try something different like creating a cartoon or writing a novel. This might be a comic that depicts a certain historical incident or a tale whose ending is based on a specific physics concept. You'll have made a valuable study tool and had fun doing it if you include some puns and wordplay on tough subjects to make them simpler to recall.
If despite all of the above, you're having trouble making studying enjoyable, you can at least make some of the time you spend studying enjoyable. To keep your studying marathon from becoming overwhelming, load up some episodes of your favorite TV program, figure out how to break down your favorite pastime into manageable portions, or plan a brief catch-up with some pals.
If despite all of the above, you're having trouble making studying enjoyable, you can at least make some of the time you spend studying enjoyable. To keep your studying marathon from becoming overwhelming, load up some episodes of your favorite TV program, figure out how to break down your favorite pastime into manageable portions, or plan a brief catch-up with some pals.
The high-pressure period of preparation for examinations has few advantages. One of them should be that you can be foolish whenever you want. You're already looking stupid if you're running around the home singing Chemistry songs while pretending to be Henry VIII, so don't worry about it. Finally, if instructing a sock puppet on the doctrines of major global faiths or eating nothing but Brie for lunch helps you focus better on the French language, go for it.
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