Learn Your Way: Maximizing Study Sessions

Michayla Stephens
Nov 5, 2025
5 min read

In a day and age where education is becoming more and more rigorous, with Cambridge, AP, IB, Honors, and other advanced classes becoming the norm, an increasing number of students are finding themselves being forced to become the next Kay Chung to study and succeed in their classes. While the TikTok-famous, inspiring dental student’s method works well for her and others, other methods may be better for you and allow you to study and succeed in a way that is more suited to you.

To get the most out of your study sessions, it’s essential first to make sure you know where to start. It becomes exponentially harder to study when you don’t know what’s going on in your classes in the first place. To ensure that your study sessions are actual study sessions and not you learning content for the first time, attend your classes and be actively involved in them, take notes, ask questions, and attend office hours and/or tutoring to understand content that you don’t know.

After you’ve got your foundational knowledge, the next important thing for pre-study session practices is to create a proper schedule and environment for studying.

Go into your studying sessions with a quantitative plan. Are you going to study for a certain number of hours, until a specific chapter, or until your bowl of ice melts? Having these parameters holds you accountable while also ensuring you don’t overexert yourself. When planning your study sessions, you should also incorporate breaks to prevent burnout. You should also get into the habit of rewarding yourself when you hit a goal! Whether it's with a sweet treat or hanging out with friends, achieving your study goals and sticking to your schedule is a significant accomplishment that deserves to be rewarded. It is also important to note that your study schedule should be consistent. You should dedicate a particular time of the day, every day, to your studying. Consistency is key and helps prevent burnout and feeling overwhelmed by your studies.

When creating a study environment, it should be free of distractions, and it’s essential to recognize that distractions can include your study buddies. At the end of the day, you are responsible for yourself, and if having others around to study may distract you, it’s crucial for you to recognize this and take appropriate measures!

A big part of studying is note-taking! However, writing your professor's presentation verbatim isn’t the best way to take notes, even if it may be the easiest thing to do.

When writing notes, always read what you’re writing first. This may seem obvious, but it’s very easy to fall into the trap of just writing the words that you see. Actually taking the time to read and comprehend what you’re seeing is the first step in learning and is crucial for identifying any questions you may have. If your professor tends to speed through the presentation, always opt to read and listen to the presentation and take notes on your own time to ensure that if you have a question based on what you’ve read or heard, you have time to ask it!

As aforementioned, when it comes time to write your notes, don’t just write what’s on the presentation. Writing your notes in your own words increases the chance of you actually remembering what you wrote. Writing in your own words encourages active learning, rather than passive copying, and builds deeper understanding. As Physicist Richard Feynman said, “If you can’t say something in your own words, you don’t understand it.”

Summarizing is also another essential tool in note-taking. Not only does it encourage you to write things in your own words, but it also promotes your understanding of the key concept by eliminating things you already know, extraneous details, etc. Understanding key concepts is most helpful for tests and exams, which is why a summary can be so important. Summarizing and writing notes yourself can promote your ability to connect different concepts, which helps with tests and exams, and ensures that you understand a body of knowledge, not just a ton of disconnected facts. To cite the words of another famous Physicist, Albert Einstein, “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Summarizing helps you know the simple components of a concept, promoting true, lasting understanding.

Speaking of writing notes, it is essential that you actually write your notes. Even though typing can be more efficient, writing promotes understanding and memory. As found by the BBC, taking notes by hand promotes recall, learning, and increases the chance of information being stored in the brain. When writing notes, using sticky notes, highlighting, and other organizational methods is essential. These tools promote connection between ideas, ensure easy accessibility of information, help share information if you like study groups, and improve information retention.

So, you’ve gotten the information from your class, written it all down in your notebooks, and you are now ready to study. “What method should I use?” is the next big thing to tackle. This is a loaded question, as everyone learns and processes information differently. However, here are a few popular, research-based methods that can help!

Born from combining his own ideologies with those of Einstein is the Feynman technique for studying. This technique can be applied in four simple steps for any concept.

Pick your topic. Try to make it as specific as possible using subsections of a chapter or unit.
Teach this topic to someone else as thoroughly as you can.
Review your source material and identify the gaps in your “teaching”.
1. If you have gaps, reteach the lesson until you eliminate them.
If you don’t have any gaps, refine and simplify your “teaching” to ensure you understand the concept thoroughly.

Created by Francis P. Robinson, an educational psychologist at the Ohio State University, the SQ3R method is a 5-step method that can be used to boost studying and your in-class participation.

Survey: Read the text for a general overview.
Question: Make questions about what you just read.
Read: Actively read/research to find the answer to your questions.
Recite: Summarize what you just learned in your own words.
Review: Go over your notes/reading to reinforce what you’ve learned.

While not defined methods of their own, individual study habits that are useful and can be combined with other habits and techniques are:

Active Recall:
- Utilize flashcards & practice quizzes to actively engage your mind and identify any weaknesses you may have.
Interleaving:
- Mix different subjects or topics in a single study session, rather than studying one subject.
Pomodoro Technique:
- Study in focused, timed intervals ( 25 - 40 minutes) separated by short breaks to prevent burnout.
Mind mapping:
- Visually organize concepts and their connections to each other.

While dedicating a consistent amount of time to classes, note-taking, and studying can be demanding, especially when juggling sports, jobs, extracurriculars, and family commitments, it is essential never to give up. Education truly is a gift and is responsible for increased life expectancies, improved quality of life, and so much more. If your education ever starts to feel like too much, remember that you aren’t alone. Your professors, counselors, administration, friends, and family are at your side, and it’s essential to let them help you when you need it. If you get a bad grade on a test or even a class, it’s important to remember that it isn’t the end of the world. Give yourself time to be upset, then pick yourself up, analyze your mistakes, and try your best to change and do better. Never give up!