I'm a decent student and have been my entire life. I go to a good school and I genuinely love learning. However, I don't know how to study, and I'm terrified.
As a kid, school came easy to me. I did my homework on time and absorbed information in class like a sponge, and that was enough to get by. Because of this, I never learned good study habits, nor did I learn about what works for me as a student. Whereas some of my friends frantically made flash cards and studied them for hours, briefly using Quizlet right before class was enough for me. Even AP exams were easy as long as I read Crash Course and watched a few YouTube videos the night before. And, as the years went by, everything seemed to be review. Those of us who can get through high school like this develop an unproductive smugness. We thrive off of knowing the correct answers, getting 100% test scores, and accumulating meaningless academic honors.
When it's time for college, though, we learn brand new material with which none of our prior knowledge will help. Everything we learned from thirteen years of schooling gets thrown out the window and ignored. We have little to no background information and we're thrust into a void of confusion, all encased in a four-page syllabus and weeks of torment. Midterms arrive and we're stuck in a seemingly endless loop of rereading chapters, furiously highlighting everything, and ripping our hair out in hopes of retaining at least a tiny bit of course content. Finals are another story.
The problem is that good students, often high-achieving college-bound students, get coddled when they can easily retain spoon-fed information without having to study. As a result, they generally don't learn how to study at all. We go off to college and struggle with critical and analytical thinking because we didn't need to think that critically or analytically before. And it's embarrassing. I'll admit that I feel so ashamed when I don't know the answer or when I can't understand something. What's worse is that I have trouble admitting when I need help and consequently suffer alone in silence.
During my first semester of college, I avoided office hours like the plague. I thought I was capable of doing everything myself and that I fully understood the material because that's how it always was up until college. This mentality stayed with me during second semester. And then I got a C+ on a paper in a class that was not even applicable to my major. I was so frustrated. But I was also naive and arrogant, and my grades and my overall college experience suffered.
Finally, I flipped the switch. During my first semester of sophomore year, I began to go to office hours more frequently, I asked questions when I needed to, I learned how to read more efficiently and effectively, and I became more engaged in my classes. I developed great relationships with my professors, and even though my course load was the most challenging and demanding so far, I ended up getting the best grades I had ever gotten.
Okay, I still am not entirely sure how to study, and that is terrifying. What shouldn't be terrifying, however, is the very prospect of asking for help. What shouldn't be terrifying is feeling like you don't know anything. If you knew everything, why would you even go to college in the first place? College is the time to realize that you actually know nothing and to fix that.
What's the solution? Humility. Seek help when you need it. Admit defeat and learn from failure. College is full of helpful resources, but only when you actually use them. Of course, everyone is different. Everyone studies differently, everyone experiences college differently, but a healthy dose of humility is a great first step. If you free yourself from that rut of excessive pride from high school, you'll greatly benefit from realizing when you need help. You'll discover how you personally function as a student, and maybe even learn about who you are as a person along the way.
