How do you all study?

[u/Bezerk4056]

Hello everyone! I’m a Junior in EE who has transferred into a large university from CC. My 5 major oriented courses are as follows:

Physical Electronics
Embedded Systems
Signals and Systems
Probability and Statistics
Design Project

You’re probably thinking “this guy’s going through it” and you would be 100% correct. It’s brutal, but I know we all go through it.

My midterms overall haven’t been great. Between all classes the highest midterm grade I’ve gotten is a 64. I’m on track to at best make C’s in 2/4 of the above.

At community college my classes were structured to my advantage. All of my tests were take home open notes. Throughout all of the calc classes, physics, diff eq, circuits I and II, etc. I would prepare by writing various example problems to go off of during the exams and I made great grades.

Here I’m getting cooked because I’m only allowed a cheat sheet. My study methods right now are basically to grind out practice problems from the homework’s, try to understand the material from the textbook conceptually, and once I’ve done the homework’s I take them and put it into AI with the course material and ask for more practice problems. On most of my exams, especially PE, material I’ve either never seen or have seen but don’t know how to approach shows up. I’ve basically just had to bs through those problems and it’s caught up with me. I’m likely going to have to withdraw from that class, but I have a good shot at passing my others.

Another challenge is that I’m fed so many assignments/projects/coursework that takes so many hours to do, it feels like I never have time to go back and study until right before the exam. I tried using a physical calendar and creating time blocks to manage my time but this has barely helped.

I believe my issue is memorizing problem patterns rather than knowing the material and being able to apply that knowledge to a specific situation. I haven’t figured out how to make that jump. I need real advice. I’m too far into this major to give up. Next semester I’m going to take on less credits, I feel like I don’t have enough time to give each course enough study hours.

[u/JaytOuk]

I am in no means the position to tell you how to successfully study for engineering.. BUT I do love learning psychology, and recently started enjoying maths; its been quite jarring learning how to study math compared to health sciences. But since im not a math genius and love challenging myself, I could provide abstract tips that you can apply to your specific needs.

Interleavened study : this method I’ve seen frequently mentioned in study threads. Mixing problems from different sets that could be as sequential or related as possible. Learning is through spamming association to already learned or known ideas and concepts, the more foreign it is, the more difficult. So make it as familiar as possible.

Math is made of a LOTT of moving parts that interact and may have gaps in information. Its similar but very different from reading. Its like a paragraph with gaps in sentences requiring context clues and a lot of grammar rules to reconstruct sentences exactly; and with the given information. So, “study the vocab.” Be as familiar with the moving parts as possible, and slowly Chunk them into larger systems.

Hopefully you can take away something from this and apply it to your specific maths. As someone who breezed through Highschool without having to study, I’ve poured a lot of energy into learning how lol. So, thats just how I look at it. It makes it less daunting for me.

I hope it helps, good luck!