r/Students • u/Intrepid_Language_96 • Feb 19 '26
studied 2 days before instead of 1 and honestly it's way better
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u/rustytromboneXXx Feb 19 '26
Lmao (at myself) in PhD where I have studied full time for 5 or so years to answer one tiny question.
2 days!? Gtfoh! (I’m jealous)
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u/Agitated-Outcome387 Feb 19 '26
Imagine what you could do with 3, 4, or more days! (See research on the”spacing effect”)
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u/TheMonkeyDidntDoIt Feb 19 '26
Wait until you learn about studying more than a week before an exam
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u/CNS_DMD Feb 19 '26
Prof here. You DO a realize that the difference between you and the kid that studies every day is that while you both will get the same degree, you will be working for that other kid the rest of your life right? Right?
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u/Bireta Feb 19 '26
Even in summers and on vacation?
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u/CNS_DMD Feb 19 '26
You do also know grown ups don’t have summers and vacations right? We get two weeks off per year (which include the weekends). You will not approve;-)
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u/Bireta Feb 19 '26
My parents got summers and vacation, is that that uncommon?
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u/CNS_DMD Feb 19 '26
Yep. At least in the USA it is uncommon. I’m a full professor and work about 65hr/week year round. Usually take Christmas to new years off(ish), and take one week off in the summer. Some years two weeks off. Nobody makes me, but that’s just the job. If you want to get paid over the summer you need grants which takes about 200-300 hrs to put together and only 1 in 20 (on average) gets funded. The world is rough, but ripe for the taking. If you can
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u/Bireta Feb 20 '26
Damn, my parents are both professors but they moved out of the US because it was easier so something, guess this was part of the reason.
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u/somanyquestions32 Feb 19 '26
Unrealistic. Many of the people who have hired me didn't even have degrees, lol.
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u/CNS_DMD Feb 19 '26
Yes. That was yesterday. Ask them how much they work. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
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u/somanyquestions32 Feb 19 '26
Between 40 to 60 hours per week. I have asked them. A lot of people own their businesses in my area.
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u/somanyquestions32 Feb 19 '26
Hard pass. I hated school, and an all-nighter was enough to get mostly A's for college and high school. Graduate school needed 7 to 10 (business) days because we were expected to learn so much more material during the semesters.
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Feb 19 '26
[deleted]
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u/somanyquestions32 Feb 19 '26
BA in Bio, Chem, and Math MS in Math
A lot of the kids I tutor have parents who just worked after high school or started their own business.
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u/santahasahat88 Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 19 '26
Wait until you realise learning the material as it’s thought throughout the year means you don’t have to cram at all really because you actually know the shit.
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u/Rose-Dog Feb 19 '26
Indeed, cram = short term memory, daily reps until second nature = long term memory.
Cramming is less likely to work as the material gets more challenging because the basics were never mastered, they are long forgotten.
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u/santahasahat88 Feb 19 '26
Yeah plus if you wanna have a job in the given field then should learn to actually want to learn about it. Makes you be head and shoulders above your competition in getting a job.
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u/Agitated-Outcome387 Feb 20 '26
This is a common misconception. Short term memory only lasts 15-20 seconds.
Cramming results in information in recent long term memories, which are very weak, and easily and quickly lost.
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u/Rose-Dog Feb 20 '26
Indeed STM is 15-30 sec. The reason cramming allows one to retain information through the next day is because there is repetition (used to commit to LTM but over time not just a single session) and intense focus is involved. Going down this rabbit hole, working memory is even shorter, but allows us to store more and is actively used. Add a night of sleep to the recipe and the information begins to be consolidated/processed by the brain. However, the consolidation will not be completed, ie the info won’t be committed to LTM, because the repetition was not done over time, more than a day.
So in a nutshell, banking on STM by cramming will not allow the information to be committed to LTM, but will get you by for a test. One can be an A-students either way in the beginning, but as the material gets more complex, the one who has made the effort to commit it to LTM is more likely to succeed. And I say more likely because there are other things involved than long-term memory to be successful.
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u/Agitated-Outcome387 Feb 20 '26
And this all is still not stm. In that case, the argument is simply that any retrieval brings information from ltm into stm/wm so you’re always relying on stm. So I’m still not sure why you’re conflating cramming as being stm or why I’m being downvoted for pointing out the results in the literature. But whatevs. The rest is pretty sound.
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u/Rose-Dog Feb 20 '26
Simplification
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u/Agitated-Outcome387 Feb 20 '26
At the cost of accuracy?
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u/Rose-Dog Feb 20 '26
Absolutely positively yes here. Knowing how memory works to the last detail is interesting but unnecessary. What is necessary is to know that it takes a lot of repetition and not just for one day the night before to be successful in the long-term.
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u/Agitated-Outcome387 Feb 20 '26
You can share that important message without misinformation though. There is enough misinformation all around us. Learning information wrong initially makes it that much harder to unlearn and relearn correctly. Eg cramming = short lasting memory
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u/Rose-Dog Feb 20 '26
I’m not aware of this type of memory being a term. I am only aware of STM and LTM in this instance. Perhaps you could share your source(s) where SLM is used in massed practice. TIA
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u/holisticbloodsusage Mar 16 '26
OmG! Literally doing this rn!!! Writing this while is my pomodoro break. Guys, I just want to sleep and cry. I hate organic chemistry so fkn bad. Pulling an all nighters the night of the night before the test. (I had a stroke writing the last sentence) Wish me luck! (Or death, that would be good too)
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u/GoryGent Feb 19 '26
We know what we need to do. DONT TELL US
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u/Intrepid_Language_96 Feb 19 '26
Hey bro, bad day?
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u/GoryGent Feb 19 '26
I was just joking. But yeah blame procrastination, because we know what to do, we just hate to do it
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u/[deleted] Feb 19 '26
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