In the age of lackluster learning tools and depressing levels of literacy, I found myself in the treacheries of academia, searching for guidance that didn't come with a subscription on how to learn tactfully. Similarly to how Charlie describes Reading in this course: learning a skill that is difficult yet immensely enriching and additive once you get through the valley of disappointment. Many of the study methods most students use, despite putting forth lots of effort and energy, are ineffective. Re-reading your notes and highlighting passages won't save you for exams. At the same time, many proper strategies are discussed there, with 3 key takeaways that apply to every form of learning, from SAT Prep to military prowess. Active Recall, as described, is just actually doing the thing, testing yourself how you will be tested come exam time, playing your instrument, training for your sport, or, in the case of this class, active reading. By testing yourself consistently despite the horrific difficulty this poses, you will almost immediately become well acquainted in comparison to just re-reading text you rushed to write with 4 hours of sleep in the first place. Testing is key in everything that we do or want to improve at to interrupt the natural flow of forgetting.

Next is interleaving; it sounds complicated, but it's as simple as mixing up the examples you encounter. When facing a new problem, it's easy to approach it linearly. Still, the discomfort of handling different pitch speeds in the same batting session, reading books of varying length, or working through various math problems shapes your overall understanding. The last and most confusing to understand, in my opinion, is Spaced Repetition. Studying daily, thankfully, isn't helpful; you need to separate your study sessions to allow for natural forgetting that you will interrupt when you review. What this does is essentially slam things into your long-term memory. To make this all actionable, let's walk through a day together. You go to an intro to psychology class; instead of just taking notes, have questions from that lecture you can reference, or, if it's online, make your own questions based on the book materials. Review those questions in different contexts presented to you, and begin spacing out your study sessions. Over time, you will have encoded the information so profoundly that the test day is a joke; it's just more questions you've already been doing. If you haven't had this book, it's life-changing and better than any productivity guru's advice, thanks to the research that underpins it. I actually want to go back and read it to get a better sense of some of the ideas I haven't engaged with!