How to study 12+ hours per day without hurting your...

rocomath

He obviously just wants attention, gj feeding it to him.

Lol, couldn't agree more!

Cyrus

Actually, I think hes telling the truth. He has a lot of posts in the math subforums.

ktm

I reviewed the thread and realized there were only a few posts that bugged me. It seems these few posts set the atmosphere for me in this thread. I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression.

I was also bugged that it seemed like posters here were persuading the OP to change his lifestyle. I think it makes sense for the OP to ask a research math professor how much time he or she spends on math every day, as well as a doctor concerning the health issues. I have no problem with advice stated here, and I think it can be valuable, but I don't think he should make his decision off of this thread alone.

I will take some time to criticize one post that followed my own:
"If you need to study 12 hours a day to get a 4.0, that is NOT good. That is mediocre. You ain't smart if you need that much ****ing time. Get real."

This post makes the faulty, rather shallow assumption that he's only studying to get a 4.0. Does this poster not understand the idea of studying for the purpose of learning and doing math? He could in fact be studying materials outside of his classes. He could also be doing problems or chapters in his textbooks that his professors doesn't assign, There are also situations where a student gets permission from the dean to take more than the maximum number of credits allowed in a semester, and hence has an unusually heavy course load. In fact, the entire persuasive power of this post (which merits none) lies in its obnoxious attitude, which combined with a few other posts in this thread could fluster the OP and affect his decision without any good reason. It could also make him feel unwelcome on these forums. IIRC, he hasn't posted in this thread for a while, has he?

I assume someone is going to say that my post had a similarly obnoxious attitude. But 1) my post was not devoid of content like that above and 2) there were only a few people whom I was reacting to in my post, and I apologize to those who felt targeted but were not meant to be targeted.

Coto

The effectiveness of retaining information when studying for long periods of time go down. Especially when you're only studying a single subject. Switching from calc to lin. algebra to analysis to geometry over the course of a day is an extremely inefficient way of studying. Inspiration comes from living in general, and as other's have already pointed out, it yields more harm than good to focus on solely a single thing for day after day, hour after hour.

I'm not saying it's required that you go get a "life". What I'm saying is, if you focus too narrowly on a single thing (hobby), you will be an inefficient learner, and the wisdom that you would normally obtain over the years is lost in the hours of surplus time (which may seem productive, but your mind just does not work as quickly or efficiently when you do this) that you spend per day to study more.

Don't get me wrong. I've finished up my physics degree now, and for a few semesters I was working my *** off just to finish assignments and keep on top of the material each week. I understand how easy it is to become a 12hr study day, but I can't stress enough how much time you are truly wasting when you do this. Perhaps if the workload warrants that you have to do it, then so be it.. but otherwise, get your 8hrs of sleep, enjoy a couple hours of music and entertainment, get into the habit of doing some sort of exercise every day, and you'll find that a balanced day will cause you to accomplish as much studying as you are doing now in half the time.

Saladsamurai

Well, we can't all be naturally brilliant like you guys

mathboy

Ok, over the past week or so I have been enjoyably studying for about 9 to 10 hours per day (outside of class time). What I do is I study from textbooks that I'm not even taking courses in. I don't study just for marks, but to learn. And I would do the same thing even if I wasn't taking any courses. That's why I need so many hours to study.

BioCore

After Reading this post all I can say is keep at it then. I know a lot of students like you who actually did well in school and social life. It is good though that you cut down your study time by a bit, good to take a break once in a while. Seeing a you have an interesting method of studying for math courses, I was wondering: when you say you do all the exercises from the chapter your studying; do you mean you do all the questions from that chapter?

I am required to take one calculus course for my Life Science program, in my first year and I am trying to find a way to efficiently study and get all the theories understood. Some people have told me to do this very thing, as in do more than what is assigned. Would you recommend for someone like me that will only take one math course to also do this, as in do all the questions from a section/chapter?

mathboy

I do every question offered in my textbook, and if I feel I need more, I go into another textbook. Doing every single question takes a lot of time, so do it only if you are willing to sacrifice hours for other things.

BioCore

That is actually one of my main concerns. I want to try and find a way to study efficiently, just so much that I can understand the theorems and be able to use them in any manner that comes in a test or exam. The reason is that this is the only math course I will take in my whole 4 years of university, and seeing as a lot of it I will not be using would be better that I spend my time on other more important courses such as Biology and Chemistry.

bmm9

My desk at home is really small and uncomfortable so i tend to stand up and use my white board when I'm working out problems. If you go to Lowe's, they sell sheets of white board material for $10. The only down side is my feet hurt from this, but I need new shoes. You might want to try to get into some research with other people - it can be fun and you don't feel like the time could have been better spent.

mathboy

I always type out my work and save it, because people always forget later on what they learned. This way I can always review my work later on, and perhaps modify it as I become better.

bmm9

I record my results in a notebook, since typing up work in TeX usually takes too long. I like to keep it neat so I do my work out on the board or on scrap. If you write carefully your notes should be legible, but it tends to take a lot less time to write notation than type it (maybe not in LaTeX?).

Try to make the most of your time. I used to try to do every problem, but now if the problems are just calculations, I'll pick a few, and if I get stuck on something that isn't essential, I'll move on. Also, I used to copy down theorems before I proved them, and copied down definitions before making examples, but now I usually just write "proof of theorem... ", and I only write out a definition if they give it to you in words (to get quantization right).

mathboy

I use Mathtype to type out my work. No coding necessary, and quick keyboard shortcuts available. It's super fast. In fact, it's faster than writing down the solution by hand because you can easily copy and paste many expressions. Plus it's easy to edit solutions when you later realized you made a mistake somewhere.

Werg22

I think it's much better to spend time thinking and fine tunning our conceptions than absorbing raw information for several hours.

mathboy

What do you mean by thinking and fine-tuning conceptions? You mean just reflecting over what you've learned and rereading current notes?

leon1127

This is how i studied when I was taking 31 credits.
Wake up at 0800
drive to school
class until lunch.
drive to other school and have my lunch, meanwhile I do mild reading for the afternoon class.
after class, I study at library for a little.
I go play pool for an hour.
Drive to starbucks and continue my study.
go home and do some bed time studying.

Have you tried go different places to study during a day? Sitting at the same place for a long time is not a very good environment to study.

Now being in grad school, my reading has gotten more intensive and yet study at different places during the day is still a very sufficient way to study for me.

PowerIso

Hmm I guess I just don't see a real point in 12 hours of studying known information. It just seems like you are trying to jump the gun and get ahead really quickly. Slow down and turn some of that study time into research time. I can promise you that if you spent your time researching a topic, it will prepare you better for a future career in academics and challenge your brain more than doing problems with known solutions. Talk to a professor for some easy research ideas. Research it, write an abstract and present it.

Not only will you grow as an academic, but you will also improve your status as a serious learner. No one can really see if you study 12 hours a day, but people can see if you have done research. Use your time wisely.