Joshua Mortin didn’t struggle with study skills or memory in high school. He grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he is currently dual-enrolled in high school and Mass Bay Community College. “In high school,” he says, “my studying habits have been slim to none. I was the type of high school student who was able to pass a test just from listening and from what I remembered from class.”

Inspired by his parents, who both have Ph.D.’s, Joshua decided to enroll in the local community college while still in high school. There, he quickly learned that the expectations of students in college are very different from those in high school. At Mass Bay, Joshua has had to adjust his habits when he found that he wasn’t able to remember the sheer volume of content instructors threw at him. “Two of the biggest challenges transitioning from high school to college were learning to study and time management.” His classes tend to go twice as fast, and instructors expect students to do a lot of work on their own. One of the first steps Joshua took to adjust his study habits was to stop setting aside huge blocks of unstructured time. “I learned that studying for more than four hours straight is not the best for me,” he says. “I need to study for an hour, take a half-hour break, and then study another hour. I realized that after an hour I had trouble remembering things.” By taking breaks to eat, exercise, or watch TV, Joshua knows that he’s giving his brain time to process information and move it from his short-term memory to his long-term memory, a concept you’ll learn more about in this chapter. He also gives himself time to forget the material that he hasn’t quite mastered so that he can go over it again and “overlearn” it.

After finishing high school this year, Joshua plans either to complete his associate’s degree at Mass Bay and transfer to a four-year institution or to transfer right away. He would like to study either mechanical or aeronautical engineering. His one piece of advice to other first-year students is to remember that the first year can be the hardest because it’s so different from high school. “College isn’t a four-year party,” he says. “The first year is going to be the hardest because it’s so different. Just push through it. You’ll find that it all starts making sense.”

You might have learned to study effectively while you were in high school, or, like Joshua, you might find that your high school study habits no longer work. You will need to discover ways to structure your study time that works best for you. Joshua quickly learned that a four-hour study session was too long for him. But however you structure your study sessions, you will need to allocate regular times each week to review course material, do assigned reading, and keep up with your homework. Occasionally, you will also want to do additional (unassigned) reading and investigate particular topics that interest you, strategies that will help you retain knowledge.

Studying, comprehending, and remembering are essential to getting the most from your college experience. Although many students think that the only reason for studying is to do well on exams, a far more important reason is to learn and understand course information. If you study to increase your understanding, you are more likely to remember and apply what you learn not only to tests, but also to future courses and to life beyond college.

This chapter offers you a number of strategies for making the best use of your study time. It also addresses the important topic of memory. There’s no getting around it: If you can’t remember what you have read or heard, you won’t do well on course exams.