Studying for an Essay Exam: Student Writers
Mark Zempel
That's an interesting way to look at writing under pressure or an essay exam, is to think of it as a research paper that you're gonna write, but instead of the library for all the information, the information should be everything that you've learned through the semester. I mean obviously, that's what the instructor is asking you the question for, to see what you've learned over the semester, and you should've gotten all that in lectures

And so in that case the library is in here [points to head]. That's why I find it really useful, to whether, whether even if you think it's the most mundane stuff or not, I find it really useful to just sit with a pad and paper, and take notes of lectures in class. Points teacher makes, as much as you can. Because that's such a good memory exercise for me anyway. Is the act of hearing it and writing it down. Oftentimes if I hear it and write it down, I'm just gonna remember it, I don't even really need to look at it again. But if I just hear it, and I try to think of it later, it's not the same thing, but if I hear it and write it down, it like makes this circuit through your body or something, and it works.

Pat Patterson
The mistake that most people make is they try to review too much in a limited period of time. One of my patients told me once, "You can eat an elephant with a spoon if you take it one bite at a time." So what I try to teach students to do when I teach study skills is to teach them something I call intravenous learning, where they take information in one drop at a time. So if they can learn to read ahead of the lecture, read the information before the professor talks about it, then the lecture is a review. Then they take better notes. If they're in the habit of reviewing the information from the previous lecture right before the next lecture, then they have an understanding of how the materials fit together. If the semester is fifteen weeks and the lecture's three times a week, then there are fortyfive pieces to the puzzle that have to be fit together. The mistake that many students make is they don't understand how the previous piece fits with the piece they just got, so if you keep the information fresh you can see the picture unfold.

Rush Limbaugh
And there's a big difference in memorizing it, and a big difference knowing it. And in my case, even though I started late in terms of formal education. I started on my own crash course in the early Twenties, people say, "How can you remember stuff that happened ten years ago, or fifteen years ago?" And I always say what people said to me when I was in college, if you just study a little bit every night, you'll never have to cram.

Patterson
Then I would recommend reviewing notes from the lecture right after the lecture and then have weekly reviews. That way, the material they learned in week one will still be as fresh as it was in week one, at week seven. And then when it comes time to study…then they will know it. So to answer your question about essay tests…to be able to answer a question properly during an essay test, not only do you need to give the who, what, when, where, how, and why, and the examples…but you need to be able to talk about the materials. And the mistake that most students make is they don't test themselves before getting into a testing situation—to use themselves as a barometer as to what they know or they don't know.