Year: 2015

Consider a Study Group

Jonathan Golding Studying , ,

Getting all your studying done can be a real drag, but one way to make it easier is to join a study group. Here are some reasons why you might want to consider studying with others at least some of the time.

1) A study group can test you on the material. You can test yourself, but maybe you’ll be tempted to get a bit lazy about this—moving to the next item when you feel sure you know something. It’s easier for someone else, like a classmate in a study group, to be tough and make sure you have the right answer before moving on.

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2) Most students don’t have a very regimented study schedule, only studying when they feel they have the time, and therefore missing or avoiding studying. When you’re in a study group, your schedule is strictly determined. If the group meets on Tuesday and Thursday at 9 PM, then that’s when you are going to study; you can’t keep rescheduling your study time and get off track.

3) A less obvious benefit of a study group is that you can compare your notes with those of other members of the group to make sure your notes are complete. During class, it’s easy to miss important material that might be on the exam because you were thinking about something else. In your study group, it’s unlikely that everyone missed the same part of the lecture.

4) You can discuss the class material with those who think differently from you and who each bring unique strengths to the group. Your classmates may understand certain things better than you, and be able to explain them to you. This will make your study session go faster.

5) In a study group, you will have to clearly explain things so that everyone in the group can follow. Because others depend on your ability to explain things, this will push you to thoroughly learn the material.

6) A study group can help build friendships. I always preach that college is a time to grow intellectually, but also a time to grow personally. You can get to know others as you learn material and hopefully become good friends with them—and the friendships you make in college can last a lifetime.

In closing: I understand that some of you only want to study by yourselves. Please consider what I have said, and think carefully about your decision. For some of you, studying with others can really pay off.

Get Your Sleep!

Jonathan Golding Uncategorized , ,

During my 27 years of teaching, I’ve often looked around my large class (400-500 students) and seen a student sleeping. I’d prefer that they were awake, but I still have some sympathy; college demands a lot of work, which can lead to staying up late reading and studying. As if this wasn’t enough, some students work outside jobs, are athletes, or participate in other activities like music. At college, sleep is in short supply.


This means that it’s important for you to get enough of it. On average, college students need to get about 8 hours of sleep a night, but the research shows that undergrads sleep 1-2 hours less than that. Staying up late on school nights and sleeping late on weekends messes with students’ internal clocks and makes the little sleep they get even less restful.

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According to the National Sleep Foundation, lack of sleep leads to poor health. Less sleep can:
1) Increase stress
2) Contribute to acne and other skin problems
3) Lead to aggressive or inappropriate behavior, like being impatient or angry
4) Cause you to gain weight because of unhealthy eating habits
5) Heighten the effects of alcohol and possibly increase your use of caffeine and nicotine
6) Weaken your immune system and therefore contribute to illness

Lack of sleep can also hurt your performance in the classroom. If you don’t get enough sleep, you’ll have a tougher time paying attention, which will make it harder to study and learn material for exams. On top of this, lack of sleep will make taking the exams themselves harder—if you’re even able to get there on time. Too many students have come to my office, out of breath, saying that they were up all night studying, fell asleep, and failed to get up in time to take an exam.

If you want to have fun in college and also succeed in class, get enough sleep. Don’t avoid sleep by using caffeine and nicotine. These are stimulants, which means that they might help you stay awake in the short term, but don’t make you any more rested. Also, alcohol might help you fall asleep quickly, but your sleep will be disrupted during the night. Finally, manage your time as well as you can, so that you won’t even feel like you need to stay up all night.

By getting enough sleep you’ll feel better in both body and mind, continue to enjoy college life, and get good grades in your classes.

Tips for Taking Multiple-Choice Exams: Exam Day

Jonathan Golding Taking Exams

When the day of a multiple-choice exam arrives, there are some very helpful test-taking strategies you should keep in mind:

1) When you first receive the exam, give it a quick look over and make sure to read the instructions. As I said in my last post, you will hopefully already know how many questions will be on the exam so you won’t have to take any time figuring out how much time you should spend on each question.

2) Answer all the easier questions first. This lets you spend more time on the harder questions. If a question is hard, skip it for now, and make a mark on your exam to remind you that you need to come back to the question after you finish all the easy questions. If you do this and are using a Scantron or other kind of bubble sheet, make sure not to mark in any of the bubbles for skipped questions.

Hand completing a multiple choice exam.

3) If you can, try to think of the answer to a question immediately after reading it, before reading any of the possible answers. Then, look at the answers and see which one matches. This makes alternatives like “all of the above”, “a and b” or “none of the above” easier to answer. For example, if none of the answers you generated match the choices given, except for “none of the above,” then you know which one to pick.

4) You can make educated guesses based on the following: (a) answers with absolute words (e.g., “all”, “never”) are usually incorrect; (b) answers with qualifiers (e.g., “some”, “generally”) are usually correct; (c) correct answers sometimes repeat some of the terms in the question; (d) partly true and partly false answers are incorrect; (e) if two answers are opposites, only one is likely correct; (f) answers with unfamiliar terms tend to be incorrect; (g) if two answers mean about the same thing and there is only one choice, both are probably incorrect; and (h) just because an answer sounds correct, it doesn’t mean it is correct (e.g., “operatic” is not the same as “operational”).

5) Review the exam. Research pretty conclusively shows that changing answers leads to correct responses. So don’t immediately rush out once you complete the exam. You have time left, so use it to check your answers.

6) Don’t try to guess what the instructor had in mind when he or she made up the exam. Just because an “a” answer hasn’t appeared for a while, this doesn’t mean that one is about to appear. Overthinking in this way leads to errors. Your time is better spent just answering the questions.

Good luck on those multiple-choice exams!

Please note that the comments of Dr. Golding and the others who post on this blog express their own opinion and not that of the University of Kentucky.

Image credit by Alberto G. on Flicker.  CC by 2.0.