It would be very helpful if you can give me some tips on how to study well so it pays off. I do study but it looks like my studying doesn't help on tests.
Having recently gone back to school and taken a lot of science all at once, as well as doing a lot of teaching extracurriculars and now working as a math/science tutor charging $60/hr... I tend to see studying through a lens of three layers
1) Understanding -- this is where you sit in class or read the material, attentively (but passively) *receiving* the information, using just enough brain power to 'get it' ... Although you may forget it by tomorrow, you understood it at least once.
2) Understanding and Memorizing -- this is where you choose the important information and repeat it to yourself in whatever way you choose---writing, self-talk, etc. The key here is not only understanding the information, but understanding it with *spaced repetition*. (There's some science on good intervals for remembering things... e.g. learning it once, then 15 minutes later, then 30 mins later, a day later, etc. But you really have to learn yourself here and know what timing is best for you. Personally, I try to nail something down immediately in class, then reacquaint myself with it several days before a test, then the night before, then immediately before. That's not the most effective, but it's my compromise with my procrastinating self.)
3) Understanding, Reorganizing, and Memorizing -- this is the most complete level of understanding. It's what professional schools are selecting for and trying to nurture in their students. You need to be able to take the material in whatever way it was presented to you (from whatever lecture or book), see for yourself an overarching context/meaning/importance of each topic, then reorganize the information *into that system you created*. Then, once you've got your own kind of organization set, you get to work on memorizing it through spaced repetition.
3 continued) There are many different ways to reorganize any given load of information. Sometimes you can be very concrete or visual---like organizing organic chemistry reactions by categories based on what their starting materials are. ("Here are 5 things I can do with alkyl halides!") Or you can be more abstract---like organizing said reactions by the mechanisms. ("Here's are some different ways a substitution nucleophilic bimolecular might unfold depending on different solvents, nucleophiles, and leaving groups.") It's up to you to chose the one your curiosity points you towards. The simple act of reorganizing makes information so much more available to you by linking it all together, rather than each tidbit being compartmentalized. At my school we had walls in the science building that were dry erase from floor to ceiling, and my friends and I would fill the wall with an entire semester's worth of information in some sort of organization we happened upon together. Not only is the information linked by a system, but it also gives everything a visual geography that just meshes with human memory better. If I was sitting at a test trying to remember something, instead of just trying to remember a random isolated fact to help me through a problem, I would see that wall in my head and try to navigate to the right information by concept or just visual memory ("hmmm I need to replace this molecule with this molecule, and that requires a such and such kind of reaction which we had on this half of the board because it was a complicated carbonyl reaction, etc. etc.)
Basically my advice can be summarized by saying: take good notes, but don't just make them a copy of what you received in class. Find an overarching system of organization (which often requires further studying beyond lecture and *gasp* reading the book), and *reorganize* your notes according to that system. Then give yourself several spaced opportunities to remember all of it. (Also make your notes visually intuitive so you can more easily *see* information and relationships in your head later on.)
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But you can't divorce motivation from the picture. That third level of studying takes energy. It takes motivation. A lot of your motivation will depend on more permanent things about yourself... like your ingrained self image, what station in life you were raised to expect, who your role models are, etc. For example, a huge part of my self-image has been my dad's level of medical success and the learned assumption, since I was young, that I could outdo anyone in school if I felt like it. So regardless of how dearly I may want to be a dentist currently, I also have a compulsion to do well on anything that reflects on my intelligence, lest I lose that part of my identity upon which I lean fearfully. That sort of thing motivates a lot of people in school, for better or for worse.
But, there are also healthier, more learnable forms of motivation. I went back to school May 2014, started and finished all my pre-reqs and then some by August 2015 with a 4.0, then studied for the DAT in 3 weeks and got a 23. What was my motivation? I got my first degree in 2012 (in music with average grades). When I graduated, I found out that life wasn't going to hand me things anymore, my dreams weren't working, I had no real employable skills, and I was trapped in dysfunctional relationships. All those things compounded all at once in 2013/2014 and I promised myself I'd never go back to that place. I had the chance to see a lot of people go before me, the life choices they made, the places they ended up at, etc. That was a huge motivator. And when I went back to school, my perspective was totally different. Suddenly school work seemed like a rare and interesting opportunity (especially compared to "would you like a receipt today?"). And suddenly a lot of my classmates seemed lazy and childish.
That time outside of school was invaluable to me, and if you can't find it within yourself to buckle down and study, I would suggest you go spend some real time away from school completely and see how mind numbing can be the average unskilled labor and/or customer service positions. You may find yourself content in that rat race. Or you may find you have the moxie and savvy to climb the ladder of society without acute/concrete skills or accreditations. I discovered that my talents would probably be best expressed through such qualifications, so I went back to school. We'll see if it pays off tomorrow.
