Do you spend a lot time on your daily commute to school or college? But finding that this is eating away your precious study and leisure time? The average American is expected to spend about 100 hours a year on his or her daily commute. That is a lot of idle time wasted which could be put to better use. The obvious answer to this is to study on the go.
Don't bring your textbooks
When asked to study on the go, the first thing that comes to most people's mind is to carry a textbook or written notes around to read. The problem with this is that the environment in which you're reading is very different from when you're at the library or at home. Distractions abound when you're travelling which makes studying difficult as it requires intense focus and concentration. There can be any number of factors which affects your concentration such as noise, people talking around you, motion sickness, and discomfort.
To truly maximize the benefits of studying while on the go, you'll need to take creative approaches to studying that lets you absorb more in such an environment.
Prepare in advance
Nothing beats good preparation. Analyze your daily commute and then plan to use different study methods to suit the commuting environment. Figure out how much study time you have (10 minutes? 20 minutes? 5 minutes followed by 5 minutes as you change buses?) and fit your study goals into those time slots. Then break down your study topics into small chunks that can fit into these "study opportunities". This helps your mind to digest the information between the time slots. Remember, when you're breaking down your study topics into smaller chunks you're actually learning to see the "big picture" of what you're studying and how each topic is related to each other so you're not wasting time doing this at home the night before. You can learn more strategies here.
Learn by listening
If you take the public transport such buses or trains, chances are that you'll be unable to read long paragraphs of text comfortably. The light levels might fluctuate, buses packed so you don't always get a seat, etc. If this is the case then you could consider listening to audio recordings such as pod casts instead. You can even create your own recordings that will reinforce your memory retention of your study. Another advantage of doing this yourself is that you'll be able to create recordings that matches your available time slots when you're commuting. Play your recordings in the morning, and repeat them on your way home to further stick the information into your mind.
Read in short bursts
Plenty of people are able to read and send email/SMS while using the public transport, so why not use it as a creative study technique? Flash cards would work well here as you can take it out of your pocket, read up a small topic, put it back into your pocket, and then do some deep thinking about it to commit it to your memory. But since we're lucky enough to live at a time with wireless internet access, why not just use a smartphone or tablet? There are plenty of software or apps designed specifically for these devices that act as flash cards or study aids for when you're on the go. Better yet, the entire resources of the internet is available on your finger tips.
Blog/Tweet about your study!
Another creative idea is to create a blog or twitter account specifically designed to help you study on the go. The idea is that you blog or tweet about your study topics (without referring to your notes) as if you're summarizing the textbook itself. You can use this as an excellent indicator of whether you actually understood a topic. During your commute, think about what you learnt in class and try to summarize it into a blog post. Extra points if you can summarize it into a 140 character tweet! Your friends can then join in to correct or out-summarize you and it becomes a powerful social learning experience.
I hope the creative tips given here will give you some points to think about and help you along in your studies. We're just scratching the surface here as I'm sure you'll be able to think of more creative ways to improve your study skill as you study on the go!
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Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.
(Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, On Philosophy of Education)
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