Question about one's intellegence

[DarklordKyo]

Fr some reason, my brain is like a barrel with a hole in the bottom. For some reason, despite the fact that I study, it's like knowledge goes in one end, and out the other. Can anyone give me advice on toning down my idiocy so I can stop being a whiny ***** when it comes to my first world problems to forums on the internet?

 

[AnarchistFish]

This isn't really about intelligence, more studying techniques. Change around how you learn. e.g. I never learn anything just by reading my notes, but if I write them out again in the form of spider diagrams and the like then I find it sticks much more easily.

 

[HardkorSB]

I don't go to college anymore but when I did, I always used to shorten things.
A lot of the things in books is just padding. The general idea of a chapter can usually be summarized in 2-3 sentences but the author wants to write a book so a chapter is built around those 2-3 sentences.
Once you've condensed the chapter into that, that's all you have to learn. What do you do when you need mre than 2-3 sentences? The same thing the author did, pad things out.
I once managed to condense a 500+ page book into 8 pages
In case you're wondering if this works, I had full academic scholarship in college thanks to that method.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

I'm having the same problem as you, OP. I literally can't revise effectively. I've tried reading books over and over, flashcards, having friends give me quick-fire questions, etc...but nothing's really worked. Maybe I'm just not motivated enough, since most times an exam comes, I've done fuck all revision and might only pass it based on rambling shit up that sounds a bit smart, but actually doesn't have much substance behind it.

Eh. I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about it. People can study for years and years. If you're bad at a subject, you're bad at a subject. If you don't like a subject, you don't like a subject. It's the unfair way of the world.

 

[Catfood220]

Don't study for more than about 40 minutes. After that time your brain will switch off and you won't take any of it in which is why studying for hours on end is a bad idea. The best idea is to study for a short time, about 40 - 45 minutes and take a little break before you start again.

 

[Pinkamena]

Depends on what you're studying. If it's physics, math or other subjects that require a lot of math, you just need to do a lot of exercises. If it's reading-heavy subjects like psychology, chemistry, biology, geology, etc etc etc, you need to condense what you're reading into snippets of text and write the keywords down. Spider diagrams work well.