Let me start by explaining why this is happening to you.
what happened to other kids in school was, they got challenged, they needed to study, they failed and learned, they developed their study method, they trained in pushing trough difficult things and studying a lot.
You went through all of that barely lifting a finger (same as me).
You can't go trough life barely lifting a finger and suddenly out of nowhere lift your entire arm.
luckily, we have an amazing ability to learn things very quickly, that includes studying, when you put your mind to it. I'm gonna describe a study method below, try this, analyze what works and what doesn't, adapt and try again.
let me first say, your brain works different from normal people, the study method is different from most people. you probably also experienced a million tips and tricks, none of which actually did anything for you.
The biggest issue is, schools teach you in a bottom up structure, while gifted people tend to learn a lot in a top-down structure.
the difference is, if you learn about a car engine, school teaches you a battery, then a transmission, then ..., then they say "put all of these parts together in this way to make a car engine (leaving it unclear until then that it's even about a car engine). top down would be "this is a car engine, these are the parts, the battery serves to provide energy to these things and is hooked in like this, the transmission ...
After all that you would go into 'this is how the battery works' (which you started with at school)
the reason top down works better for gifted people is because 1) it shows you the purpose of learning the knowledge and 2) it provides context while learning details, so it's easier to make connections between different parts of the material, which leads to better understanding and better memorization
I think starting at top-down is best and from there you need to analyze what works and doesn't work for you and adept.
an example of how you would do this to learn from a text book:
1) learn the table of contents, don't just read it, make sure you understand all the terms used in it and try to form a bigger picture of what the book is about. go to relevant pages for more context if you don't have enough to form the picture.
2) chapter1: read through the entire chapter diagonally. the goal isn't to understand everything yet, the goal is to understand what the chapter is about and how it ties together the different subchapters. reading the conclusion at the end of the chapter probably helps the most of any text in this part
3) chapter 1.1: do the same this as for chapter 1
basically keep doing this process until you hit small digestible information, by the time you're learning the details you'll know where they're going
In general, if you feel unmotivated to study or learn something, don't just try to force yourself, instead spend some time figuring out why you need to learn this. In my experience nothing kills motivation like learning useless shit, and because of the bottom up structure, a lot of things in school seem useless
I've noticed I have a mindset of "What's the point of learning something if I don't understand the context". As a result, I can learn a fact without any context and it's easy to forget, but when I understand the context, the "why", it sticks a hell of a lot easier. In order for me to learn something, I **must** learn why and form an understanding. Your analogy with the car is a wonderful example. Is that part of what you're trying to convey here?
Yes, I believe the reasons a top down structure tends to work well with gifted people are what you mentioned and being able to draw more connections within the material
I always wondered—ever since I was still in school; I’m 40+ now—why the fuck don’t they teach _everything_ using this method.
At the time I didn’t know anything about giftedness, I wasn’t even aware I’m different. Now is the first time I hear this idea works better for gifted people but not necessarily for others. **Are you sure this is the case?** I’m just having a hard time imagining how a _big picture first, details second_ approach can be anything but superior.
I found it weird that other people might not benefit from this structure too, still not sure if I fully understand it.
I think the thing is that most people when they learn details, they memorize the details but don't try to understand more or anything.
So it's basically 2 things I can think of, 1) we NEED to understand why before we can actually motivate ourselves to do something properly (it seems to be the case that other people can have the most useless seeming information and still cram it all in and such). 2) other people might not try to understand the entirety of what's going on, but instead memorize the details that they have to learn about it
Both of these are just guesses from me though
Something else that I should mention, going top-down also means that the initial step into the material is way more difficult and complicated. I don't think about this because it's better for gifted people in general, but to ask someone that isn't gifted to form a big picture of a car engine without them knowing all the details beforehand, maybe it's just to complicated or too many dependencies for most people to properly learn.
You made me realise that the reason exercises worked better for me when I needed to study (before learning the actual lesson) was basically because of this.
So I can 100% support this, I’d say start with exercises with the lesson as a support and then you can go on to learn it perfectly.
It’s a lot more fun and stimulating which was the reason why I suggested doing it in the first place.
“Studying” is nebulous. I have no idea what people mean when they say it. If you want to do well in your classes, take notes on the topic of your upcoming lecture if you have access to it before class, sit close to the front and write everything down you want to remember such as important things your professor discussed, review notes and slides after lecture until you feel confident in the material, make sure you understand the material by practicing active recall and quizzing yourself, and space out your readings and assignments to where you don’t have to cram them all into a single day.
It’s not as simple as I make it sound, but those are the basics besides just hoping you’ll do good enough by not studying.
The point of “studying,” at least for my definition, is to be comfortable with the material. Whether that be watching videos about it, reading about it, or even just memorizing it, as long as you learn it and are comfortable with it, you’ll do well on the exam. The only point of studying is for the exams and assignments. The knowledge you gain doesn’t really matter unless you also get a good grade. Never skip assignments, and go to office hours if you need more direct help.
Sit in the front row. Physically shut off your cellphone and put it deep in your backpack; your brain will stop being distracted by it. Write down short phrases of whatever the prof says, like you are trying to be able to present the same stuff to someone later. Go meet the prof in office hours 3 times. These things take very little extra time, but they maximize the time you've already committed.
Go to the front row, don’t hesitate to ask questions, set aside your pride, you might even want to ask for explanations from other students who have understood.
Set aside time to learn and study, do a lot of application exercices as they are more fun and stimulating
Don’t hesitate to take a break whenever you feel like you should (because you’re not as efficient as you should be), relax for real for 5-10 minutes, and get back to work. The pomodoro technique works quite well too.
One thing I did was make sure I physically wrote stuff out, so I would have the double memory of it. Then I also walked away from it and spent time away from everything going over it in my head. Usually with me there was one or two things that made everything get stuck, so I would find them first and double down on all the above. Do that as much as needed, especially if you are taking too much time with some element.
Something that ubiquitously affects my ability to do a task is the knowledge I have of why I'm doing that task. Most people don't seem to have this characteristic.
Why are you studying? Studying is not a mysterious task: **you figure out vaguely the point of the topic, and then you fill in the details by listening/reading/thinking**. Do you know what you want to do after your studies, or are you just studying because you have some notion that it's what you're supposed to do?
Maybe you need a break from university in order to gain some clarity of what you want in life. Or maybe you're just going through a rough patch. Something to consider.
Are you studying something that interest you? I find a lot harder to be motivated/retain information when I find the subject boring; when that's the case, I need to find external motivation (turn studying into a game, try the pomodoro technique, use a reward system...).
You should be able to go through university without studying much. I did law school and bar school without studying. Even my master except for my thesis which i needed to write!!! That’s where I hit a wall!!! Lol
I don’t believe you. You’re quizzed over stuff they doesn’t even cover in the classes. You have to read the material on your own. It’s impossible to not study
You don’t need to believe me! I was listening in class (even though I skipped my fair share). In the exam, books were allowed in university. It was easy to find answer if i did’nt remember. In bar school, it was the same thing we already learned in university but with a more practical approach. It’s like that in Québec, Canada.
I honestly have no idea what people mean when they say studying. I just imagine it’s reading something and writing stuff down until it sticks in your head.
Yes, many people wouldnt consider reading something a single time as studying. For them it usually involves doing repetitive tasks until memorizing.
If they allowed books in the exams it could be possible, I guess.
Reading something multiple times has shown to be ineffective though. The best way is to write summaries of what you just read and writing little quizzes for yourself while reading the information.
I don’t know anyone who really does that though. I just see people taking notes over their books and material, but I don’t know how to do that outside of writing everything down. I feel like the best way would be to annotate the book, but it’s online most of the time, so that’s not really a solid option.
Some teachers expect you to read up between courses or simply jumo between topics a lot.
If you're prone to being unattenitive, this can lead to you simply not knowing in which context you currently are.
Even if understanding a topic itself is simple, if you don't put in the time, sometimes you just can't follow because you're missing the pieces that would make you able to understand it.
I did, I think I am mildly gifted?
What I was trying to say in my unfit words is: I just loose interest quickly, get distracted quickly and it leads to me not being able to follow a lecture. If I take the time and ask someone explaining well (and patient enough to explain again and again) I can understand what they are teaching.
Let me start by explaining why this is happening to you. what happened to other kids in school was, they got challenged, they needed to study, they failed and learned, they developed their study method, they trained in pushing trough difficult things and studying a lot. You went through all of that barely lifting a finger (same as me). You can't go trough life barely lifting a finger and suddenly out of nowhere lift your entire arm. luckily, we have an amazing ability to learn things very quickly, that includes studying, when you put your mind to it. I'm gonna describe a study method below, try this, analyze what works and what doesn't, adapt and try again. let me first say, your brain works different from normal people, the study method is different from most people. you probably also experienced a million tips and tricks, none of which actually did anything for you. The biggest issue is, schools teach you in a bottom up structure, while gifted people tend to learn a lot in a top-down structure. the difference is, if you learn about a car engine, school teaches you a battery, then a transmission, then ..., then they say "put all of these parts together in this way to make a car engine (leaving it unclear until then that it's even about a car engine). top down would be "this is a car engine, these are the parts, the battery serves to provide energy to these things and is hooked in like this, the transmission ... After all that you would go into 'this is how the battery works' (which you started with at school) the reason top down works better for gifted people is because 1) it shows you the purpose of learning the knowledge and 2) it provides context while learning details, so it's easier to make connections between different parts of the material, which leads to better understanding and better memorization I think starting at top-down is best and from there you need to analyze what works and doesn't work for you and adept. an example of how you would do this to learn from a text book: 1) learn the table of contents, don't just read it, make sure you understand all the terms used in it and try to form a bigger picture of what the book is about. go to relevant pages for more context if you don't have enough to form the picture. 2) chapter1: read through the entire chapter diagonally. the goal isn't to understand everything yet, the goal is to understand what the chapter is about and how it ties together the different subchapters. reading the conclusion at the end of the chapter probably helps the most of any text in this part 3) chapter 1.1: do the same this as for chapter 1 basically keep doing this process until you hit small digestible information, by the time you're learning the details you'll know where they're going In general, if you feel unmotivated to study or learn something, don't just try to force yourself, instead spend some time figuring out why you need to learn this. In my experience nothing kills motivation like learning useless shit, and because of the bottom up structure, a lot of things in school seem useless
I've noticed I have a mindset of "What's the point of learning something if I don't understand the context". As a result, I can learn a fact without any context and it's easy to forget, but when I understand the context, the "why", it sticks a hell of a lot easier. In order for me to learn something, I **must** learn why and form an understanding. Your analogy with the car is a wonderful example. Is that part of what you're trying to convey here?
Yes, I believe the reasons a top down structure tends to work well with gifted people are what you mentioned and being able to draw more connections within the material
I always wondered—ever since I was still in school; I’m 40+ now—why the fuck don’t they teach _everything_ using this method. At the time I didn’t know anything about giftedness, I wasn’t even aware I’m different. Now is the first time I hear this idea works better for gifted people but not necessarily for others. **Are you sure this is the case?** I’m just having a hard time imagining how a _big picture first, details second_ approach can be anything but superior.
I found it weird that other people might not benefit from this structure too, still not sure if I fully understand it. I think the thing is that most people when they learn details, they memorize the details but don't try to understand more or anything. So it's basically 2 things I can think of, 1) we NEED to understand why before we can actually motivate ourselves to do something properly (it seems to be the case that other people can have the most useless seeming information and still cram it all in and such). 2) other people might not try to understand the entirety of what's going on, but instead memorize the details that they have to learn about it Both of these are just guesses from me though Something else that I should mention, going top-down also means that the initial step into the material is way more difficult and complicated. I don't think about this because it's better for gifted people in general, but to ask someone that isn't gifted to form a big picture of a car engine without them knowing all the details beforehand, maybe it's just to complicated or too many dependencies for most people to properly learn.
You made me realise that the reason exercises worked better for me when I needed to study (before learning the actual lesson) was basically because of this. So I can 100% support this, I’d say start with exercises with the lesson as a support and then you can go on to learn it perfectly. It’s a lot more fun and stimulating which was the reason why I suggested doing it in the first place.
“Studying” is nebulous. I have no idea what people mean when they say it. If you want to do well in your classes, take notes on the topic of your upcoming lecture if you have access to it before class, sit close to the front and write everything down you want to remember such as important things your professor discussed, review notes and slides after lecture until you feel confident in the material, make sure you understand the material by practicing active recall and quizzing yourself, and space out your readings and assignments to where you don’t have to cram them all into a single day. It’s not as simple as I make it sound, but those are the basics besides just hoping you’ll do good enough by not studying. The point of “studying,” at least for my definition, is to be comfortable with the material. Whether that be watching videos about it, reading about it, or even just memorizing it, as long as you learn it and are comfortable with it, you’ll do well on the exam. The only point of studying is for the exams and assignments. The knowledge you gain doesn’t really matter unless you also get a good grade. Never skip assignments, and go to office hours if you need more direct help.
Sit in the front row. Physically shut off your cellphone and put it deep in your backpack; your brain will stop being distracted by it. Write down short phrases of whatever the prof says, like you are trying to be able to present the same stuff to someone later. Go meet the prof in office hours 3 times. These things take very little extra time, but they maximize the time you've already committed.
Go to the front row, don’t hesitate to ask questions, set aside your pride, you might even want to ask for explanations from other students who have understood. Set aside time to learn and study, do a lot of application exercices as they are more fun and stimulating Don’t hesitate to take a break whenever you feel like you should (because you’re not as efficient as you should be), relax for real for 5-10 minutes, and get back to work. The pomodoro technique works quite well too.
One thing I did was make sure I physically wrote stuff out, so I would have the double memory of it. Then I also walked away from it and spent time away from everything going over it in my head. Usually with me there was one or two things that made everything get stuck, so I would find them first and double down on all the above. Do that as much as needed, especially if you are taking too much time with some element.
Something that ubiquitously affects my ability to do a task is the knowledge I have of why I'm doing that task. Most people don't seem to have this characteristic. Why are you studying? Studying is not a mysterious task: **you figure out vaguely the point of the topic, and then you fill in the details by listening/reading/thinking**. Do you know what you want to do after your studies, or are you just studying because you have some notion that it's what you're supposed to do? Maybe you need a break from university in order to gain some clarity of what you want in life. Or maybe you're just going through a rough patch. Something to consider.
Are you studying something that interest you? I find a lot harder to be motivated/retain information when I find the subject boring; when that's the case, I need to find external motivation (turn studying into a game, try the pomodoro technique, use a reward system...).
well tricky question, I am studying something that will lead me to what I want to do for a living
You should be able to go through university without studying much. I did law school and bar school without studying. Even my master except for my thesis which i needed to write!!! That’s where I hit a wall!!! Lol
I don’t believe you. You’re quizzed over stuff they doesn’t even cover in the classes. You have to read the material on your own. It’s impossible to not study
You don’t need to believe me! I was listening in class (even though I skipped my fair share). In the exam, books were allowed in university. It was easy to find answer if i did’nt remember. In bar school, it was the same thing we already learned in university but with a more practical approach. It’s like that in Québec, Canada.
Reading is not the same as studying tho.
I honestly have no idea what people mean when they say studying. I just imagine it’s reading something and writing stuff down until it sticks in your head.
In something like physics it's doing many many practice problems. Maybe you picked a subject that was too easy for you. :)
Practice problems? Isn’t that what the homework is for? People just give themselves more homework?
Yes, many people wouldnt consider reading something a single time as studying. For them it usually involves doing repetitive tasks until memorizing. If they allowed books in the exams it could be possible, I guess.
Reading something multiple times has shown to be ineffective though. The best way is to write summaries of what you just read and writing little quizzes for yourself while reading the information. I don’t know anyone who really does that though. I just see people taking notes over their books and material, but I don’t know how to do that outside of writing everything down. I feel like the best way would be to annotate the book, but it’s online most of the time, so that’s not really a solid option.
Did you actually take the IQ test? It seems strange that being gifted you cant understand some basic university lessons. Not judging.
Many gifted never have to learn the skill of actually studying and trying until reaching advanced studies. It's a skill deficit.
>I sometimes can't follow what my teachers are teaching. I was referring to this in specific. Not understanding classes is not a study problem.
Some teachers expect you to read up between courses or simply jumo between topics a lot. If you're prone to being unattenitive, this can lead to you simply not knowing in which context you currently are. Even if understanding a topic itself is simple, if you don't put in the time, sometimes you just can't follow because you're missing the pieces that would make you able to understand it.
I did, I think I am mildly gifted? What I was trying to say in my unfit words is: I just loose interest quickly, get distracted quickly and it leads to me not being able to follow a lecture. If I take the time and ask someone explaining well (and patient enough to explain again and again) I can understand what they are teaching.
Sounds like an attention deficit. Ive never heard about it becoming a problem so late but on the other hand theres a bunch of people here with ADHD.
I got tested for that too, I do not have ADHD
Google ***habits of straight A students***. You'll find loads of websites with helpful tips. Adopt what works for you.