The Easy Way To Absorb the Most Information In Class

When I decided to go to university, I knew that if I wanted to be a doctor, I had to change the way that I had been studying. Also how I have been watching the class.

For that, I had to develop techniques that would help to retain necessary information and also where I could pay attention and understand the content.

Since then I have been using techniques that allow me to retain the most information + concentrate during classes for future studies.

A reminder may be the way I attend classes may not work for you. We have to consider how the content is taught, which materials are used, how the class is given in your university/course.

However, some of the techniques may be useful, resulting in you ending up implementing them in your studies and classes.

What is the importance of classes for me anyway?

Classes serve as guides.

Every time I have a new lecture I can use the class material to guide me in my studies, whether by creating summaries, flashcards, or searching for topics presented in textbooks or on the internet.

The classes allow me to create my study material

I study through summaries and flashcards. Whenever the teacher passes on new material or unseen content.

I aim to capture as much information as I can by taking notes, typing what the teacher says of the slide. Give attention to what is being presented so that when you go on in the material you can understand more easily.

Classes are usually the answers to my exams

Usually, 70% of the questions on my theory and practice exams currently in physiology/histology come from material given in class.

Which comes from a textbook and the teacher’s experiences, It is always important to look at the book to consult doubts that may arise and can probably help to clarify ideas.

Remember that it is often the teacher himself who creates the exam questions.

Classes are given by professionals who have already gone through the same path and have the experience to share.

Many theory concepts can be related to clinical medicine or clinical cases that have occurred by opposite effects made by some diseases usually can help understand how the biological systems of the human body, relate the concepts.

With this information given in class and as you go to the medical field results are easier to apply due to the examples given by doctors on their experiences and daily patients. 

Uses different areas of learning are applied.

Classes are especially important for those who learn by looking, listening, and often writing. People need to learn by watching the teacher pointing and giving examples in class.

Many learn by listening to specific phrases or terms given in lectures. Others learn by writing technical words and so on.

In this way, with these 4 points of importance, I can show how important classes are for my retention of information and content.

As we know classes given during the year are not equal in the same way, nor do all subjects have the same importance.

With that, we can say whether these techniques could work or not. For me, it has.

After all, how do I absorb information from each class?

Record class audio

 I use my cell phone to record the class because when I review my notes I put the audio in, ending up remembering the class as a whole.

 It is important to emphasize that not all the information given in class can be relevant, which may waste time.

If you do not have all that time available in the day due to the workload or the amount of material given, it can make you waste critical time during exam weeks.

It is critical to take just what is important so you can look over all the content.

Take notes during class

Taking notes during the class needs to be accurate based on what the teacher is lecturing about. Information that should be important, but I don’t care about spelling and whether it’s formatted at the moment because I’m recording the class.

Giving importance to the fact of paying attention in class. I prefer to type to take my notes, as the amount of information given during the class is immense and writing on pen and paper can result in deconcentration in lecture and can also result in illegible handwriting when re-studying.

(many students recommend not writing anything down in class, just paying attention, or seeing the material before the class, I prefer to take notes because facilitates retaining information, personally, if I type and I put energy into it, my chances of losing focus or getting drowsy are low, even though, it changes from person to person).

When do I have to do these methods?

I do all this procedure during the class until the class ends.

What about virtual classes? Well, I just put the class app on one side of the screen (zoom/Microsoft teams) and put Word on the other side.

So every slide the teacher is showing I take photos/prints and paste them in the notes. I don’t care if it’s spelled correctly or not at that moment.

What is the purpose of this method?

The goal is to capture as much information as possible either by mentally paying attention, physically or virtually by typing information and recording the class.

With that, I can go through as much information given in lectures as subjects that have a relatively high weight in your curriculum.

The whole objective of giving importance to classes and capturing information serves for my creation of flashcards, summaries, and being able serve as a guide for my study, when I sit down to catch up on the subject, I have a map and goals to fulfill.

In case I don’t understand a specific topic, I have 3 sources of information given in classes, which can be either reading the textbook directly or going on the internet looking for explanations from a teacher/student from another university or course that is teaching the same.

Set objectives according to what was taught in classes, to be consistent in the study segment.

Tip: it is crucial that in the use of such methods, so you do not allow topics to accumulate for a week and more, otherwise it can be very distressing when going over everything in time before exams, making it impossible not to sacrifice other subjects. to pass the nearest exam.

Conclusion

With that, I left some techniques that I use to make my classes more interesting in college, often going to lectures can be tedious and exhausting, but some strategies that I implemented resulted in a more dynamic and objective in my course during the year. I hope it can be of some use to other people.

By the way, here are some brain-based techniques to retain information by Loma Linda University, It can support you inside the classroom.

Furthermore, many subjects can be useless to attend classes because they can cause teachers to just read what is written on the slide and result in understanding absolutely nothing. In cases like these, which will be frequent at the university, you as a student need to be self-sufficient to go after content and information and learn on your own, without depending on classes to continue with your career.

Remember that it may not always work for everyone, because each person studies differently and learns differently. The important thing is to reach the goal of learning for life and be flexible with the problems that may appear during the course.

-Kel