Wrong!

When faced with familiar terms or examples, you might find yourself feeling like you really understand the material, when your brain is really just responding to the fact that it's seen this exact material before. This is called the familiarity trap—when everything seems familiar, your brain doesn't have to work so hard, so it feels like you've mastered the material, even though you haven't. Try to mix things up as you're studying.

More and more, evidence suggests confusion is where deep learning lies. It might even be that some level of confusion activates parts of your brain which regulate learning and motivation, helping you achieve a greater level of understanding. If you're not confused, you might not be learning.

Don't let yourself get discouraged if it feels like you aren't 'getting it'; that's a good sign. 

Bust the myth:

• Retrieve—don't regurgitate. Develop your own test questions, ask yourself questions, solve sample problems, and analyse for deeper meanings. Need some good questions to ask yourself? Try: why is this answer important? What does it relate to? How does this answer connect with what I already know? Can I elaborate this answer? Can I illustrate it with an example?

• If you're confused, don't give up. Working hard to understand a problem or figure something out isn't a bad thing, and will likely lead to a deeper understanding of the material which will stay with you for a long time. 

If you stay up all night cramming for a test, you'll probably pass. If you've got a test tomorrow and you haven't cracked a book, you don't have a choice. But have you really learned anything while you were cramming? Cramming doesn't give the brain time to process information and make critical connections necessary to retrieve it from memory later. If you have classes that build on previous courses, you'll wish you'd spaced out your studying later.

Learning goes beyond your test scores: critical thinking analysis, applying principles to solve problems, the ability to assess your effectiveness, revise, and apply what you know are skills that you'll need through the rest of your life. If you have a test the next morning, you might have to pull that all-nighter, but you'll do better on the test and remember the material for longer if you spread your learning out, and use some of the strategies laid out here.

Bust the myth:

• Apply learned material. Try to think about situations where you might use what you're learning; come up with your own examples of a concept, or try to teach it to someone else. All these activities require you to retrieve what you know, and every time you retrieve it, you're relearning it.

• Think ahead about the classes you'll be taking, and what you'll be expected to know when you take them. Get some advice from your teacher or academic advisor. Take note of concepts you'll need to know well for the future, and focus your time on those items.

• Learn from failure. If you fail an exam, take steps to analyse what went wrong and change your strategies for next time. Take a deep breath, and do your best to learn from the experience. 

Being a self-directed learner requires planning. Answering the 5 questions from the graphic above can help to build a disciplined approach which will help you tackle your academic work.

Planning can also help you develop a workable schedule for studying. "Research shows spacing study episodes out with breaks in between study sessions or repetitions of the same material is more effective than massing such study episodes. Massing practice is akin to cramming all night before the test." (Clark and Bjork, 2014).

Planning reduces stress, helps you avoid cramming, and builds skills in metacognition. Planning is an important part of any career or occupation, so learning to plan well contributes to your overall competency. Even learning to plan takes practice, so start early! 

Bust the myth:

• Target your studying: try to study key themes, and take what you know about the exam structure into account when you're planning. If you know you'll have an essay, write outlines! If you have to solve problems, go over homework or make up your own.

• Review or practice throughout the term. Without regular review, you may have to re-learn a large portion of the course right before the final.