I didn't fail anything in high school, but not strictly because my teachers thought I did well. I took an AP English class, and in the last week before the AP test my teacher backed me into a corner (literally) and told me she would fail me, and that she would make sure she got me every single year from then on and would keep on failing me. She despised me in a way few people ever have.
Pity for her the district rules said the final grade in an AP class is the student's score on the AP test. I aced the test (largely by ignoring most of what she told me) so she had to give me an A. I swear she drew it in blood she was so pissed.
I'll second what BassMan_720 said, though: That experience with my English teacher made me all sorts of cocky when I got to university. I didn't know how to study, and I got my ass handed to me on a plate, so to speak. My first year I got a D in a class in my major. The TA wanted to flunk me. Again, the guy hated my guts and I have no idea why. I took a year off, got state residency, learned how to study, and went back. I still got more D's and one F. Thank goodness only one of those was in my minor course of study and none were in my major.
I'm not in a position to tell you how to study because I was so very very bad at it. But I can tell you some of the hard-learned lessons I went through:
1 - Focus on the concepts rather than on the specifics. You mentioned math class, so that's what I'll use as an example. If you're learning to solve systems of polynomial equations, learn the underlying concepts of how to set up the equations so you can solve them. If there are tricks that make life easier, learn those tricks. If there are pitfalls you can run into that let you know something went wrong (like having fewer equations than variables!) learn these so you don't get stuck. I missed a lot of the cool tricks in trigonometry, but I get the concepts well enough I can go back to first principles and work out a solution anyway. But it's slower without the tricks.
2 - The teacher's job is to impart information. They WANT you to understand. The measure of a teacher is how well the students understand what is taught. If you don't understand, something went wrong. If you take the initiative and ask the teacher for additional help after class, most teachers will be willing to help you. They may help you themselves, or they may put you in touch with a student who gets the material and can help tutor you. Being shy at this stage is a great way to shoot yourself in the foot. (I was shy and didn't understand this until AFTER I'd finished my degree. Had I learned this in high school, my academic life would have been much, MUCH more pleasant.)
3 - Take as complete notes as you can. In university teachers often give students note packets. There's a huge temptation not to take notes during the lecture. Don't fall prey to it! Take your own notes anyway. Even if you doodle during the lecture, doodle in your notes. The notes and the doodles serve as a mnemonic to help you remember the material later. If you're an uber organized kind of person, transcribe your notes when you get home. I'm not and I have no clue how someone can be that organized. But it takes all kinds.
4 - Do all your homework the moment you get home. All of it, beginning to end. Don't put it off. This helps the concepts cement. It will also mean going back through your notes and re-reading what you wrote and doodled. This helps the mnemonic keys "take". If anything is confusing in your notes, look it up in your book or have the phone number of someone you can call and talk to about it. Get the proper information in your notes in a way that will make sense to you later. Don't stop until the homework sets are all done to your satisfaction.
5 - This one is controversial, but I'll throw it out anyway: If you can, study in a group. With one notable exception, no one I went to school with understood everything. The trick was to find enough overlap that someone in the study group understood each of the questions. At university we met in the department lounge (don't ask) and used the chalkboard. Whoever understood the question got up at the board and lectured to the rest of us. Often two or more people understood a given question, so we would have debates. Often these were loud, and always they involved lots of chalk dust. We didn't stop until we had completed and understood every question.
Here's why this is controversial: When I tell this story to teachers, many of them claim what we did was cheating. I claim what we did was learn. I came out of those study sessions understanding the material better than when I came out of class. But better to check first and make sure the teachers won't flunk you for group study.
6 - Find something, anything, that will relate what you are learning to something in your life. This gives the information relevance. Relevant information takes. Irrelevant information tends to slide off into oblivion at the worst of times, like during tests. There was a fantastic professor at university who had been there for something like thirty five years. He taught mathematics. If someone asked a question in class, the first thing he did was ask what their field of study was. He would then give them an example in their own field of study so they had a context from which to understand it. This was amazingly effective.
7 - Study your own subjects on your own, for your own purposes. This, more than anything else, will teach you how you learn best. I did do this in high school, but wasn't smart enough to apply it to my school studies. This also tends to lead to a broad exposure that can later provide a basis for understanding other subjects. For example, in high school I was doing 3D graphics programming on my own. (This was back in the cave-man days of the 8088, when the only way to draw a line was to write the routine yourself.) This led me off into learning Intel assembly, matrix mathematics, quaternions (yes, I was getting deep at this point), all sorts of fun stuff. (I think it was my fascination with this that drove my AP English teacher up the wall.) The amazing thing is how much of this was useful later. And having learned it to my own satisfaction on my own gave me a great basis for understanding it that much better when I ran into the material in class.
It doesn't matter what you study on your own. Just study something.
One last anecdote and I'll stop:
I know what you mean when you said you felt stupid when you left math class. I didn't really come to an understanding of that until my senior year at university, and only because one of my teachers provided us with a fantastic experience. It was a quantum mechanics class, and the teacher was Steven Weinberg. The first day of class he went through the quantum mechanical model of the hydrogen atom. Except for words like "the" "and" and "but" I swear I didn't understand a word he said. I left class that day knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was in too deep, and was going to flunk. The next class wasn't for two days, so I spent two days depressed out of my mind. The next class he started by saying he'd rushed things, and would begin again at the beginning.
We spent the rest of that semester going through every single thing he used in that first lecture, but in grave detail. Cross-sections, scattering, orbitals, everything. I had a hard time understanding it all in class, but because we studied in a group in the evenings, I usually did understand by the end of the day. Tests were rough, but I survived.
The last day of class he repeated the lecture from the first day, almost word-for-word. This time I understood it.
Coming out of a class confused and feeling stupid means that you didn't have sufficient knowledge going in to take full advantage of the material being taught. Unless you or the teacher catches this early and corrects it by teaching the underlying concepts, it only gets worse. If EVER you find yourself coming out of a class confused like that, run (or walk fast... can't run in the halls) to your teacher and tell them. Tell them where they lost you. If you got lost at their first word, tell them that. If they're a good teacher they'll give you some pointers on what you can study to help you understand what was said in the lecture and to prepare yourself for the lecture the next day. And in exchange they will then know that they're moving too fast and need to slow down.
Sorry for the ramble. You asked a good question.
26 May 2011, 10:50 pm
Find a tutor. Figure out when you study best (for me it's early in the morning, 8 am and like. I can't study at all at night). Have a talk with your teacher.
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