How to get those (brain) gains 🤓

Hi friends, and welcome back to the Open Note! Today, I wanted to share the story behind our name, followed by some evidence-based ways to study effectively in college.

🤔 Why Open Note?

“Open Note” = my open notebook, where I’ll share lessons and experiences to help you lead a happy and meaningful life. The “Open” part shares my hopes that this newsletter will be accessible and welcoming to all. The “Note” part is a nod to my identity as a student (these issues are essentially “notes” I take in daily life). Also, my podcast is called the Open Mic Podcast, so I thought it would be cute to match the names. 😋

🎥 Latest Uploads

I recently made a video documenting the key strategies that will help you become a better learner. I highly recommend watching it for a more thorough explanation, but here are some of the most important points:

(1) Active recall. The more effort, the better.

Re-reading the textbook may make you feel like you’re learning. But in reality, you’re only gaining fluency in recognizing the information that’s on the page. The time used for this kind of “passive review” may be better spent using active methods, such as testing yourself or doing practice problems (with the answers tucked away until you’ve actually thought through the questions yourself).

(2) Spaced repetition. Beat the forgetting curve!

There’s this thing called the “forgetting curve,” which maps the progress of our (you guessed it) forgetting. The red line on the graph below shows the trajectory of our retention as time goes on (without interference).

You forget quite a lot after just one day, and even more after one week! We can combat the forgetting curve by using active recall strategies in a spaced out way—"spaced repetition.“ The blue, orange, and purple lines show the trajectory of our retention after one, two, and three subsequent study sessions, respectively. As you can see, the slope of our forgetting becomes less steep with each session, meaning that we forget less quickly with each review (which is our goal!). Because of this, when implementing spaced repetition, we can increase the time between each succeeding study session. By giving us this time to "forget,” we will be forcing ourselves to use more effort in each session, which helps reinforce our knowledge.

(3) Handwriting vs typing notes.

Evidence has shown that handwriting notes engages the brain more so than typing notes does. Also, when handwriting notes, you won’t be able to write down everything your professor is saying verbatim (unless you have super speed), so you will have to write down only the most important points. Or perhaps even more effectively, you’ll have to summarize the points in your own words—a method more “active” than typing down every word that is spoken.

(4) Fun with mnemonics!

Make your life easier with mnemonics. Though not a substitute for learning and understanding, this tool can really help when you need to recall a large quantity of information. A fun mnemonic to help remember the TCA cycle intermediates (if you ever take biochemistry) is shown below:

(5) Take notes on your notes.

Write down questions in the margins of your notes so you don’t forget them. Draw diagrams next to key points to help yourself remember. Taking notes on your notes helps you to recognize which points you don’t yet fully understand, so you can improve on them!

(6) Active learning within the classroom.

Active learning strategies are definitely a lot more convenient to employ if they are integrated within the syllabus. For example, in my Introductory Biology class, we constantly use active strategies (e.g. group problems in recitations, ungraded homework problems that encourage us to explain all our answers) to help reinforce our knowledge. Though active strategies may feel challenging at the time, the benefits reaped from this style of learning are very motivating. :)

🎵 Latest Bops

Marshmello & Jonas Brothers - Leave Before You Love Me

This song popped up on my playlist for the first time this week! Definitely a nice 80’s vibe… reminiscent of Wham!‘s Last Christmas.

Olivia Rodrigo - good 4 u

I know, I’m super late to jumping on the Rodrigo train. Bopping to this one this week. Also really like deja vu. 😜

That’s it for this issue. Let me know if you implement any of these learning strategies (and if they work for you!). Cheers to being inbox buddies!

❤️ Caroline

P.S. If you have any feedback/comments for me, please reply to this email or contact me on my website: carolinechen.me. I’m always happy to hear your thoughts on content, what you find useful, and what can be improved with some “re-thinking.” :D