When you’re sitting in a lecture, there are two reasons, almost diametrically opposed, that will ensure that you neither understand nor retain anything:
- You are not interested and you think about something that has nothing to do with the content of the lecture.
- You try to follow but there is way too much information and you find yourself struggling to discern what is important. Or to discern anything, really.
These two ways of being completely lost can be combated by trying your best to answer two simple questions in your own words (a sentence is enough, more if inspiration strikes):
- What are we actually talking about?
- Why are we talking about this?
Let us start with the question “what are we actually talking about?”.
A useful way to think about this is to imagine that you are trying to explain to your grandmother what you’re currently studying. Do not overwhelm her with details (even if she is a physicist). Again, a sentence is probably enough. If you go past five sentences, you are not doing this right.
Now, the question “Why are we talking about this?”.
Well, imagine that your grandmother – who has just listened more or less patiently to your answer to the first question – now asks with increasing disinterest: “So what? Is this really what you spend your days doing?”. It is up to you to find the words to get a satisfied “ah, it’s not so silly after all” out of her.
The purpose of these little questions is to create a framework. A structure. A hook. This framework will make all the difference between having no idea (or only a very vague idea) of what you are studying, and having a solid hook on which you can attach all sorts of useful things when going through your next lectures, seminars, and, yes, life. Without this structure, all the things you will hear about regarding this course, the formulas, etc, will most likely fall into the void, and into the hazy depths of your memory. The first question: “what?” helps you to take a well-needed step back to make sure you are seeing the forest and not just banging your head against random trees. The second question: “why?“, will give you at worst a semi-interesting example to keep in mind, and at best an internal motivation to try to learn more. You may even find yourself encountering a situation in your daily life that perfectly illustrates what you have just been studying, and, importantly, realise that it does.
The other goal, and it may well be a very important one, is to give yourself permission to be lazy. Everyone says to themselves at some point during the week: “this weekend, I’m going to review the whole course, understand everything, bam I’m a genius, I’m even going to do all the exercises”. Then come Saturday morning. And Monday. And the next Saturday. And you are still far from being a genius. Here is the thing: you may have asked, even implicitly, too much from yourself, and that prevented you from studying in any meaningful way.
So here is my suggestion: why not try (see how gentle I am trying to be) to replace this unfortunate chain of events with something less ambitious and more functional. On Saturdays, as far as physics is concerned, you have ONE mission. Open your lectures one by one, and answer my two questions. This should take you about three minutes per lecture. You can even batch all the lectures from the same module together and answer the “what” and “why” questions just once for all of them together. This should not take you much more than a grand total of thirty minutes. And that’s only if you can’t stop yourself from doing more than I am actually suggesting here. Give it ago, and I bet you will thank yourself later.
I’ll leave you with an example:
Mathematical Tools for Physics
What? How to do integrals, find the volume of certain objects, or solve differential equations, that kind of stuff…
Why? Well, when you think about it, it’s absolutely fascinating that you can use math to describe the world. For example, I can do a stupid and hypothetical calculation: if I drop my cat from a height of 1.5 meters, how long will it take to reach the ground? With my paper, my pen, and my calculator, I find something like 0.5s. Well, if I actually pick up my cat and drop it for real from 1.5 meters high, it will actually take about 0.5s to fall. But honestly, what does my cat care about my paper, my pen, and my calculator??
And there you imagine Granny, satisfied: “ahh, it’s not so silly after all. BUT LEAVE MY CAT ALONE!”
(PS: if you want to go further on this math story, there’s an interesting article called “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” by EP. Wigner)