Through my experience, I believe this is the most effective way to do well at school (or university). I should’ve done much more of this in retrospect (which I haven’t). This blog is a reminder for myself on what things I should be focusing more on next time I take a course.

Here’s the key: study the material that’s going to be covered in the class ahead of time and spend time thinking deeply about ever aspect. Note down doubts you have in the session so that you can bring them up in the class during that topic. This serves multiple purposes:

• Your friends will not see the amount of prior effort you put into this. They will think you’re a genius. You’d start feeling the same about yourself. Increases your confidence and hence your learning and score in the course. (do not actively tell people your preparation strategy as it might reduce this affect; I think think that inethical, I believe Richard Feynman used the same technique very often)
• Note down all your quesitons and ask them in the class as if you came up with them for the first time. People are going to be crazy surprised on how deeply and quickly you grasp concepts, little do they know that you’ve studied all this before and were well prepared. The professor will be impressed too; and would love to collaborate with you. Again, this leads to increase in confidence like no other.

I have a bigger argument on why confidence is so important using a few personal examples. Let me share a couple of my personal examples.

• I wasn’t a good student back at school (< 7th grade). I used to score 55-60% overall (which is often the bottom 20%). Used to get 75% in math, 40% in hindi and 55-60 in others. In 7th grade, during an exam the question was written wrong on the board, so everyone noted it down wrong and got the wrong answer. I copied the question wrong (which was already written wrong) and by luck I got the right answer. I topped that exam with 19.5/20. People were surprised and started asking me how I scored that well. I told stories about how hard I worked (even though I knew deeply that I just got lucky). People started to treat me differently because of this. I might have spend more time studying math because of this. The result of all of this was that I continued to be in the 5% since then in math. It’s interesting how a small event really turned things around for me.
• I used to have physics till 10th grade (I blame my teachers). During my inter, I had a great physics teacher where I used to go for tution. That helped me like physcics more. I was solving questions much faster than anyone else and started spending time deeply about each and every question. The confidence that it gives you is like no other. Being able to visualize concepts and solve it before anyone else. That reflected in my normal class too and I started scoring very well in physics. People started treating me like a genius in physics which further improved my confidence and only made me better.

If all these techniques are as effective as I claim them to be, why haven’t I applied them in the past? Why haven’t I topped and dominated all my classes? I’d like to think I did that to some extent in COMP546 (the course was easy enough to study before class), but not in COMP767 (to much content to study before). Next time I take a course, I’ll make sure to study topics ahead of time so that I’ll reap all the benefits mentioend above.