October Newsletter: Study Strategies

cWelcome to the Beating Burnout Newsletter. A digital magazine dedicated to living mindfully, deeper reflection and personal growth.

🍂 A third of the way through…

as the air cools, and the leaves start to fall,

the crisp autumn wind is not the only thing that is picking up its pace…

October brings about a new period: mid-term season

it’s normal to feel stressed, strained and spent,

but like seasons, this phase will also pass by.

Remember to appreciate the small beauties of nature.

📔 Effective Studying: Active Recall and Spaced Repetition

“I have pages on pages on pages of notes! Where do I start?”

In school, we are taught what to learn, but not how to learn it! Many of us default to re-reading and highlighting notes, which makes it hard to really commit things to memory.

We need to understand how our memory works and use that to our advantage!

Information that we learn is stored into our working (or short-term) memory.

When we organize information into categories or connect them with our own personal experiences, this information can be encoded in our long-term memory.

However, this information will eventually be forgotten if we don’t use it! When we retrieve or recall the information that we learned, it strengthens our memory of that topic.

Active recall is a way to practice our memory retrieval! Here’s a few ideas that are based on active recall:

• ⁉️ Question-Answer Notes: Try to write your notes as a question, and hide the answers! The next time you review, instead of re-reading what you learnt, try to actively remember the concepts!

  

  You can use: Notion.so (illustrated above), Remnote.io, Flashcard Software or Cornell Notes Formatting!

• 📑 Learning Objectives Guide: Jot down learning objectives from PowerPoint slides or nursing textbooks. Next, try to write, draw or explain as much as you recall about that topic. Once you are done, check your course notes and pay attention to what you have forgotten.

• 📚️ Question Bank Practice: Whether it be official textbook question banks (highly recommended), online Quizlets from former nursing students, textbook chapter questions, or other online resources, all type of quiz material help you determine which areas of knowledge are stronger or weaker.

Spaced Repetition helps us answer the question: “How often should I review?”

Everyone works differently - some people prefer rigid study schedules, and others review sporadically whenever they have time! Whichever strategy you pick, make sure that you review the content in each class at least a few times.

This is because humans forget information at a exponential rate as seen in the Ebbinghaus Curve of Forgetting (below)!

When we learn something new for the first time, we forget about ~40% of it by the 3rd day. After our first review, we forget ~30% of the information by the 3rd day. And with each subsequent review, we gradually retain the information for longer periods of time.

Each review allows us to strengthen the synapse between nerves involved in specific memories. Through spaced repetition, we are trying to combat the saying: “what you don’t use, you lose.”

😴 Prioritizing Sleep: Sleep Consolidation and Caffeine Naps

“I’m just so tired…”

Oftentimes, nursing school is hectic and we fall behind on studying. So we tend to leave studying to last minute, and pull late nights. However, midterm season is when we need to prioritize sleep the most!

• 🛌 Slow-Wave-Sleep (SWS), a memory consolidation booster: When we first learn information, the information is stored in our hippocampus. Sleep consolidation is where the hippocampus reorganizes memories and encodes it to the neo-cortex in a more permanent form of storage.

• 💤 Midday Naps: According to the US Sleep Foundation, an afternoon nap between 20-30 minutes can help aid memory formation and improve learning! Some people also try caffeine naps, as the onset of caffeine is 30 minutes after consumption - so they wake up feeling more alert!

Difficulties with nursing school

With clinical schedules shifting from 7am - 3pm on one week, then 3pm - 11pm the next week, it is difficult to have a steady sleep schedule.

Instead of expecting yourself to sleep and wake up at a certain time every day, sometimes the best you can do is try to get 7.5-8.5 hours of sleep most nights, regardless of timing.

It’s okay for your schedule to look different. But if you are experiencing great difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, you can visit the campus’ Health and Wellness Center in the Minto Complex for help!

🌳 Resource Corner

🙌 Positive Affirmations

🍅 Pomodoro Technique

📸 Cocoa and Cram