 Hey guys, it's MJ the student's actuary and I thought why not make a video on 10 study tips for difficult subjects and These techniques can be used for all the actuarial subjects for engineering for medicine Basically for any university course or for any subject that you're finding to be difficult So yeah without further ado Let's get into it. I have done four years of university and another two years outside of it studying these exams And yeah, I just wanted to share with you some tips that I find useful when preparing for a difficult subject So here we go The first one is Patience when you come to study a really difficult subject you need to be patient with yourself You're not going to grasp the concept straight away like you did at school You're not going to necessarily get the answers right on the first time you answer the questions so you need to give yourself patience or you need to be patient with yourself and understand that these things do take time and Yeah, so don't be too hard on yourself if you're not grasping the information straight away and this kind of leads to the second technique or tip and that is to be confident Which is quite difficult to do right in the beginning because you're looking at this work and it's not making any sense to you But the trick is is to be confident. You need to well, yeah Just have that that feeling within yourself that you are going to get through it have that What's what's the word? I'm looking for that self. Yeah, that's self confidence That though you may not understand the work in the beginning you do have a mind It is packed with the brain that's got a whole bunch of neurons working together in a great network. And so you can Understand all this information in time. So yeah, be confident. Don't doubt your ability Number three is pace yourself. I mean gone are the days where you can study the night before an exam That's that's not going to work in actuarial science or for any of these difficult subjects You need to prepare way in advance and you need to pace yourself So don't just go like say, okay the exams in two months time and then on the first day spend 10 hours studying You know, that's that's crazy. That's kind of silly Pace yourself to start off with just doing say two hours a day and slowly work yourself up to I like to get up to eight hours a day. I think that's that's a really solid day Anything more and you're you're gonna tie yourself out But job pace yourself when it comes to studying don't burn out in the beginning and don't leave it too late Okay, technique number four is to take breaks, but there's different types of breaks that you can take Taking a break where you go and play like a very intense PlayStation game is Not very smart. So like playing a game of FIFA or doing some Call of Duty Saying that you know where you need your mind to focus and concentrate That's not a good break a much better break from studying is to maybe take a little nap Go for a walk or doing something that doesn't require too much brain activity That's what you want to do in your break is give your mind a little bit of a rest So and make your breaks like between five and 20 minutes and y'all like I said have a nap do some exercise Something that isn't focused on the mental area such as gaming or reading like a really intense book Number five is Invest invest in your study material invest in study Equipment so by this I mean go out and buy the best notebooks You can afford get the best stationery get the best textbooks what I went and I did what I did was I got the Samsung Galaxy note 12.2 inch. It's pretty awesome If you've seen any of my other videos all those notes I've made have been done on this device. It is incredible. It is expensive So but this is this is studying and studying should be like your number one priority in life When you're yeah, when you're around our age So invest in this stuff. Don't buy it to play games buy it so that it can help with studying by textbooks By stationery and job if you invest financially in your studying, you're gonna be more eager To you know invest your time, so it's money well spent Okay tip number six is Research if you don't understand something Research it either look for a video on YouTube read the Wikipedia page Go to a library like be really old-school and find a book on the topic and read it I mean we live in an era where we have all this knowledge at our fingertips So use it go online and if you don't understand the concept Google it until you find the answer So research research research Okay, number seven is Practice, you know that there's that old saying practice makes perfect Well, if you're doing physics or mathematics or statistics or you know saying that requires a lot of application With numbers, but it can even be you know doing a whole bunch of past papers doing a whole bunch of tutorial questions Just doing exercises in general You really want to practice and this is something that a lot of students leave out They will learn the theory. They'll have a great attitude towards studying But then they'll get lazy when it comes to practicing and this can be the deciding factor between passing and Not so practice it takes time. It's difficult, but do it okay tip number eight is You need to question the material that you're learning I mean at school You're kind of like told these are the facts and you would parrot learn the facts and you would go like regurgitate them in the exam Okay university you can't really do that anymore what you need to do is you need to question the material so if something says You know this is the fact you must say well, why is that the fact? What is the evidence behind that? How would the world be if that was false? You know ask these questions around every piece of information and You'll be surprised. I mean even while we're doing a tutorial science Especially the the specialist subjects and the fellowship courses You start seeing some stuff in the notes that Yeah, they should not really have put there or you know, it's questionable. So Question the material. It's a great way to engage. It's a great way to study actively keep your mind shaft Don't believe everything you read and always look for a logical Yeah, just a logical explanation for it And if they're stating facts Oscar's off Can this be empirically verified or are they just making it up a lot of the time people just make stuff up? So you do want to question material that you get Okay tip number nine we almost at the end and this is probably The most important of all of them and that is to get sleep It is very very silly to stay up the whole night before an exam trying to study in that stress state, okay? Give your mind Give your mind a break and get some sleep. Okay. This is gonna help you drastically With memory recall with just feeling confident being energetic for the exam and just being sharp So you want to make sure that you're getting between seven and eight hours of sleep Every single night and especially the night before an exam I sometimes even go to bed With ten hours to go because I know it takes a little bit of time to fall asleep So factor that in as well. You want to have seven to eight hours of good sleep Don't stay up the night before the exam and that's why pace yourself Study in advance so that you can have a good night rest before the big day and Then number ten is something that cannot be empirically verified There's no science behind it, but it's worked very well for me So I thought I might as well share it with you guys and that is to pray for some reason I pray before all my exams. I pray while I study and I've done pretty well so far So I believe in God and he gives me a whole bunch of wisdom and I respect that some of you guys may not Hold the same belief But you know what they say praying it helps you to focus focus in on what your problems are I'll notice it like when I'll pray. I'll be like, oh God I'm battling with this section and with that section and this and that and what that even does is It's just highlighting in my brain what areas I'm Uncertain about what areas the next day. I need to go and spend more time on so it's a great form of Reflection as well as communicating with a higher power, but like I said, I respect if you guys are a non-believer I hope the other nine tips have been Worth while for you guys and job if you enjoyed this video. I mean, it was very quick Subscribe for more. I am going to be making a video on how to study With a semantic using a semantic net. It's a new method I've been developing It works incredible it will incredibly and I'm very happy with it and Joe I'm just it's gonna take a little bit of time to put it into a video and you know organize all the facts and stuff So I wanted to be perfect for you guys So until that comes out if you haven't already subscribed so that you will get notified when that video comes out Otherwise, I hope you guys enjoyed it. I'm MJ the student-actree and job study hard. Cheers