 Hello everybody, Andrea Majeski here with Dental Tutoring. Let's talk about how to study properly and the best ways to study, especially if you're new to either the dental hygiene program or the dental assisting program. It can be very overwhelming. They have probably overloaded you with information, probably the first day, the second day, the third day. And they've also probably told you, I know in my program, they had said, if you wanna look full-time, just don't because you'll have no time. I remembered that and I remember thinking, oh goodness, I'm screwed, right? Cause I did have to work full-time. I didn't have the money otherwise. But so let me just help you guys and what I found worked for me when it comes to studying and what didn't work. And when I saw other students doing that worked for them, but just honestly didn't work for me. So everybody's different. The best advice that I can give you is to be as organized as possible and make it fun, make it exciting, meaning, you know, buy a different color notebook or well, you'll probably have a laptop at this point, right? I don't really know. I didn't have a laptop in school. I did have a laptop story, but a lot of my notes were still in like a notebook. And I just bought a different color notebook for every topic. So then that way, if I only needed to bring, like if I had three classes that day that I would only bring those notebooks opposed to having like a binder for all of my classes and then having to bring that whole thing with me. I took a bus and it took about an hour and then I still had to walk to my school so I didn't really want anything too heavy. But that's what I did to make it more exciting. All of my notebooks were a different color. Now, I'm not gonna just talk about different color notebooks here, but that did help me. But the most important thing is to get organized. So make sure to write down somewhere, whether it be on a calendar agenda, maybe, write down when all of your different classes are, plus when your tests are, when you have homework, when you have a project due, when you have exams, you know, write all of that down. And that might seem obvious and that might seem simple, but not a lot of people tend to do that. And I say to write it down because before every test, I want you to be studying for two weeks, two weeks before your test for every topic. Now, sometimes your teachers may not give you two weeks notice. It's usually about a week, hopefully, but two weeks preferably. But let's say that they only give you a week's notice. Study a week before for every single topic. And I say that because you will have a lot of different topics, a lot of different tests, and you need to study equally for all of them. It doesn't matter if this test is worth 10% yet in your pharmacology class, the test is worth 20%. I don't know. It doesn't matter about the percentage. You need to do well on every single test. And to do that is to study in advance. If you study the night before, that's not going to help you. You might do a good job, but are you going to get 80%? Probably not. Always aim the highest. And I say to study two weeks before, if you can, because I want you to study one hour per topic, two weeks before your test. But a nice thing is, is it after you are doing, say an hour per topic after about three days, you will only need to do, say, half an hour a topic after that. And then by the second week, you're literally just reading through your notes and then going, okay, I finally understand this now. It takes two weeks. That's what I have found. That's what a lot of people have said. It takes two weeks of consistent studying, memorizing however you want to do it to have it in here. Okay, it takes two weeks. But again, if your teacher only gives you a week to study, yeah, if they only give you a week's notice before your test, then that's all that you can do, right? Then you might have to study an hour per topic for that week, opposed to if you started two weeks beforehand. You'll probably study an hour per topic. And then by the third day, you'll be reading through things a lot quicker and then studying like half an hour per topic, right? And that's a lot easier than having to study like two hours a topic because you just thought, okay, it's three weeks before my test. I don't know anything. So I'm gonna have to be studying for like six hours tonight, six hours tomorrow. That just isn't right either, right? Because you need to have a life too. Not much of one. You will not have much of a life while you are in school but you still need a break too. And always remember you guys that life happens, okay? If you try to study for an exam two days before, maybe you'll become sick and then you won't be able to study or your mom needs you to do something or I don't know, you just need to do something, right? Or it's like, oh shoot, I have a party to go to on Sunday. So I'm not really gonna have time to study because I have to go look for an outfit or whatever. The point is that life happens but if you tried to study two weeks before then you're able to get enough in there that if you say a couple of days before your test, I think today I'll just take it easy because I have been studying a lot. You can take it easy that day, that's allowed, right? So that's the best thing that I suggest. What else was I gonna say? Oh yes, a lot of students think that if they rewrite their notes while they're studying that that helps them. In my opinion, that's not helpful because you are just simply writing everything down. Your hands will be sore and then you just have to read through that again anyway. So why not save your time and just read through it either on your PowerPoint and your notes and that's it. You're probably saving hours, steady time, unless, but if you wanna write everything down that will take just as much time, right? But everybody's different. If you find that that does work for you then by all means you should do it. But from when I've been noticing students try that they get exhausted and they fail their first test and they wonder why. They say to me, well I've been studying for six hours and you know, like I studied so hard so why did I fail my test? Well, it was because you took those six hours writing everything down, reading through it. You are tired at that point. So you read through it thinking you're memorizing it and then you don't actually memorize it. So be organized, study at least two weeks before if you can, if your teacher only gives you a week notice then study a week before for sure. Study an hour per topic and then it should become less and less after that. Like you will know as you're reading through things probably the third day. The first day you'll read through everything and feel like you learned nothing. That's normal. The second day you will read through things and think, okay I think I remembered one fourth of that. That's normal. The third day you read through everything and it will start to sink in. You'll be reading through it quicker and then you'll be able to memorize a lot easier. Now it gets a little bit tricky if you do work full time. So I do always say to study at least two hours to up to six hours a day. Hopefully your teachers are able to not have all of your tests on the same day, right? You know, hopefully that might happen. So then you'll be doing a lot of studying but hopefully they'll at least have a test on like Wednesday, another one on Thursday, another one on Friday type thing, right? So always study two weeks before and then you can manage your time that way because if you work full time you might only be able to study two hours a day. That's okay but then on the weekends when you don't work, study six hours a day to make up for it, okay? But don't study more than six hours and make sure to get a good sleep and make sure to only study like two hours at a time. Study two hours and then eat something, watch TV, go shopping, watch a show, whatever. Do the laundry and for at least an hour, two hours even to give yourself that time to look at something else, to do something else, right? And then study two hours after that and then take another break after the two hours. It does help you out a lot because if you study, let's say for three hours at a time, you're becoming tired after the two hours. So that last hour of your three hours you probably didn't learn much where you're actually learning more. If you take a break after two hours to just sort of take it easy and then you feel ready almost to study again, okay? So I hope that helps. If I left out any study tips that worked for you please be sure to comment because I am sure that everybody else would love to hear them and good luck and let me know how you do and I'll see you guys in the next one.