Metro Minute: Study Habits

I know, I know, I've missed two days on this. But as I said very clearly yesterday, there are finals.

Today has been an unusual day in that I didn't actually take the train in this morning. Ergo, no trains of thought. But now that I'm on the metro I have a few thoughts floating about in my head. Most of them involve linear algebra and physics but those are not the subjects I'm here to talk about. Well, not directly, at least.

Studying. We all do it or have done it. It's one of those things that, well, at least I personally, find tricky to properly quantify. How much is enough? At what point does my studying stop being an efficient use of my time? What is the proper balance of sleep time, study time, and break time? Granted, some of these things can be determined as we go but it would be very nice to have some kind of concrete idea before hand; it would make planning out the day so much simpler. Last night, for example, I intended to stay in the library until almost nine, at which point I would take the last train home, get there at about ten-thirty and get to bed relatively quickly. However, after the amount of work I had done up to that point by about seven I was completely sick and tired of doing anything that required more brain function than pushing shiny buttons and went home (setting a record for time elapsed while doing so; got home in about seventy minutes). This morning my plan was to get to school for nine and spend three hours or so in the library before heading to class, but evidently that plan has changed.

Also, I've wound up being the head honcho of a study group; not that I'm the brightest but in that I'm the only one who will take the time to coordinate it. With that comes the expectation that I've planned out in some respect how to spend the time or what the group will study. But how does one do this? Study sessions in omnibus were a piece of cake; before the session spend at least an hour looking at the guide and filling in what you know (and doing at least some research on the rest), then go in, give what you know and chances are the other people knew other things better leading to a well-rounded exchange of information. At least in theory. But here we don't have those. Use past finals? Great. Only everyone uses those up so fast there's no point within about two days of them being uploaded. So now I'm trying to think of an idea or two to be able to get some kind of decent study session together for linear algebra, but due to a) the suckiness of the textbook (biggest waste of a hundred bucks ever) and b) the small number of past finals available I really haven't much to work with. I certainly can't “teach” the material in a review sense as I'm largely the one in need of review. Which leaves me with very few options, none of which I can see at the moment.