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Common Study Habit Questions

Published: February 28th 2024, 6:18:03 pm

Hey everyone. I've been keeping a small list of regular questions I get about my study habits for a guide. Here are eight questions and answers that I hope you find helpful! 

1. Where do you get your sources from?

There's a complete guide for this question here!

2. How do you decide WHAT to read and study?

Lets say I'm studying for a specific episode of Lexual Does The 90s. First I make a general timeline, which is also part outline. I brainstorm things I want to talk about and sort everything into appropriate categories. I make a list of questions I want answered and pull potential reads and topics from a variety of places, including:

• Bibliographies and reference lists in books and articles that I read. 
• Searching the indexes of the books on my shelves. The reason I have so many books (especially general ones on topics from vacation to white flight to an assortment of biographies and reference guides) is so that at any moment when studying, I can look up chapters and blurbs that help me generate more ideas. 
• Wikipedia. People shit on Wikipedia, but it is great for providing jumping-off points for research, and they even have timelines of every single year in modern human history. These pages are missing a bunch of highly niche history events, but they're great rabbit holes.
• Online Timelines. There are a bunch of niche topics that people have organized timelines for, but here are a few to get you started: History of The World|Food Timeline| Timelines of World History | Human Sexuality Timeline | US Historical Events from 1900 to Present | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline |Global African History Timeline| TIMELINE OF PALESTINE'S HISTORY | 
• College syllabi. Look up any theme you're interested in ("The Sixties", "Sex in Film", "Bill Clinton", etc) and the words 'syllabus' and 'pdf' and a bunch of stuff will pop up. Boom, you're on your way to creating your own syllabus. Make sure you vet the university and professor to understand the bias of the selected readings and try to counterbalance with opposing views. This means pulling more reads. 

After pulling all of my reads and listing the URLs out in a Note (iMac), lately, I've been organizing everything for each essay by theme (because my essays have gotten so long lol). This makes it easier to see what needs more sources, where there may be potential bias, and how I can fit stuff into my schedule, which brings me to....

3. How do you decide WHEN to read and study?

• While I don't always stick to my schedule, it keeps me on a general routine. I mostly study Monday-Friday. Because I print a lot and keep things in folders, I go by theme. I make a point to knock out at least 2-4 hours a day of reading during light weeks (when I'm finding b-roll, streaming, relaxing, doing other business ventures etc) and at least 6-8 hours a day when I'm in hardcore study mode (just studying and writing and haven't been on social media in weeks/months). No matter what, I take notes. 
• Using your timeline/outline, start with the most general concepts before you move to the smaller topics within. For instance, let's say you're studying how the city of Los Angeles changed after 1992. Before taking notes on Reactions to the LA Riots of 1992, it would be helpful to read articles about California before the riots, and then Rodney King and Latashsa Harlins, before moving into trial verdicts, then moving into the riots themselves. With each step, you can pull even more sources and find more topics that add perspective. 

4. What do you take notes on?

• What is the subject of the article/chapter/book?
• What are facts that I don't know? What are new interpretations of things I already know?
• What is the author explaining? What is their tone/bias? 
• Is there corroborating evidence from other sources? Is there conflicting evidence?
• Is there any interesting information about the date this article/chapter/book was published? Any interesting information about the author?
• Is there any information about the people quoted in the article/chapter/book? Do they pop up in future discourse/events?
• What is proving and disproving my thesis?

5. How do you take notes?

• I'm a fan of pen and paper.
• For bigger projects, I like to print a bunch of small pictures of topics and subjects, cut them out, and keep them handy to glue into my notebook
• I use a bunch of pen colors but i'm not big on color coding. I know people do find it useful but I'm a little too chaotic for that. I do, however, highlight significant topics.
• I also highlight major quotes in articles and annotate the printed pages themselves-- asking questions, adding additional context after digging on google, etc
• I love big loopy subheadings announcing the topic, followed by bullet point summarizations 
• Important details go in boxes and circles and I love compare/contrast charts. Not a fan of Venn Diagrams or the Cornell method. 

6. How do you study your notes?

• Re-reading them the next day after I wrote them
• Summarizing them without looking in an informal draft that eventually becomes a script
• Checking the summary against the notes, zeroing in on what I missed and listing out what wasn't succinct enough for further study
• But! That's not it.  I take multiple sets of notes on the same topic from different viewpoints. That's when it's time for a synthesis of the multiple viewpoints. 
• If this was school, I'd put topics on flashcards, put the most relevant bullet points on the back, and set a 30-60-second timer to list the bullet points in an eloquent fashion

7. How do you navigate academic papers and studies?

These often expensive texts can be dense and packed with jargon. The best way to deal with them is:

• What year was this paper written or the article was published? Is it a seminal and crucial text to read or are there newer and better versions of it with better language?
• Most of these texts have a specific format. Pay attention to the methodology. They explain how the study/research was conducted. Analyze how this may be useful to your writing-- or a challenge. If this study has a small sample size, are there other studies with bigger ones? If this study has a specific racial group, are there studies with others?
• Check for peer reviews. What are experts in the field saying about this research? Has anyone challenged it and accused it of being inaccurate? If so, why, and how does that fit into your understanding of the material?
• The conclusion is usually the beef of the paper. Take copious notes on everything else, but pay special focus to what the authors decided were important takeaways.  Do they acknowledge unanswered questions that have potential research rabbit holes? If the paper is older, it may be possible that the authors have followed it up with a book or update. 
• If you don't have the time to read the study itself, check to see if there is news coverage of the study/paper so you can get summaries. Read multiple points of coverage and synthesize.  This isn't a substitute for reading the paper itself, but helpful if you're a sophomore with a paper due tomorrow.

8. What is your ideal study set-up?

I have three, depending on my mood.

A: In my brightly lit office, with a cup of coffee and a blunt, sitting in complete silence. A five-subject notebook for handwritten notes, an Office Treats notebook for episode outlines, and general Intelexual Media ideas.

B: In my brightly lit office, with a cup of coffee and a blunt, listening to lo-fi. A five-subject notebook for handwritten notes, an Office Treats notebook for episode outlines and general Intelexual Media ideas.

C:  In a brightly lit coffee shop with a cup of coffee, looking cute, sitting in with my headphones on, playing lo-fi. A five-subject notebook for handwritten notes, an Office Treats notebook for episode outlines, and general Intelexual Media ideas. 

I hope this was helpful! Happy studying! Also, you can check out this video for more tips.