Conversation

I’m not sure Caltech undergrads (at least the ones in my vicinity) *knew how* to do explicit studying like this. There was a lot of working in public, but I rarely saw anything other than murderous problem sets and projects.

Not Caltech, but for me studying was all about becoming comfortable with certain classes of problems. I remember running variations on the same discrete problems over and over until I had learned to see the meta pattern in them.

Started with re-doing problems that were demoed in class, then re-did them over and over until I didn’t have to look at my notes for help, then worked on variations of the theme until it clicked. Then do it again a couple days later, just to make sure it was actually in there.

I suspect it probably just looked like running through problem sets to anyone who walked by. I wonder if any of your peers were running similarly ‘intentional practice’ behaviours that looked like ‘getting through the homework’. (The homework was easy afterwards.)

Domenic Denicola

@domenic

There was no time for intentional practice. We had murderous problem sets every night that would usually take 4-8 hours! If we were smart, we could've taken fewer classes and developed study skills with the extra time, but... too many cool courses to take!!