A&P study suggestions

1.Take good notes in lecture by hand

2. Type notes (I use OneNote)

3. Print out typed notes

4. Take chunks of typed notes and hand write them onto notecards, one card per little section or topic, not too much info per card

5. Go through and memorize cards

If you can, voice record the lectures. If you get any handouts, go through them everyday. If your professor offers open labs for study, go to them.

Make sure you are staying organized in your notes. Re-write them in a way you can understand. Make pictures or list the steps of the processes.

One way I studied is to think of the body part itself in action. Think of what can it do, why it does that, etc.

I'm a crammer. Bad habit but found something that really worked and stuck with it.

What I did was copy paste all of the PowerPoint slides into bulletpoint format. If you have taken comm 101 then you know what I mean. Once organized I would read one sentence out loud two to three times, then without looking at the page I would try and remember and say it 10 -15 more times out loud. Then move one to second sentence.

After completing a page I would review and be able to say almost every sentence in my own words.

Worked so well that for finals I just reread all my self made study guides once and did very well.

Not perfect but got me A's throughout prerequisites. Now I'm waiting for an acceptance call to the fall program at UNLV.

Good luck just remember to take bits and pieces from people's ideas and create a study method that works for you.

I'm primarily an auditory learner, so what helped me was to read the notes aloud to myself. I had a newborn while taking Patho, and guess what I read to her in lieu of Goodnight Moon or Very Hungry Caterpillar?

I also rewrote my lecture notes, so I could have something neater than what I'd written down in class. I bought 2 notebooks for class; one for my in-class rough draft, one for my neat revision.

Notes are in outline format (imagine indentations at each level -- it won't let me format here)

I)

A.)

1.)

a)

b)

2.)

B.)

C.)

II)

Etc.

My A&P courses were notoriously difficult among the schools in my area (because we had some of the best professors). An interesting tidbit: I looked at A&P online courses for the heck of it, and several online programs used course materials written by my actual professor at the brick & mortar school where I took my A&P. I thought that was pretty neat yet intimidating, and there is also a Facebook group of "Zao Survivors" who pass the course, lol. Ok, with that being said, here's my advice: take notes by hand, or if you have to type out notes in class, go back over them with your materials and fill in the blanks later. I feel like this immensely helped in solidifying the material. I'm a textbook procrastinator, so I really had to suppress that urge and study in a more appropriate way. For lab, I recommend youtube videos or Khan Academy for evals. I did poorly on my muscle eval at the end of my 1st semester, and all I had been doing was using the diagrams in the book. However, I earned extra credit on the blood vessel eval at the end of 2nd semester because I used my diagrams AND videos to help with memorization (and extra lab time, nothing beats reviewing in person). I also recommend to study WELL in advance for the bigger tests/evals, so you don't have to rely on cramming the night before. Videos are helpful in this respect too; if you have a few minutes between classes, watch a video. It can only help, and you'd be surprised how much you'll remember after reviewing them for an hour straight.

If you can find a good study group, I also found this to be helpful. I was careful to steer clear of students who didn't seem to take the class seriously, or were more interested in maintaining a social life. I'm a non-traditional student with a family, so the campus life didn't really interest or distract me that much. However, making a little time to wind down on the weekends was crucial. You can burn out easily without taking small breaks, just remember to get back on track and allow enough time to complete homework, assignments, studying etc. I had to make myself study in advance and work on my lab notebook (which took an enormous amount of time to complete), in order to keep ahead. If you find yourself getting bogged down or behind on assignments, take a risk assessment and devote more of your time to assignments that "cost" more in terms of points towards your grade. Just my two cents, wishing you luck!

What material are you on? What worked for me was a study group. We would go through the chapters and the study guides and quiz each other. I think quizzing yourself is a really good way to see what you know. Use the tests in your book. I tried taking notes and typing them up but honestly it was too much work for me and it wasn't helping me that much. I liked making flash cards or taking a blank piece of paper and going through terms and trying to write down or draw everything from memory. I think you do need to identify what type of learner you are first and then try some different things out.

I am taking A&P 2 over summer session and it is definitely a lot of information over a short period of time (12 days to go...WOO HOO)! Have you tried the "Crash Course" series on YouTube? They may not be as in depth as your course, but I have found them helpful in giving me a good basic understanding of the material before diving deeper into it. The videos are very well put together, quite entertaining, and only about ten minutes each. They are divided up by body system, with some systems having multiple videos.

If your course it set up for online lectures, or you are able to record them, try listening to the lecture a second time after you read the chapter. For me, the first time I listen it is just about taking notes and trying to keep up, but by the second time it usually "clicks" and I have a much better grasp. Hang in there and good luck!

Concept mapping! Learn to write down connections between topics and you'll retain more of what your learned.

I love Kahn and Crash Course! I as well am in the summer session ( 9 classes left!! - Thank God! ) and use these combined with re-writing my notes and taking my study notes EVERYWHERE with me! I'm either working, at school, studying or sleeping. There are no spare minutes at the moment. I can say I'm counting down the days until I have a wee bit of time off!