B. Recognise Fatigue :

Don't regard tiredness as something to be avoided. After an honest work, you ought to be tried But be conscious of fatigue. Drowsiness and other symptoms of fatigue are nature's way of warning that rest is needed. If that warning is neglected, nature removes the symptoms and allows the work to go on but at a price. The work may not suffer but you will. It is just like ignoring the reserve signal of a vehicle and then end up walking all the way to a petrol pump. At the same time, don't keep on looking for the symptoms of fatigue - you may find them too easily.

A distinction must be made between boredom and fatigue. Boredom comes only when you lack interest although you are fresh and can do any thing except reading that particular subject. In such cases, changing a subject is often as good as a rest period. Don't change it too frequently also - you must learn to face the uninteresting in order to attain something that is interesting.

C. Setting to Study :

As you sit down to study, your effectiveness initially declines, This is because you are busy fighting all other interests that clamour for your attention. This phase is crucial and should not be confused with boredom - otherwise you will end up changing subjects and books but not gaining anything meaningfully. Once you settle your account with matters that occupy your mind, effectivenes steadily increases. This goes on till fatigue counter balances your efforts and then again a fall starts.

E. Manipulation of Memory :

Most, infact all, students complain about memory. However, the same students can rattle off everything about movies or cricket fixtures. This discrepancy can be attributed to poor management of memory. Everyone is born with a fixed endowment of memory which can;t be altered but one can definitely make a more efficient and purposeful use of his memory.

Many drugs including herbal ones are credited with improving memory - most of these claims are baseless and rely more on placebo effect rather than on actual benefit. Others like nicotine, caffiene, alcohol and amphetamine commonly taken by the students may do the trick by providing euphoria. Any attempt at improving memory by resorting to drugs is bound to end in futility and therefore best avoided.

There are certain simple methods available to improve retention and recapitulation of what you have studied. For this it is important to make a distinction between reading and studying. We all have the experience of reading a book many times yet not being able to recall what we have read.

Reading and re - reading a page is not important. What really matters is analysing what is on the page, as thoroughly and deeply as possible. This is known as level of processing. The more deep processing you do, the better you are likely to remember. This requires a deliberate effort and time. Always remember that there are no short cuts in learning - you can't rush learning.

You should recognise what is known as Practice effect and make full use of it. It is a common experience that once you start reading a new book, you find it difficult and uninteresting. On your second reading however, it doesn't seem so difficult. This is practice effect. It has been proven scientifically that it persists for about 10 days. Therefore, sessions should be scheduled as frequently as possible to make full use of practice effect.

D. Where to Study :

There is difference of opinion on this point. Some say that you should treat your body severely and put it in an uncomfortable position, then only will your mind concentrate. Others think that body should be as comfortable as possible so that the mind is free to work. Neither view can be pushed to extremity. The principle should be that the body should not make its presence felt, either by comfort or discomfort as to call attention to itself.

A point that often comes up is can you relax and study at the same time. The positive view is shared by many students and it is not uncommon to see students lying comfortably on a dunlop couch with a pack of chips in one hand, cold drink in other and eyes on the book. Our answer would be probably no. Study involves certain amount of tension and up to a level, the degree of performance is related to the degree of tension generated. However, if you become too tensed to the level of anxiety, your performance again falls.

Another point that needs to be emphasised is that what you remember is not a carbon copy of what you study - rather you remember the results of your processing. In other words the more meaning and organisation you find in a material, the better will be the retention. This is another reason for learning by rule rather than by rote.

F. Recitation :

If you have 6 hours to study and reading a chaper takes 2 hours then what do you do - read it 3 times ? That could be a bad approach. Better would be to cut down the reading time to 2 hours and spend the remaining 4 in reciting (not verbatim, of course) what you have read.

Recitation is an age old practice for improving retention. It is one of the reasons, why most of us can still recall 'Twinkle - twinkle little star' or ' Baa Baa Black Sheep' because as children we used to recite these rhymes many times.

Recitation helps in more that ways. Firstly, it motivates because you know that you have to recite what you are learning.

Secondly, it provides immediate feedback and tells you, how well you have learnt and in which areas you are shaky. Thirdly, since you don't recite verbatim, you do some deep processing, further aiding memory. Lastly, it helps you to practice retrieval. You tend to store the material in such a way that you can readily call on it.

G. SQ3R Techinque :

A related technique for better retention and an exercise in deep processing is SQ3R. It is specially useful when reading a topic for the first time. It leads to better understanding, lasting associations and better memory. Essentially, it consists of the following steps. :

Survey : Give a quick to the topic / book to find out what it deals with, what is its level of discussion, which areas have been discussed satisfactorily and which areas will need recourse to another book.

Question : When you survey, you will find yourself asking certain basic questions like why this topic has been given so much importance ; why such and such aspects has been skipped ; how much can I depend on this book ; which areas can be skipped because I have already read them and so on.

Read : Having prepared yourself with this basic information, sit down to read. Try to find the meaning and organisation of the material and do some deep processing.

Recite : After reading, close the book and try to recite what you have learnt.

Review : Go through the book again to check whether you could recite correctly. Go through the weak areas again and then follow the cycle of read - recite - review till you have perfected the material.

Law of overlearning states that you should not stop at the first perfect performance but continue to learn beyond that. If it took you 10 attempts to recite a para correctly then recite it at least 15 times (i. e. 150% overlearning) to remember it for a longer time. This law explains why we can still recall the story of 'Alice in Wonderland' or some other fairy learnt in our childhood because we continued to hear them again and again even after we remembered them.

Before concluding, we want to give you on example from a movie, Gigi. There is an elderly couple celebrating their marriage anniversary. They recall their first meeting. She says, that dinner was at 9, he was late and she wore a gown of gold. He says that dinner was at 8, he was on time and she wore blue. This sequence has been picturised in a sing, 'I remember it well'. There is no way of knowing who is right but they are in full agreement on what really counts - that the meeting led to a life time of happy affection. This is how your memory should be managed - not bogged down by unneccesary details yet accurate on what really matters !