Oh, the Places You'll... Study

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Now that you’re (hopefully) back into the swing of your school schedule, you should be noticing the work is starting to pile up too. Unfortunately, the weeks will only get more intense as your test calendar gets increasingly hectic, and whilst the school holidays will give you a brief respite from your daily toils, there’ll still be a heap of additional work to do, and you don’t want to rely on your ability to catch up when you could be spending that time getting ahead. That’s why finding an optimal study zone is so important.

Setting a solid foundation for yourself now will make the rest of the year that little bit less stressful, and an easy way to do that is to find study spaces that are most conducive to you learning and revising. So where can you go outside of school hours? Maybe you’ve got a bunch of noisy siblings at home who get in your way whenever you crack open your textbook, or perhaps your peers won’t let you do your work in peace if you hang around during free periods or after classes. Whatever the case may be, you have a whole host of options depending on your circumstances and the kind of study zone that you prefer.

At home, your room

You know how the stereotype of a moody teenager involves hibernating in your room for long periods of time? Well they say there’s a little truth behind every stereotype, and even if you’re not that bad, you probably still spend a significant amount of time cooped up in your own space as opposed to a huge family room where you have less control over things like background noise.

But your room can sometimes be plagued with distractions – a messy space or piles of other work can distract you from the task at hand… to say nothing of phones, laptops, iPads, and so forth. But if you’ve got the mental fortitude to not pick up your phone every time it buzzes, and if your work environment is at least kind of neat, if not totally immaculate, then you can easily turn your room into an optimal study zone.

Things like natural lighting and clean air obviously make a big difference here, but you’ll also have the chance to fine tune other environmental factors like the temperature, music (if you so desire), and perhaps even a few delicious snacks nearby to use as a reward system.

And in your own room, you’ve even got more freedom. School libraries tend to frown on students spreading worksheets and diagrams all over the floor or pinning stuff up on the walls, but your bedroom is unlikely to have draconian librarians disapprovingly looking over your shoulder and shushing you all the time, meaning that you can pretty much do whatever you want.

If you are keen to set up a bedroom study zone, give yourself a table or desk to work at, as crouching over your bed or lounging about whilst trying to complete a stack of textbook questions is as bad for your back as it is for your brain; a nice comfy chair is a far better option. Your spine will thank you when you’re 60.

About the house

For those who have resigned themselves to permanently messy bedrooms or who’d rather keep that space as a strictly non-study relaxation zone, there are other options within your home which can either substitute for, or complement this.

If your house has a study, or a fairly quiet room with a desk, then that’ll be your obvious first resort. Try to kick out other siblings or family members if possible, or at the very least, politely ask them to keep the noise down for your more intensive study sessions. But you can also accomplish a fair amount of work in rooms that might not stand out as being typical study zone spaces. Sticking a few formulae to the fridge or having your revision notes attached to the walls of bathrooms and hallways can go a long way, even if they’re not areas where you’d sit down and stare for an extended periods of time.

In fact, those brief windows of study can add up to be a considerable amount of time overall. Let’s say you attached a bunch of vocabulary or perhaps a few summary sheets to your bathroom mirror. And assuming your shower/ beauty routine is a short, but daily occurrence for you: that’s around ten minutes each day of you absorbing that content, which is more than an hour a week. Assuming you did this from March through to October, that’s over thirty hours of exposure to revision material, which might make all the difference at the tail end of things.

Crashing friends’ houses

But for some, the home environment is just not a viable option for a study zone because of the sheer amount of distractions present. As such, you might be better off organising to meet up at a friend’s place – either for a group study session, or just so you can get some peace and quiet. If you have relatives or family friends that live nearby, you could even pay them a visit and ask whether they’d mind if you borrowed a spare room for a few hours a week when you needed to get things done.

Studying at a friend’s house is a good option if you work best amongst others, or if the kind of tasks you’re completing are suited to group discussions and collaboration, but it’s equally possible to just set yourself a half hour window to work through something in relative silence and agree to compare answers or take breaks together afterwards.

The same distractions that were present in your home can still apply, but there’s also the added potential problem of there being a friend (or friends) who might inadvertently draw your attention away from the task. The best way to avoid this is to designate a specific time-frame in which you need to complete a specific task, and commit to getting the work out of the way so you can chat and chill out afterwards without feeling guilty for neglecting your homework.

Planes, trains, and automobiles

…okay, unless you’re a frequent flyer, maybe not planes… but seeing as you probably spend a fair bit of time each day in the car or catching buses and trains, it can seem wasteful to just be staring into space or playing mindless games on your phone when you might be able to cram in a quick bit of study. Don’t get me wrong – you shouldn’t be forcing yourself to do work every spare minute of the day, but if you’re someone who doesn’t really find sitting at a desk for hours on end to be particularly efficient or effective, maybe you’d benefit more from these shorter exercises. Having a few key English vocabulary words saved on your phone can make for a good alternative to tapping away at Candy Crush or whatever you kids are into these days, and even rereading past tests to take note of any mistakes you made is better than having to just sit around watching the world go by as you listen to the bus chug its way to and from school.

This is doubly true for those who live quite far away from school and have to drive for more than an hour to get there (or catch public transport which, let’s be honest, means it takes you 20% longer assuming the trains don’t break). That’s a pretty significant chunk out of your day, and you’ll likely be exhausted by the end of the day, let alone the end of each week. I was always a fan of using travel times to nap or chill out so that whenever I had free time at home or school, I would be more in the mood to commit to studying. But you may find it equally valuable to get some reading and revision done while in transit so that you can spend your lunchtimes at school or evenings at home just relaxing.

Considering you’ll usually have some of your work with you in the mornings and afternoons, finding a few easy ten fifteen minute exercises with which to occupy yourself should be fairly straightforward. Maybe pick out some especially challenging textbook questions to complete, or an extended response prompt to ponder. Of course, if you’re travelling longer distances, you can commit to more extensive exercises. Just make sure you’re not one of those poor unfortunate souls who gets travel sick when reading… that’s a sure-fire way to wreck your brain for the next couple of hours.

Your local library as a study zone

As someone who worked best in ultra-quiet spaces and preferred the company of books to my noisy Year 12 peers, I can personally attest to the advantages of finding a nearby library and treating that as your go-to study zone. Most metropolitan suburbs will have a library within a fifteen-minute drive, and there might even be one within walking distance of your home or school.

Whilst you don’t have as much freedom as you do at home regarding sound, space, and snacks, the enforced silent areas can be a great incentive to get work done, and if you manage to find a relatively unpopular space, then you won’t have to worry about others distracting you.

But feel free to experiment with different environments throughout the year as your workload and study regime change, too. Maybe what works for you in one subject won’t work so well for another. Most students will usually end up finding some combination that suits them best over the course of their QCE years, and it can be a great comfort to have these designated areas for homework and revision. The right study zone can make all the difference to your productivity, so don’t limit yourself to the monotony of studying at school.