I've just wrapped up my third semester of course-work in my Electrical Engineering Masters, and here are some things that I've learned on the way.
My primary goal for my Masters is to learn a good breadth of materials while not sacrificing depth. How to do so has been a work in progress.
The Issue: Like it or not, you're going to end up prioritising some courses over others. If you neglect hard courses and prioritise easy ones, you'll fail the former and hardly do better on the latter.
In my first semester, I took a statistics class that was just within my reach. Halfway through the semester however I got lazy and stopped reviewing the lectures and doing the exercises. I sat in the lectures despite no-longer understanding them. I didn't end up taking the exam; not retaining much and not getting credits, I wasted almost a hundred hours.
Principle: Triage your courses early on. Base this on what it takes to properly learn the material, and what it takes to do well on the exam.
Last semester, I took knowledge-based courses on Computer Vision and Acoustics, and more technical courses on Dynamics and Machine Learning. During the semester, I basically didn't touch the first two outside of watching the lectures. Instead, I spent my extra time learning how to do the page-long calculus derivations for Dynamics, and the alien linear algebra required for Machine Learning. Since knowledge is easy to cram, I wasn't penalised for neglecting Acoustics and Computer Vision and ended up doing well in all of my exams.
The Issue: If you have messy and non-comprehensive notes, they won't be useful when you need the knowledge later on.
When I interned at Tesla, I worked on the ultrasonic sensors. Most modern cars use ultrasonic sensors to detect if there's anything close to the vehicle. I had taken a course on how to analyse sensor signals three years ago, and my notes were so poor that I had to re-learn the theory I needed from scratch.
Principle A: Print and bind your lecture notes before classes start.
After a semester of this, I now have 5 booklets of neatly annotated lecture notes: vehicles to take the knowledge I learn during the course with me into the future.
Principle B: If feasible, watch the lectures while annotating the script.
Rather than follow the lecture for two hours, then spend another two hours afterwards reading the script, I find it much more efficient just to combine these two steps. If the script is similar enough to the lecture, the lecture actually helps me to read the script more easily, since it paces my reading and makes sure I stay focused.
The Issue: To properly learn theoretical courses, knowledge is only half the problem. You need to develop nimbleness with the calculations and proofs, and this can't be crammed.
In my first semester, I was inspired by the image of the student who would spend days in an epic fight against a difficult math problem and eventually experience the euphoria of victory. Refusing to read the solutions, I spent too long on problem sets and fell behind on them and everything else.
Principle: Stay on top of the exercises, even if it means reading the solutions.
In the hustle of life, I find it hard to just do problem sets, especially since they're mentally exhausting. Last semester, I set aside particular weekly time slots and set caps on how long I'd work on problems before checking the solutions. I’ve also found it useful to attend tutorials, when they discuss the problem sets.
The Issue: If you want to take challenging courses, it takes time to catch up on missing prerequisites. If you’re not careful, spending this time will put you behind on your other work.
When I took my first Machine Learning course, my knowledge of linear algebra and probability was so poor that I spent weeks reading up on these materials. Naturally, this made me fall very behind on my other courses, and my performance for the entire term was negatively impacted by the bad start.
Principle: Wake up on time and ration until 10 am on foundations.
I didn’t have all the prerequisites that I needed for taking Dynamics last semester. I managed to follow the course and do well because for one month, I'd spend two hours in the morning reading lecture notes from a first-year Differential Equations course. As an aside, I can highly recommend Paul's Notes for catching up on Bachelor's-level engineering math. They're easy to read and have lots of examples. I've also tried putting “catch-up time” after dinner, but I've generally been too tired by then.
In addition to sleeping, eating and exercising, I’ve increased my energy levels by hanging out with people who like studying. I’ve saved energy by learning to study more efficiently.
Principle A: Get a really bright light in your room.
Last semester, I bought a 3000-Lumen industrial lamp for less than $50 and hung it over my table. It's well-established that bright light helps set your circadian rhythm, improving sleep quality. I found that the bright, cold light gives me a boost of energy in the morning as well and makes being indoors feel more like being outside. It’s done miracles in curing eye-strain issues.
Principle B: Live with people who work hard and play hard.
After I began living with my friends, I became much more motivated to study and I found more pleasure in learning. I have two guesses as to why: first, living with friends gives you frequent and low-duration social contact, keeping your energy levels up while not requiring too much time. Second, when your friends study similar things to you, you can discuss concepts with each other. This makes applying the Feynman Technique (learning by teaching) a cinch!
The Issue: In-person lectures are often too fast or too slow, and it's time-consuming to find study-space on campus between classes.
Coming back from Covid, I was keen to attend every lecture in person: I get to meet new people, ask questions, etc. Looking back however, this was sometimes a bad choice. When lectures were too fast for me, I'd miss a bit of crucial context half-way through and absorb nothing for the remainder of the session. When lectures were too slow, I was bored to the point of understanding less than if I had watched a fast-forwarded recording. I love spending time with friends, but when I'm on campus I find myself chatting too long with people between classes when I should be catching up on material instead.
Principle: Go to class for the first few weeks to make friends and to get to know the professor. Afterwards, don't hesitate to watch recordings rather than attend class.
Last semester, I took a full course-load while doing research. When things got hectic, I moved to watching online recordings instead of attending the lectures for two of my courses. This made it easier to annotate the lecture script while following the lecture, improved retention, and saved loads of transit time.
The Issue: Most people probably revise for exams in a very inefficient way.
My two objectives in school are understanding concepts and getting good grades, and until I put more thought into my study system, I was good at neither. For example, my roommate and I both took the same class in Machine Learning. I spent over two weeks re-reading all of the slides and redoing the problem sets and I didn't focus much on past exams. I didn't come to any fundamentally new depths of understanding - rather, I was reminding myself of what I learned during the semester. My friend just reviewed a cheatsheet that he downloaded off the internet and read the solutions to all the past exams. He spent less than a third the amount of time I spent studying and got a far better grade. When I found out, I had to take a moment of silence.
Principle A: Learn properly during the semester, then study for the exam as efficiently as possible.
After the debacle with the machine-learning course, I switched up my system. By reading the lecture script and doing the exercises, I learned the material properly during the semester. During revision, my goal wasn’t to learn the materials, but rather to train specifically for the exam. My first step in revision is now to download past exams and see how "gameable" they are. Some proof-based exams like Graph Theory simply can't be gamed; you need to absorb the material well during the semester and train your thinking skills. But oftentimes, it works very well just to use my roommate's expedient strategy. I used this strategy on one of my courses last semester and got the same level of performance and efficiency as him.
Principle B: Use Anki for memorization.
For memorising lots of material quickly, I can't recommend Anki enough. It's essentially flash-cards with spaced-repetition, to help establish material in your long-term memory. The flashcards can be made very quickly using this plugin. For two of my courses last semester, most of my exam prep was covered by pedalling on an elliptical while doing 30 minutes of Anki on my phone, for a few days.
Principle C: Use the Probability Maximisation Approach on multiple-choice exams.
A tip that helped me a lot this semester: when doing time-pressured multiple-choice exams, it’s typically smart to avoid doing the math/deep thinking, and instead take a “probability maximisation” approach. You rule out the obviously wrong answers, and rate the remaining ones by their plausibility. For example, if you have to choose among equations, which ones have the terms that you would expect?
I used to think that only people with extraordinary talent could learn their courses well and ace their exams while having a good work-life balance. Applying these principles last semester has convinced me otherwise, and hopefully they can help you too.
As an aside, I think that pain-sensitivity is important. One shouldn’t bear prolonged suffering just for the sake of it. I don't have the same capacity for locking myself in a computer lab and eating leftover free pizza as I did in my bachelors. Rather than making me weak however, this different standard of life has made me efficient. Having priorities like philosophising and reading has somehow made me a better student.
This post is dedicated to Benjamin, who invited me to his flat, and Antoine, who helped me to mentally dissociate the words “exam preparation” and “self flagellation”.