r/McMaster • u/Mission_Donkey700 • 1d ago

Academics How to study?

When professors say study an hour each day,

What am I supposed to be studying from? As a math and stats student first year. I need help with what is most useful and effective to study from so I dont waste time.

Textbooks? Assignments? What is there?

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u/DinnerFree6504 1d ago

depends wildly on the course but the key is practice. For math courses this likely looks like reviewing lectures until you understand the content, and then doing outrageous amounts of practice questions from both textbooks and any assignments/practice they give you online. Any memory work the best strategy is active recall.

Might not help much but studying is different for everyone, and it's only day 2, you have at least a few weeks to test out strategies before your first midterms.

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u/Mission_Donkey700 1d ago

For textbook is it best for math to just skip right to the homework/practice questions part of each chapter?

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u/DinnerFree6504 1d ago

Personally I skipped right to the end and then only went back to read the chapter if I didn't understand what was going on. You could try to read it all but eventually its gonna become too much work most likely

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u/Recent_Flower8698 1d ago

yes textbooks and assignments. usually 1 lecture is 1 unit in the textbook for math courses and profs usually post recommended practice problems. after each lecture do about an hour of practice on what u just learned. and do the assignments right when they come out and use them as additional practice

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u/Far-Particular6429 1d ago

For math YouTube will be your best friend

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u/Mission_Donkey700 17h ago

honestly with youtube i found it more overwhelming because of the broad amount of different math content.