Leon Hu ‘29
Exec. Opinion Editor
In college, there always appears to be a surprising level of deference to study habits that are, quite frankly, inefficient. ‘Studying’ is synonymous with ‘cramming’. A quick Youtube search will yield a myriad of videos either documenting all-nighters or instructing the viewer how to do so. Around finals season, activity in Raether library can extend far past midnight, with private rooms filled with sleep-deprived students gorging their minds on information just hours before their finals commence. Put simply, when the semester’s workload peaks, many try to ‘lock in.’
Yet, is this really what locking in means?
Let’s say there are two students, student A and student B, taking TRPD-101. Both students complete the first exam of the semester and have three weeks before midterms. Student A, after a short three-day study break, decides to begin studying alongside the lectures and keeps a consistent study schedule of one hour per day, every weekday, until the midterm. Student B decides they need a break after the first exam—rightfully so—but also determines that it is still too early to study until the week before the midterm. When Student B reaches the final week, however, several unexpected events come up, and they only get two days of studying before the midterm. Thus, while Student A has already amassed twelve hours of studying and can sleep soundly before the 9AM midterm, Student B somehow has to make up over ten hours of studying in two days while still having class 10AM to 4PM. Student B crams until 1AM the day before, rushes over the material, and goes to sleep anxious.
Would you really say that Student B was more locked in than Student A, even if B had a higher volume of studying in a single session?
Let’s also consider the format of their study sessions. In addition to the distributed practice described above—a method backed by extensive science—Student A chooses to work in a way that challenges their understanding of the material, not their rote memorization of terms. They review and memorize terms and meanings, yes, but they also take the time to try to understand the terms that they remember but, frankly, do not understand. They use the ‘rubber duck’ method: to understand what’s going wrong with their understanding, they explain the concepts in question to an inanimate object (the rubber duck) until they find where the gap in their understanding lies. On the other hand, Student B is pressed for time and cannot spare any of their day-before cram session to genuinely understand the material. Again, Student B is now far more uncertain about the content and, understandably, feels out of it.
What part about this looks ‘locked in’?
This mentality may be even worse for writing assignments. Crafting good writing is a very, very time-consuming process, so much so that even the deadlines imposed by a typical class may not be sufficient to produce something very good. So, when you condense a writing process for a ten-page essay that is meant to be written over the course of three weeks into two days, quality must be sacrificed. Quantity can be forced—if you type nonstop at 50 words per minute, you can finish a 3000-word essay in an hour—but quality cannot. Quality writing requires time away from the keyboard to let your ideas marinate and new insight to be gained. And cramming for group projects may be the worst of all: you do not want to be the only person who has not done their share of work when it is due the following night.
Students, especially freshmen, know that locking in does not mean pulling an all-nighter after not studying for three weeks. Locking in is getting consistent one-hour study sessions multiple times a week so you can get a full ten hours of sleep before your final. It means being consistently engaged and locked in so you are never truly locked out. If you have to ‘lock in’ a day before your final to cram, it often means that you were not locked in beforehand.
Should you study right before big exams and assignments? Absolutely. Should you study for eight hours straight until 3AM in the morning before your 9AM? Probably not. With proper spacing of studying and workload, there should be no need to force such abnormally high volumes of rehearsal in a single space. Put in the effort to start working earlier in the semester. That, truly, is ‘locking in.’