Schedule Advice
An appropriate work strategy for this course is critical to success
for every student. But, for a variety of reasons, not every
student in this course has incorporated (or even realized) all of
the valuable components of the ideal strategy.
The ideas below should help you think through the formation of a
work strategy that will work best for you. Of course, once
formed, it remains that you must supply all of the motivation to
keep up with it!
- Lectures
- Be on time, and be sure to sit in a location where you can
comfortably see the board and easily hear the lecturer.
- Do not have your email, facebook, youtube, or other
distractions open during the lecture. Note, these are
distracting also to the students behind you!
- Have either an electronic or paper copy of the lecture
notes, and annotate with your own notes throughout the
lecture. Use colored pens to distinguish your notes.
- If you are confused by some portion of the lecture, and if
lecture recordings are being made, make a note of the time
at the corresponding location on the lecture notes.
This will allow you to easily locate the relevant portion of
the video when you return at a later time to study this
portion of the notes.
- Review the lecture recordings for every class
meeting. You might spend some time with other
resources first, to try to resolve some prerequisite issues
that might have been holding you back during class.
When you are ready, click through to the parts of the
lecture that you found most confusing.
- Reading
- Before each lecture, skim over the appropriate pages of
the lecture notes, and the corresponding sections of the
book.
- After the lecture, re-read the above thoroughly.
Remember, you are responsible for all of the material in the
book and in the notes (unless explicitly stated otherwise),
but due to time constraints not all will be covered in
class.
- Homework
- After each lecture and the subsequent reading, you should
try to complete as many of the homework exercises from that
day as you can, and make as much progress as you can on the
others, to avoid leaving too many exercises to be done just
before the due date.
- Note the Help Room hours and course office hours, and plan
your schedule to allow you opportunities to go to ask
questions specifically about exercises that you could not
complete on your own.
- Go to the Help Room or course office hours to get help on
the questions from the previous day, complete all of those
exercises, and submit that assignment.
- Try also to go to the Help Room or office hours with
general questions on the material that might have come up in
your mind as a result of the homework exercises.
- Plan your schedule also to allow you to come to instructor
office hours with questions, especially general questions
for which you might get the best help from the
instructors. Remember you are welcome at the office
hours of all instructors/TAs for the course.
- Daily studying
- Identify important topics covered that day, relevant
definitions, theorems, techniques, and applications.
- Identify topics you are having trouble with.
Identify if those topics make use of earlier topics you are
continuing to have trouble with.
- Spend focused time reading the presentation of that
material in the lecture notes and in the book.
- Consider reviewing relevant portions of the lecture
recordings, if such recordings are being made. (Work
back-and-forth between the written materials and the lecture
recordings -- watching the recordings can help you
understand things in the written materials, and likewise
understanding the written material can help you understand
further in the recordings.)
- Maintain a list of questions to ask in instructor office
hours, or the help room, that get specifically to what you
are having trouble with. Ask these questions in office
hours or the Help Room. Cross off questions when
resolved, or consider rephrasing if your concerns are not
thoroughly satisfied.
- Big-picture studying
- Identify how current topics from class relate to, and/or
make use of, earlier topics from the course.
- Think about why topics have been presented in this order.
- Try to anticipate possible generalizations or applications
of recent topics.
- Discuss the above with a study group of other students.
- Organization
- Maintain a documented daily schedule that allows you to
fit in the above items, along with the rest of your
obligations.
- Adjust your daily schedule as you gain experience on how
best to allocate time to these items.
- Consider how your schedule might need to change near an
exam date.
- Consider how you might make most effective use of the
flexibility of time during the weekend.