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Comment by __MatrixMan__ | Hacker News Reader

I once took a psychology course with my girlfriend at the time. She and her pals would be up all night studying with flashcards. I'd just walk into class, learn about it, never study, and get A's on the tests.

When they asked me how I was doing it I explained that I'm there to learn understand the topic and I don't give a damn about the test. So I just let my curiosity lead the way, it causes me to ask questions in and out of class, email the professor about them, do my own research and experiments. Despite not letting the test be my guide, this prepared me for the test anyhow.

I'm glad they work for some people, but flashcards to me seem like they provide a shallow kind of understanding. I don't want to remember the equation, I want to be able to derive it in a pinch, and flash cards don't give me that.

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It depends on the subject. For classes/subjects that are very terminology-heavy, with a lot of dependencies between topics, memorizing things is a pre-requisite to the "deeper" understanding, especially under time-constraint of a semester or whatever. I think most people would agree that it's ideal to "naturally" explore a subject in order to get a deeper understanding of it, but one can't always be expected to 1. Be able to deploy that "curiosity" for all subjects at any time and 2. Be able to adequately achieve competence in a subject within the given timeframe

I don’t know…I think even if someone was really interested in something like organic chemistry or biochem, unless they had a very very abnormal memory they’d get wrecked on an exam without studying.

I used SRS when studying for OChem and got the highest grade across all sections my prof was teaching.

Well, I'm taking OChem next semester, so I guess we'll see.

And to be clear I don't mean "don't study" I just think that it's going to be better to connect each chemical I need to memorize to something I already understand about biochemistry though little research projects. What I end up with might end up looking a fair bit like flash cards, but I don't intend to flash them, it's the making that does it.

I think that really depends on how you use the cards. I know medicine students who clearly are passionate about their subject, but just need to get the reminders on individual terms because there’s such a wide range of topics they need to be prepared for, and lots of very similar words.

I also know that in math courses, there’s certain formulas with similar names I simply need to remember because deriving them on a test would be too time consuming. Or I could imagine in chemistry there’s various special cases that you’d want to be able to recite on a test.

I’ve never tried it for language learning but people talk highly of it, so there’s definitely some truth in their utility there.

I think the trick is flash cards are fantastic supplementally with other studying strategies.

What about classes that weren't interesting to you, but you had to pass anyway? Personally I was the same as you for classes that I found interesting, but for other required classes I went for the shallow understanding, memorize for the test approach.

I don't take those classes, what would be the point?

You were actually using spaced repetition implicitly whereas they were using flashcards to cram.

The issue wasn't the flashcards but their own failure to use them effectively.

You just described a terrible strategy for wrote memorization.

You did better than they did because the test didn’t test wrote memorization.

Well to that I'd say, work with your professors to prevent tests that test wrote memorization from being assigned.

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