Studying has never been a significant part of my life. Throughout school i have never had the need to study. I would review the required material before class occasionally and be able to remember almost exactly everything i needed. When i no longer required those concepts or memories i would dispose of them. Although this was not a smart way to do things it was my way of studying. Although if in the future i needed to recall that information i could easily relearn it for as long as i needed it, all i would require to effectively relearn is a simple study session.
Going into college i had to change up my study habits. Unfortunately. Now whenever i need to prepare for a test/exam my procedure tends to vary for each subject according to my relative ease of understanding the material. As an example for Language Studies (in my case japanese) i spread out about an hour a day to study over the course of a week.l As for other information based subjects i typically cram for 2 to 3 days before hand depending on what my schedule allows.
Admittedly my study methods are certainly not the best but they get me by as is. If i could get my habits in order i would much prefer to study all subject as i do with languages.
My memory is typically very good over a short term period for information i deem important, so for this exam i went through and took each of the practice exams roughly 10 times each to ensure i knew the concepts and material. Unluckily for me i completely disregarded who’s names matched to what achievements/theories so i was at a loss when i arrived at the matching section. Going forward this is absolutely something i will keep in mind.
For the second exam i plan to spread my studying over the course of a week and most likely write down what i feel is important to myself so that i remember those things better. My reasoning behind this is that i think i personally learn more efficiently through muscle memory, so by that logic if i write something down i will be able to remember it better. The proof that i have to back this up is that when i study Japanese i have to write a lot of the Hiragana and so far i have had near perfect scores on all tests and quizzes to date, despite missing a few classes. I am interested to learn how large a factor muscle memory can play into learning.
Kyle's Gen Psych Blog 
I like your ideas of muscle memory and I relate to this way of studying. When I write something down I tend to remember it more and it gets stuck in my head in comparison to just simply reading over information. Our book mentions the testing effect, in which you have enhanced memory after retrieving rather than just rereading information. It’s important to actively process information in order to master it. Your tactic of just cramming in 2 or 3 days probably won’t allow you to fully understand all the material given for an exam. Spacing out your study time in the future is a smart idea, spaced practice is proven to result in better retention. You mentioned you had trouble matching names of people to theories and studies, maybe making flashcards and reviewing them everyday could help you with this. When ever you have free time while your eating, right when you wake up in the morning, or before you go to sleep you could go through your flashcards of the people and studies. Another thing to remember when learning information is SQ3R where you survey, question, read, retrieve, then review. This method has proven to be accurate and helpful for many. Overlearning is definitely important as well we always think we know more than we do.
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I agree with your post. In high school studying never took more than two hours a day. Homework yes three to four hours but never straight studying. I find getting a method to study difficult as well. For most subjects simply reading the book is enough. Perhaps rereading it after lecture or rewriting my notes. Some subjects I do feel come easier or I am overconfident. I find myself designating so much time to chemistry trying to figure out how to learn it. I am not even activity learning the whole time. I just read the book and do not encode the information. Then when I got to practice problems or a quiz I wouldn’t understand what the question was asking. Chemistry and math studying really are challenging. For Psychology or Biology I mostly read the book. Biology sorties I need to draw the pictures out. This is the process of encoding to commit it to storage. Then to master the skills one would be able to recall the information out of long term memory
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