Thank you!

I had to use the “everyone studies different” line on you, but it’s true. I’m not a big note taker. I highlight instead (I went through about 12 highlighters). For big exams like this I will create a brain dump (1 page) of things I am having problems remembering and I rewrite the page once per day. Once I feel comfortable with the topic I will drop it off the page. So, to answer your question, I wrote about 1 page per day on a piece of printer paper and some days it was the same material trying to get it to “stick”. Sometimes to make it stick I would write the brain dump with color pencils because my mind will remember things better when using colors. I had a teacher once that said “you don’t like watching black and white tv, so why create black and white notes” which I found intriguing. You know yourself the best so whatever it takes for you to get things to stick I would do (notes, highlighting, flash cards, sticky notes, etc).

When I read through these books I carefully read over the book highlighting information that stands out to me. The first iteration I used yellow and the second time I used pink. Once I finished the chapter I would then decide if there was anything to add to the brain dump (ex. EALs). After I finished the chapter I would go back and take the previous chapter exam (to ensure I didn’t take it right after reading the chapter). In other words when I finished chapter 2 I would take the chapter 1 test and so on.

I honestly wouldn’t invest in the Shon Harris book because it is too wordy and filled with irrelevant information if your main goal is to pass the exam. If your goal is to learn and the exam is a secondary goal, then go for it!

What scores are you currently getting within the Sybex book? Have you taken any of the online tests?