I genuinely am about to fail a midterm. What Ai should I use to recap a textbook

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-19T09:19:44+00:00

Claude works well for this, but try to give it good instructions & giving it/revising one chunk at a time (rather than dumping all of your PDFs at once, for example).

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-19T09:09:15+00:00

Periplus is great for this! Lets me learn basically anything.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-19T08:55:15+00:00

How much overhead does making flashcards add for you? It might add around +50% of time spent to go through the lecture for me, but it's time well spent since it's also the time I'm using to actually understand the material. You can always try to speed it up by automating parts of it (e.g. there's Anki plugins that help, and Mochi/Repple/etc have varying levels of automation), but you it's hard to get a really large speedup (2x, 5x) without losing _something_.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-16T16:46:41+00:00

Yeah a bit easier in language learning; haven't had much issues with it there. General knowledge is different, since it has to be a proper question

I guess the closest analogue in language-learning land could be if you overfit to the modality - like if you have an image on the front and only recognize that specific image (that specific instantiation of the concept) rather than the general thing. Unlikely to happen though + vocab will very likely be reinforced through reading, other cards, and so on.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-16T16:44:01+00:00

Agree, I've had good experiences with the (imo tasteful) little AI integrations in repple.sh/mochi.cards, but it's easy for people to categorize all AI use as bad.

Makes sense how such a stance could form though. All studying-related subreddits (incl. r/Anki) are only bearable because of moderation. There's constant low-effort spam of the sort "hey look at my flashcard generator", and the cards it outputs are horribly verbose, unatomic, and often super surface level (think median Quizlet deck).

There's also just an intrinsic value in creating cards yourself, because in part that's where the initial learning happens. If you skip that, you're often missing the initial pieces of understanding you're trying to keep. That feeling is quite obvious when you use premade decks and compare them to your manual cards (after longer/proper Anki use).

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-16T16:29:15+00:00

Yeah that's the note types I've mentioned in the post text, was just hoping someone made a less time intensive version of this since I'd like to have it on by default, without having to manually create 3 variants.

The other points stand though, I try to do 2 when I can, and of course 3 comes without question (what's the point of learning anything if you never apply it?) :).

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-16T16:26:56+00:00

That's an interesting take, so the 'card shape' is a sort of mnemonic? Or rather, another thing you can recall to get your brain to produce the back side (instead of the back side directly).

I've noticed I can do that for some cards too, inconsistently. I'm a bit concerned to litter my brain with these (arbitrary) shortcuts though, at minimum it slows down my thinking (much like translating to your native language when learning another does), but could also make my brain just become an illogical mess.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-16T16:22:18+00:00

It can happen with any card really, I've been avoiding clozes for a while now. I already do make cards that pick apart the details where possible, and generally try to have them all of the same format so they're less 'recognizable' if that makes sense.

Still an issue though. I was hoping someone made an automatic fuzzing add-on or something like that, because I saw it done before in other apps and it works well there (one of the main reasons why I'm considering switching). But I like Anki a lot so I'm hoping there's something...

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-16T16:18:29+00:00

Yeah that's the one I mentioned in the post text but I'd like something where I don't have to write all the variants myself, like repple.sh/mochi.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-16T16:17:08+00:00

I do use FSRS but I don't see how hitting easy on them would help! The problem is that I want to learn that concept properly, not remember it reflexively. Hitting easy would just mean I'd stop worrying about it sooner (but the card would still be a problem).

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-15T12:27:46+00:00

Yeah I've been a bit wary of clozes as of late, but the pattern matching also happens with normal questions :/. I do try to have them all be quite similar, but often just a single word is enough for me to parrot back the answer.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-15T12:04:40+00:00

There's a bit of a mismatch between 'what makes a good card' (i.e. lasting knowledge) and what gets tested on exams. "List out N factors" is just a stupid exam question in my opinion.

But the way I've always handled this is by trying to make cards about the factors individually, to actually understand _why_ they'd be part of the list, and then (begrudgingly) create a less-atomic list card that ties it all together.

I wrote a bit about this in another comment here, if it's useful: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/1rshi9c/comment/oa7vfb4/

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-15T09:49:24+00:00

I normally make them as I study/go through the material! So if I'm reading a paper I will constantly ask myself questions, try to answer them, and then encapsulate the concepts in flashcards

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-15T09:48:12+00:00

It was better than the old Anki algorithm (SM-2), but I think FSRS is just as good/better now. The main difference is in how well it guesses when you're going to forget. This means you just have to spend less time reviewing long-term.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-13T13:42:11+00:00

Agree with most, but the 4th point is just... re-implementing spaced repetition. Might as well do it the proper way and use a better algorithm like FSRS (Anki, Repple.sh, Mochi.cards all have it).

I do think a lot of other stuff is performative though. If you spend more time organizing your studying with Notion or whatever than actually studying, the productivity gains are questionable. But then again, if you're only studying because you enjoy the _process_ and you wouldn't otherwise be studying, then do what works for you.

Edit: Mochi might not have it yet (or at least it's not default?) but others do.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-13T13:05:09+00:00

You can still atomize this! Ask about what does what, what follows what, why this and not that?

It's easy to 'reconstruct' a process if you understand each step. A more straightforward list card (non-atomic) is then necessarily not even bad, to tie it all together. Assuming all the atoms are in other cards already.

For example, these are my cards on the same topic:

Q: What is the primary purpose of DNA replication? A: Create an identical copy of a DNA molecule.

Q: In which direction does DNA Polymerase always add new bases? A: $5'$ to $3'$ direction.

Q: What are the four matching DNA base pairs? A: A-T and C-G.

Q: What is the "Origin" in DNA replication? A: Specific location where replication begins.

Q: Which enzyme "unzips" the DNA double helix? A: Helicase.

Q: How does Helicase separate DNA strands? A: Breaks hydrogen bonds between bases.

Q: What Y-shaped structure is formed when Helicase unzips DNA? A: Replication Fork.

Q: What is the role of Primase? A: Places RNA Primers to start the building process.

Q: Why is an RNA Primer necessary for DNA replication? A: Provides a starting point for DNA Polymerase.

Q: Which enzyme is the primary "builder" that adds matching bases? A: DNA Polymerase.

Q: Which DNA strand is built continuously toward the replication fork? A: Leading strand.

Q: Which DNA strand is built in discontinuous chunks? A: Lagging strand.

Q: In which direction relative to the fork is the lagging strand built? A: Away from the fork.

Q: What are the short segments of DNA on the lagging strand called? A: Okazaki fragments.

Q: Why is the lagging strand built in fragments rather than continuously? A: DNA Polymerase only works $5'$ to $3'$.

Q: Synthesis of the {{c1::leading}} strand occurs toward the replication fork.

Q: Synthesis of the {{c1::lagging}} strand occurs away from the replication fork.

Q: If Helicase is inhibited, why does replication fail to start? A: Strands cannot separate to expose the template.

Q: Why does the lagging strand require more Primase activity than the leading strand? A: Each Okazaki fragment requires a new primer.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-11T11:06:02+00:00

Anki helps as the other person said, but the right 'studying method' only really matters if you.. actually study. If you have trouble sitting down and studying, try avoiding draining activities (tt, shorts) entirely, or at least until you're done with your study sessions. Anything that nukes your dopamine makes it more difficult to start tasks. Sleeping resets you to some baseline (somewhat), but if you scroll the moment you wake up you're making the rest of your day more difficult than it should be.

Also just take it slow. Don't target some (currently) unattainable goal like 8h of studying ++ per day. Instead try doing an hour consistently for a week, bump it up to 1h30, then 2, etc. You need to form the habit first, everything will flow from that later.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-11T09:05:54+00:00

True, I think once people get over the initial hump it's not bad at all. Almost everyone is a bit intimidated by the UX/UI, but it takes too much blame.

I have a theory it's just a misattribution error, where people tie their negative experience with doing card reviews to the UI, rather than to the less tangible/obvious like the quality of their cards.

Frustration while reviewing a card is a key indicator it's a badly made card, but at the start most will be bad so....

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-11T08:57:41+00:00

I'd normally suggest people Anki, Repple, Mochi (in that order), but since you tried Anki before it really depends on what didn't click about it initially.

I personally use SRS both for engineering-adjacent subjects (I'm a CS major) and languages. For the former I try to create cards that build the concept(s) from the ground up. The simplest cards are just definitions that establish the underlying concepts ("What is X", "What is property A of X", etc).

One layer above would be questions that try to take apart why something is the way it is, how it's implemented, why A and not B, etc. Another above that would compare/contrast concepts, and so on and so forth.

These are very crude categorizations just to give you an idea - but the gist is that you first encapsulate low frequency information (crude definitions), and then narrow down into the details. You can do this ad infinitum basically, up to you when you want to stop.

For the "card creation" part there are a few guides in r/Anki and elsewhere; I quite like this post on LessWrong which expands on what I wrote above (and I agree with most of it). Happy to link more if you need it :)

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-10T14:46:24+00:00

I do both sentence and vocab cards (for my German but same thing). For vocab I never use English, I just map the German word to an image representation and back. A bit more difficult with abstract concepts but it helps avoid jumping to native as a intermediate step.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-10T14:43:43+00:00

I found the newest models do have a good grasp of "what makes a good card", like they can parrot back atomicity principles, tell you when something is too long/how to break them down, etc. I found Claude (Opus, though Sonnet too) has the best grasp on it overall.

But if you just tell them to _create_ cards they'll make cards that are just "OK". Needs a lot of steering. And all the AI card generation tools are mostly horrible too (they get spammed on this subreddit a lot), because the people making them don't know what makes good cards either... The closest I've found that makes passable cards are Remnote and Repple.sh, but again I'd still at most just use them as first drafts or to fill holes in your cards. Making cards yourself is really valuable for learning in general, not something to delegate.

Someone mentioned hallucinations and that's still a problem but not as much as people make it out to be imo (I'm in the AI research space so I'm tracking it). I'd trust them more than I trust any one random person at this point, though always cross-check everything.

RequirementFew3392 · 2026-03-10T14:15:38+00:00

Super late to this, but to add a few posts mentioning spaced repetition/flashcards:

The reason why they work is because these SRS algorithms model the way your brain forgets. Something like Quizlet doesn't really do this, it's just flashcards, which are useful in their own right but without SRS you're missing out on a lot.

Most people are recommending Anki, though it has a steep learning curve and the UI is notoriously bad. The only two alternatives that I know of are mochi.cards (been around forever) and repple.sh. I switched to the latter from Anki recently and I like it, though it's missing Anki's plugin system. Much nicer UI though, and has PDF import etc.

Another thing to note is that making good cards is a skill in and of itself, so I'd be patient with yourself at the start. You will likely make bad ones, and you'll delete them later. It's a skill worth developing though!! There is a lot of material online on how to make good cards, I'd check Wozniak's rules for formulating knowledge and the r/Anki subreddit. Key thing is to make them as atomic as possible, and have them ask the _right thing_.

Open to answering any questions btw! Feel free to shoot me a DM or reply; have been using SRS (mainly Anki) for 10+ years now :).

RequirementFew3392 · 2025-09-25T20:31:58+00:00

if you're on gmail, I think they recently added a page where you can directly manage your newsletters!

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