Speaker 1: The first bit of advice that I have for science students comes from mistakes that I made throughout my early stages as a student. It was so frustrating, and it wasn't until my master's and my PhD that I really honed this skill. You see, I would revise with other people. Other people that I deemed were naturally cleverer, cleverer, is that ironic? Naturally more clever than me. So, I decided that I would study with them, and this was my biggest mistake, is that I would study like they studied. I would study by just sort of like glancing over notes, highlighting stuff, and the problem is, for me, that did not stick. For them, and this was one of my friends in my undergraduate, I was so annoyed because I would study with him. He also ate his bogeys, by the way, which was gross. But, I don't know why I told you about that bit. But, he would study like the night before an exam, and he would just get such a good mark, and I tried that with him a couple of times, and I absolutely failed. So, the thing is, is that I had to learn how I learnt best, and I had to stick to it because I needed much more exposure to the content material. I needed much more exposure to the exam material. I needed to repeat exam question after exam question to make sure it stuck in my mind so that it was readily available. I didn't have a photographic memory like my friend, so I needed to study like I studied. So, that is the biggest first tip, is understand how you learn, and don't get swept up by sort of emulating someone else's learning style. I would need a full month leading up to the exam to get all of the knowledge into my brain. Some of my friends were like, what are you doing? That's way too early, and I was like, no, I know I need this, whereas they would start two weeks before, a week before, and sometimes two days before. That's so stressful to me. So, study how you need to study, not how someone else studies. I put down my success in science to one thing, bananas, and that is turning up to lectures. Now, so many people, especially these days where lectures are recorded, do the online lecture viewing, but I do not like that at all. I think turning up to a lecture, whether or not you're hungover, whether or not you're tired, whether or not it's really early, whether or not it's really late, means that you absorb the information better, and take notes, like literal notes, not on your computer, but on a piece of paper. Those, I think, are the things that connected me more to the subject, and I'm not sure whether I'm just being like super old school, now that I'm 38,

Speaker 2: being all like, oh, back in my day, we used to use pens and paper, not these new, fan-dangled computers.

Speaker 1: But I really feel like the act of sitting, listening, and writing is one of the biggest powers of retaining information and synthesising that information. I don't know why, and I'm sure there's science to back it up, but here's the thing, is that not only when you're in the lecture are you absorbing the information, you are also talking to other students, you have an ability to communicate with the lecturer. I built up great relationships with the lecturers while I was there, in the room with them, and especially as the classes get smaller and smaller, the further you progress through your university days, the more relationships that you can build with academics, the better. That will help you if you want to go on into academia, because you've built up relationships with potential supervisors, but also, it just means that you have the ability to ask questions, you have the ability to speak to students, other students, about what's tough, about what's easy, and there's a nice sense of camaraderie that goes along with it. So, that's a long way of saying turn up to lectures, even if you're hungover. Let's face it, when you're a science student, the one thing you want to do at the end of the course is pass an exam. So, why not start with the exam at the beginning of the course? That's what I used to do, and it is so powerful, because what you do is you have a look at all of the past exam papers. I used to look at the last three to five years of past exam papers for a particular course, if I could get hold of them, that is, and I would just sort of categorize them into different kind of topics and questions, and you'll be amazed, especially in university, because lecturers are very lazy when it comes to writing exam questions, is that they have pretty much stayed the same for years. Maybe a small tweak here and there, but overall, they are the same question, and what I did is, as we were going through the lectures, I would always be looking at the past exam papers, and I would say, yes, this matches with this one, and I would do it there and then. Then, when I came to revise at the end, I had all of the answers to the exam questions to revise with. Now, here's the thing, is that when I was a lecturer in university, I used to put exam questions throughout my lectures so that we could say, okay, here's an example exam question that could potentially be asked. I wouldn't ask that question, but I'd ask something very similar later on. So, do that for yourself if your lecturer is not doing it. I'm reading a book at the moment called Hidden Potential, and I am absolutely amazed at how I was able to do some of the techniques in that book just sort of on my own without realizing it during my undergraduate science student years. Now, here's the thing, is that you don't have to be an expert to teach a certain subject. In fact, the evidence has shown that if you teach a subject, even as you're learning it yourself, you will retain that information much better, and you'll give yourself the confidence that you can do even the most difficult of subjects. So, what I used to do is that at the end of the subject, I used to get together a group of friends, and we used to talk about the subject. We used to work out who was strong on one subject, who was weaker on another, and we'd sort of like take turns in explaining different concepts. And it was so powerful because what it did is it reinforced your learning. It allowed someone else to hear a different way of something being explained, which means that they're having more exposure to the exam content just with a different lens on it. And even that can be enlightening for other students. So, if you want to learn, teach. Learn something and then teach it to someone. And it is amazing what you can retain and how you can boost those grades. So, if you want to learn, teach. Too many people fall in love with science. The act of doing, the act of discovering. The problem is is there's not too many jobs out there that allow you to stay completely in contact with the purest form of science that a lot of us fall in love with when we are younger. The science jobs that exist quite often are a little bit boring. QA, development, it's just repetitive work over and over again. The thing is is that you need to look outside of science at a potential job and careers that you would maybe like to do and start building the skills that would potentially allow you to jump from science to that job. I'll be honest with you is there's not many jobs in science, like pure science these days, outside of a university. I was out of university. I was an explosives chemist in a explosives company for about 13 months and I loved it. But it wasn't for me because it was in a big old dirty hole in the middle of nowhere and I didn't like that. It allowed me to do research, it allowed me to do development and it allowed me to blow stuff up, which was great. However, I did not plan that from the get-go and I think I was just very, very lucky that I ended up in that position. So please, if you're a science student, think about the careers. It's kind of strange that we want young people to plan so far ahead, but just go on and just pretend you've got your degree, you've got the qualifications you want and you're now looking for a job and go through that search. Things will change and you should do this probably once a year throughout your studies, but ultimately it will show you what's out there, what sort of careers you can go into and if there's ones out there or you can only find ones that you really don't like, it's time to just move that ship a little bit and head in a different direction. That's just the reality, I'm afraid. Ah, science. This is probably one of the weirdest tips I've given on this YouTube channel. For science and research, but eat bananas. There we are everyone, see you in the next video. No, I'm only joking. I used to find when I was a science student, right, that not enough people went into their exam with enough brain energy reserves to perform at their best. They would like skip breakfast sometimes, they would just like have a mediocre breakfast. I always made sure, and this is kind of a weird tip and I'm sorry that it's in this video, but I would have always a banana, a full banana, not a half one, a full banana, about half an hour before every exam. And that ensured that I had enough energy for my brain because when you're in exam, your brain is just working overtime. It's thinking, it's formulating, it's worrying, it's panicking, it's doing all the things at once. So you have to make sure you give it enough energy and the one thing for me that ensured that I had the energy was a banana. It's nice and easy and packaged up. It fits in a bag nicely as long as it doesn't get squished. No one likes a squished banana. And then I would eat it half an hour before the exam. I would eat it if I was waiting outside. You know, it's just easy to carry around. You know what bananas are, don't you? I'm talking so much about bananas. Anyway, eat a banana before your exam, half an hour before. You'll be amazed at the extra boost of energy it gives you and the extra sort of like power it provides to your brain for answering those difficult questions. There we are, banana power, done. Now go check out this video where I talk about how to study like it's the year 3000, all of the AI tools for studying that exist right now. Go have a look.