Listen, I'm going to give you study tips that have worked for me throughout my entire college career.
1) Don't treat it as studying. Treat it as reviewing, skimming, yada yada yada. If you sit there and go "oh no I have to study" it's like saying to yourself that the class is difficult and you have to study for it. Which brings me to...
2) If you think something is difficult, it will be. Your biology class is not hard. It's ez pickings. I'm taking a class now called Structured Computer Organization which talks about the functionality of the computer down to the damn circuit level. Do I know everything that's going on? No. But, do I sit there and stress about this class being hard? No again. I don't even show up and I scored above average on the past two quizzes, and I scored a 100 on the last assignment.
Those top 2 points are just the psychological parts. It will be harder if you think it's hard - so stop thinking it's hard.
Now come the actual "studying" methods.
1) Long sessions = bad.
If you sit there and "study" (review!!!) for hours on end, you'll get bored, tired, and hate the material. It's OK to hate the material of course, because if you loved it, you wouldn't have to study it, but if you hate it too much you'll never retain any of it.
2) Writing down everything = bad.
You don't have to write down every intricate detail of everything in the chapter. Hell, you don't even have to read the whole chapter. I'm sure your book has things such as the boldfaced words, the end of chapter summary, and the little blue/green info boxes in the chapters. Read those and remember them. Write them down neatly in your notes. Once you've made 1 pass through a chapter, you shouldn't have to go back. Your notes should be enough.
3) Trying to learn everything = bad.
Let me be frank here. Unless you are a biology major, everything you do in that class is bullshit. I'm a Computer Science major and everything I learned in my Philosophy class was bullshit and thankfully I've purged most of it. The harder you try to burn images of this stuff into your brain, the harder it will be to focus on the important stuff in your other classes. Focus on KEY POINTS and be able to recall them easily. After you've got the big things out of the way, go into the little things.
4) Going into too much detail = bad.
Remember that big, painful, hour-long tangent your teacher went on about a particular topic? Every teacher does it at least once. Well, has he ever gone off on a big tangent and then asked a lot of questions about it on a test? My teachers surely haven't. If they did, there'd be no room on the test for other questions. Give everything equal priority unless he specifies otherwise.
Now, I'd avoid the following suggestion since it is all depending on how your class structure works. I'm able to do this in my Structured Computer Org class since my teacher posts all of his notes on the web and attendence is not mandatory. Basically, if you don't HAVE to go to class, don't bother. The class moves at a pace to accomodate everyone else - not you. If you need more time to assimilate information than everyone else, then you belong on your own learning at your own pace. If you assimilate everything quickly and grow bored and lose interest when the teacher goes off on a tangent or a student asks a dumbass question, then you also belong on your own learning quickly. If you don't feel comfortable in the classroom environment, don't bother going.
-Warik
Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below 
