Introduction
I’m a big fan of studying with friends. Not only is it way more fun than sitting in your dorm room and staring at textbooks all night, but there are actual benefits to doing so as well. But does studying with friends really help? Let’s find out!
Studying with others is a great way to retain and share knowledge.
Studying with others is a great way to retain and share knowledge, which is especially useful if you’re learning about something that’s difficult for you to grasp. When you’re working with friends who are also struggling with the same concepts, it can be easier for everyone to work through their challenges together.
When students work on their own, they often feel more pressure than when they are part of a group. A study from 2014 found that people tend to perform better in groups than alone because they feel less pressure—and therefore become more committed—when there is someone else present.
Studying with others can be distracting.
If you’re the type of student who needs absolute silence to focus, then working with others may not be for you. Long gone are the days where it was normal for a group of students to gather around one desk and take turns reading aloud from their textbooks. Nowadays, everyone wants everyone else to provide input on their work or give opinions on every single point they make.
The problem with this is that there’s no way around it: people talk and interrupt each other when they study together.
No matter how good your friends might be at remaining quiet while reading aloud (and even if they do stay silent), they’re still going to have their own ideas about what’s being read and put in their two cents about what should or shouldn’t be included in your paper or project. This means there isn’t much time left over for actually focusing on the material at hand–and if there isn’t enough time spent learning what needs to be learned, then how will anyone get better?
It’s easier to focus on a difficult topic when you’re forced to explain it to someone else
One of the most important benefits of studying with friends is that it makes you focus on the details. Explaining a topic to someone else forces you to think about how you should explain it, and then after explaining it, you retain more information from the lecture because your mind is actively working to remember what you were explaining. This is also related to how other people can help us focus on difficult topics; as humans, our brains are wired for social interaction and collaborating with others helps us learn things faster than we otherwise would.
Another benefit of studying with friends is organization: when explaining something in detail, there’s no way around having to organize your thoughts first. You can’t just throw random facts out into the air! You need some kind of structure (like a timeline) so that when they ask questions or make observations about your topic, they’re all within context of what has been discussed previously in class or outside class (for example). This kind of organization goes beyond simply taking notes—it’s actually quite useful if we’re trying to remember where certain pieces fit together later on down some road in life where said piece might come up again.”
Quizzing one another can help know what’s most important.
- Get the whole class to quiz each other.
- Get the teacher to quiz the class.
- Ask a friend to quiz you. This can be done in person or online, via Skype, Google Hangouts or iMessage (if you’re on your phone). You could also write out a problem and send it in an email (or text message) for them to read and explain it back to you verbally!
- Quiz yourself with flashcards of key concepts from each chapter or unit.
- Quiz a friend who already knows the information pretty well—they’ll help provide better explanations than Google’s automatic translations! If this is too much work for them then just go ahead with step 2b instead: ask another classmate instead so they can help explain things more clearly without having much prior knowledge themselves! Just make sure they don’t give away answers ahead of time by looking through their notes first – if this happens then try finding someone else who has taken notes instead; some people write down all sorts of interesting facts while others just write down equations related directly back onto pages where they appear within certain chapters/units; either way works fine though because outlining everything beforehand means nothing gets left out when actually trying something unfamiliar later on which could result in possible failure but even worse still would be missing out completely due to lack of interest whatsoever due only having done minimal preparation beforehand which really isn’t fair towards anyone involved since nobody likes being left behind when others succeed at tasks easily.”
Sorting out what you know, and what you don’t, helps prioritize learning.
When you’re studying with friends, you can hone in on the areas where your knowledge is lacking. If you already know something and are working on something else, it’s easy to let that area of focus fade away into the background. But if you’re with someone who knows what they’re doing and can help guide a person like yourself through the process, then it’s easier to make sure that particular topic stays relevant. This is especially true when we get out of our comfort zones and try something new: if I’m working on an essay and my friend is better at writing than I am, they might suggest different words or phrases (or even methods) that will make my work look more polished but still sound natural as opposed to being overly formalized or stilted.[1]
Studying with friends is way more fun than studying alone, even if it doesn’t always help.
Studying with friends is way more fun than studying alone, even if it doesn’t always help.
The camaraderie of a study session can be a great motivator and make you feel like part of a team. If you’re feeling burnt out on your own studies, try to find some buddies or recruit your family members to get together for an afternoon of learning—it might just be what you need to refocus and get back into the swing of things.
Conclusion
Studying with friends is a great way to spend your time and get better at what you’re learning. You can share knowledge, help each other out, and even learn more about yourself in the process! But don’t think that studying alone is bad; sometimes it’s just easier to be by yourself when trying to focus on something difficult. So if you feel like studying with others doesn’t work for you, don’t worry – there are plenty of other ways to learn too!
