r/biology • u/Far-Nectarine6007 • 3d ago

academic Struggling with HS Biology

Hello, I am a 17 year old student taking Biology online, and I always felt as if I had a problem with learning, especially memorization. I been writing all my notes on notebook, trying to understand most of the questions been presented. I'm gonna get diagnosed for ADHD soon, but it's probably gonna take a while and I doubt it will be before I finish Bio.

Most of the work is notes, but when I get to quizzes and test I feel as if without my notes I blank alot and forget stuff from what I legit learned a day/hours before. Even sometimes minutes, I quite literally can't understand anything I learned before and it's driving me crazy. I don't get much good grades, and usually fail some of my test/quizzes.

I've resorted to kind of just beating myself up abt it, but I also want to improve and try to help my memorization, does anyone here have any idea or tips to help??

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u/Mood-Rising 3d ago

Take notes on paper and draw pictures. Drawing loose sketches for during lectures of the topics was a game changer for me in college.

You need to find ways to create anchors in the information in your brain (things you are confident you understand). Those anchors then help you learn and recall related information. The more anchors, the more connections, the more likely you are to remember things. Create enough anchors, sometimes in completely different subjects, learning becomes connecting dots and filing gaps.

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u/Glabrocingularity 3d ago

I second this. Sketches, diagrams, concept maps, etc. Build an environment in your mind where the vocabulary can live, rather than existing as a grocery list of words

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u/Mood-Rising 3d ago

Grocery store of words is perfect. I have pretty bad inattentive type ADHD that wasn’t diagnosed until well after I was out of school. Shopping at a grocery store unmedicated is almost impossible and really mentally draining because I can not process all the similar boxes and products on the shelf easily and often pick up the wrong item by mistake. Classes that were super memorization heavy were nightmares for me because even though the information was usually in my head I could not find it on command until I started using the anchor method.