
Ask HN: How did you pass hard college classes? - 0xBE5A
I&#x27;m currently on my 3rd attempt at college, 10th semester overall. (I studied Computer Science and Teaching in university, dropped out of both after six and two semesters respectively, and am now doing Applied Computer Science at a technical college.) You&#x27;d think by now I&#x27;d know how to deal with difficult classes, but I&#x27;m absolutely stumped. Previously I was able to just drop out of classes and try again the next year, but at my current college there&#x27;s a strict schedule and you <i>have</i> to pass all your classes the same year.<p>I failed three final exams and have to repeat them at the end of next month. The drive and motivation is there, I have no problem sitting down and putting in the work. But it feels like (especially with maths) I&#x27;m just treading water. I&#x27;ll sit down, try to do a problem, but not even know how to approach it. So I&#x27;ll look up the sample solution just so I know where to start - and sometimes that still doesn&#x27;t help, I might understand how those steps get you to the correct result, but I have no idea how you&#x27;re supposed to think them up if you don&#x27;t even know the solution already. It&#x27;s so frustrating trying over and over again and still not getting the material. And even more so when I see all my classmates pass with ease and I&#x27;m still stuck on classes that I&#x27;m already taking for the 2nd or 3rd time.<p>It&#x27;s giving me massive anxiety, even though I know I still have enough time to study, but whenever I try, it just feels hopeless. But I know there has to be a way since I already got so far and everyone else seems to be able to do it, too. So how did you get through difficult classes?
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yontherubicon
#Try a different book

Oftentimes the assigned textbooks are subpar. Less Wrong has a good list of
textbooks. Quora questions have also been helpful

#How much of your time studying is actually spent studying?

You may need to spend less time studying.

You might spend six hours at the library, but only one hour on the actual
problem set, and five hours staring out the window. It's better to spend an
hour and a half on focused work and have 4.5 hours of free time then waste
that time pretending to study when you aren't actually being productive. If
you can't focus, take a break. Figure out how much of your time you spend
studying vs "studying." and shoot to improve that.

