8 . Science can help you improve your study methods. For more than 100 years, psychologists have done research on which study habits work best. Some tips help for almost every subject. For example, don’t just cram! And test yourself, instead of just rereading the material. Here are 4 tips to tweak your study habits.

1. Space out your studying

Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College, thinks it’s a good idea to study the day before a big test.     1    . Instead, space out those study sessions. Kornell compares our memory to water in a bucket that has a small leak. Try to refill the bucket while it’s still full, and you can’t add much more water. Allow time between study sessions, and some of the material may drip out of your memory.     2    . And you’ll remember it better, next time, he notes.

2. Practice, practice, practice!

Musicians practice their instruments.     3    . The same should go for learning. “If you want to be able to remember information, the best thing you can do is practice,” says Katherine Rawson. She’s a psychologist at Kent State University in Ohio. In one 2013 study, students took practice tests over several weeks. On the final test, they scored more than a full letter grade better, on average, than did students who studied the way they normally had.

3. Test yourself

That 2010 study backs up one of Nebel’s preferred study habits. Before big tests, her mom quizzed her on the material. “Now I know that was retrieval practice,” she says. “It’s one of the best ways you can study.” As Nebel got older, she quizzed herself. For example, she might cover up the definitions in her notebook. Then she tried to recall what each term meant. “    4    ,” Sana suggests. “Put questions on one side and the answers on the other side.” Friends can even quiz each other on the phone, she says. “Try to quiz yourself the way the teacher asks questions,” Nebel adds.

4. Dig deeper

It’s hard to remember a string of facts and figures if you don’t push further. Ask why things are a certain way. How did they come about? Why do they matter? Psychologists call this elaboration. It’s taking class material and “asking a lot of how and why questions about it,” Nebel says. In other words, don’t just accept facts at face value.     5    . And it creates a bigger network in your brain of things that relate to one another, she says. That larger network makes it easier to learn and remember things.

9 . I held them in awe. My supervisors at Cambridge in the 50s were of the generation who had served in the war: codebreakers, that kind of thing. They were fiercely intelligent in a way my schoolteachers had not been. I was full of admiration and fear. It was why I had studied hard to be there, to meet the finest brains in the land. But I was to learn a lesson.

Betty Behrens was formidable: tall, with long legs. She taught European history. In my first essay, about the French Revolution，I poured out my soul. I saw it as a new dawn of freedom and fulfilment such as Cambridge meant to me.

The essay came back untouched. I thought there must be some mistake. I had delivered it as required, on time, neatly handwritten. Now it lay on my table exactly as I had written it: no comments, no corrections of dates or names, nothing. My excitement disappeared. What of my beautiful writing-had it been somehow overlooked?

The truth was worse. On the final page, there was indeed an intervention by Betty Behrens: a line drawn through my writing and a brief paragraph. This piece of work was not worthy of any consideration by her: It was worthless, trite（老生常谈的）rubbish. If I was to continue to study with her, there must be a serious effort to understand what scholarship was.

I was knocked back with the force of her disapproval. There was nothing I wanted more than to impress this wise, clever woman. I was totally destroyed. What is clear now is those professors were not up on the niceties of human relations. There was no empathy in her remarks. In those days, issues of mental health were not considered. You were there to learn; they were there to teach.

In the event, the shock of her criticism paid off. I had nowhere to go but into my own head. The thought of sharing my shame with college colleagues was out of the question. I had some serious thinking to do. I went back to my books: the clear prose of Keynes, the measured tones of Plumb, the steady logic of Butterfield... the standard texts of the day. It proved a turning point for me. I began to examine what shaped my ideas — indeed, what shaped anyone’s ideas. I wanted and intended to do better.

Of course, my student life wasn’t all struggle and regret. I spent much of my time falling in and out of love and enjoying the world of Cambridge theatre. But when I became a journalist, Betty Behrens stood at my shoulder, my ghostly editor, reminding me the bedrock of all good journalism is thorough research, analysis of facts, a willingness to consider all points of view — and only then to let the emotions erupt on to the page.

10 . Julian Murphy has had a successful week. He’s the headmaster of an independent school called Loughborough Amherst school and he seems a bit media-friendly. Do you know what I mean? Those media-friendly headmasters? They’re regularly announcing something and not just in school — in the media. They pop up with some teaching thing: maths should only happen after lunch or they’re replacing physics with farming lessons. Anthony Seldon and Eric Anderson were the pioneers — always ringing up with a theory instead of standing in a playground with a coffee and a whistle.

Murphy first got round to being media-friendly back in 2017 when he said he was getting rid of school reports. His reasons were, he told the Independent, that “they end up using almost politician’s speak, using the same phrases such as ‘very lively and enthusiastic in lessons’, which of course actually means they don’t behave well in class”, and that some teachers, “let’s say PE or maths teachers — find writing 200-word long reports quite challenging”.

I quite like his style. He tells it like it is. Well, actually, not any more he doesn’t. Last week’s theory was a bit different. He’s banned staff, he explained to a newspaper, from using the words “good” and “bad” to refer to pupils’ behaviour. Instead, they should say “skilful” and “unskilful”.

One famous presenter tweeted in reply: “What on earth will these poor kids do when they’re exposed to the real world? This is so... BAD.” This suggests that the most sensible way for a school to prepare its students for the big wide world is simply to copy it. The “sink or swim” approach. “Look at those poor cosseted（宠爱）kids wearing armbands（充气臂圈）.” “In the real world no one’s going to carefully explain to you how to read！” But, surely, the fact that people are often rude, and sometimes violent and criminal, in the real world doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a sound idea to encourage those things inside a school.

This is how Murphy explained his new rule: “While I don’t want teachers to be soft, I also don’t want them to be shouty and make pupils feel guilty. I think it’s human psychology — if people make you feel guilty, then you get angry.” I think I agree with that.

Still, in the long run, I’m not sure it’ll do any lasting skilful. Words quickly change their meanings and schoolchildren are a major driver of that. Playgrounds have taken every polite expression for disability ever invented and almost instantly weaponised them as terms of abuse between all kids. It won’t be long before “unskillful” is ruder than “bad” ever was. Rudeness, like life itself, will find a way.