Study Tips

Disclaimer: These are my study tips that, a long time ago, allowed me to go through the LS curriculum and master the material. They might not work for you, but you might still get some “a-ha” moments.

Just a quick introduction, for those of you that do not know me, I am working as an instructor at Launch School, and I am involved in both Core and Capstone programs.

I was also a Launch School student over 5 years ago and back then, I developed my own set of study tips that helped me go through the material and master it. I am sharing those tips in this short but 🍰 article.

Going through the course

Being very impatient, I would most often go through the course relatively quickly for the first time. I would do all the exercises but wouldn’t try to master any of the topics just yet. This would usually lead to very low quiz results 😞 . In the end, though, it allowed me to master the material more efficiently so I was 😁 .

Once I went through each lesson, I would go over the course once again, quickly, marking each lesson as Easy, Medium, or Hard.

Easy — these are lessons that I’ve mastered and the benchmark for mastering the material is if I can teach to someone else. Usually, this would be my “imaginary friend” who is somewhat familiar with coding but just doesn’t know that particular topic.

Medium — these lessons are somewhat difficult, I understand some parts of them, but I am still unclear about other. I would probably need to go over them at least once or twice more to be able to master them.

Hard — I was pretty much just able to translate the words from these lessons but I couldn’t explain the concepts, couldn’t use them in practice, and overall, I felt like I had read something in a foreign language that I do not speak.

For the Hard questions, aside from going over those lessons multiple times, until they become Medium and then Easy, I feel that it is important to either:

• use Slack and/or Forum, and ask for clarifying questions
• try to find additional information online explaining the same topic. You could use Youtube videos, Medium articles etc. I think that helps as you might find that a different explanation clicks or just by reading/ seeing a topic explained in three different ways you start to understand it better

This should help you move from Hard to Medium for these topics, where it’s just about going over the lessons a couple more times until you can teach them.

Coding Exercises

The most important tip for working on the exercises is not to spend more than 40 minutes on each exercise. Even though you might be tempted to work on each one until you solve it successfully that is not really the efficient use of your time.

Solving problems is not about smartness but about pattern recognition. You want to see a lot of different algorithms so you can start recognizing patterns and thus solve problems easier. You can only solve more problems if you do not lose hours on them.

So, if you can’t solve the problem in 40 minutes, check the solution, try to reverse engineer it, and then after a couple of hours attempt to solve the same problem without looking at the solution. Repeat the same thing the following day.

Let go of your ego, and accept that not being able to solve the problem is not a failure but just the efficient use of your time.

Once you go over all problem sets, like with the course material, return and mark each problem as Easy, Medium, or Hard. You do not have to solve Easy problems again. You should go over Medium problems 1 or 2 more times and for the Hard ones, spend more time trying to understand the solution, and try to find different solutions as well. If one solution is not clear, maybe some other will be. Eventually, those Hard problems will become Medium, and you know what to do then. 😉