It's never too early to start preparing for mid-semester tests, projects, and assignments...but it can quickly become too late.

In the first week of classes, there are lots of things occupying students' minds. Preparing for midterms isn't usually one of them. But the reality is that you really should start studying for midterms from the first class of the semester.

Midterms in Week 1?

With midterm season usually popping up six to seven weeks into the semester, it can be tempting to forget about it, deciding to worry about that later on.

But when you follow this path, you have to do a bunch of studying and test prep somewhere. When that all gets condensed into a short time, it gets miserable. Let's be honest: no one wants to look at the same topic for hours and hour at a time.

So what happens? One of two things: you suffer through hours and hours of preparation, fighting to maintain focus on the task at hand when your brain is screaming, begging you to do anything else, OR you don't put in as much prep time as you should.

Either way, it sucks.

So how does thinking about midterms from week one make this any better?

Because it forces you to shift how you think about your work.

Class Time Is Study Time

If you're like most people, you see class meetings as the time to receive and gather the information you'll need to study later to prepare for assessments and projects. But this creates a very transactional model: professors provide information to students so students can study that information in very condensed, intense study sessions and then spit it back out to the professors in various assignments and assessments.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like something that would hold my motivation, either.

A better way to think about class time is as preliminary study time. Taking meaningful notes, asking questions, drawing connections between new concepts and existing knowledge, and participating in class discussions all help you deepen your understanding of a topic.

Think about class time as a jumping-off point for your studying.

After all, the closer you are in time to the lecture, the more likely you are to remember the nuanced points and connections from that lecture. That fact leads to the next tip.

You've Got Notes...Now Use Them!

Don't be like most students who take notes in class and then never look at them again until they try to study for a test weeks later. Why not? By the time students are looking at those five-week-old notes, they may as well be written in a different language.

Enough time has passed that your memory, imperfect as it is by design, likely won't have much if any record of the lecture that spawned those notes. If something in the notes doesn't make sense, you don't have anything to rely upon to flesh out and strengthen your understanding.

If, on the flip side, you review your notes each night after class, you'll be close enough to the class experience for your memory of the lecture to still be largely intact and also far enough from it to start to see where your notes may not be full or explained enough.

Use the opportunity to add anything you need to to your notes so that the version of you five weeks from now will be able to understand what your notes mean.

Make sure your notes have enough detail that someone who missed class could still understand the key concepts and connections from the lecture from your notes alone.

Additionally, use your revised notes to make sure you understand the overarching concepts in what you've just learned. Add connections from your own life or interests to help form long-lasting memories of new content. Think of examples and real-world situations that help you take concepts from hypothetical to practical.

It Takes Time to Save Time

Does this process add time each night? Admittedly, yes. But what it also does it spread your study time out over the entire semester instead of cramming it into a handful of days.

Additionally, you'll find that you don't have to relearn nearly as much as tests draw near: the work you did on the front end created long-lasting memories that are easier to bring back from the recesses of your mind than it is to create entirely new memories in just a few days.

It's sort of like hearing a song again that you LOVED ten years ago but haven't listened to much since. A lot of the lyrics will come back to you from the sheer familiarity because you did such a good job of establishing a solid memory when you first learned the song.

Compare that to trying to learn a song you heard just once two months ago and now need to know front to back. That's much harder because you're forging new memories, not just dredging up older, existing ones.

Bringing older memories back to the surface is always easier than creating new ones.

Putting that extra time in on the front end will decrease the total time you need to devote to concept retention and make midterm and finals seasons so, so much more manageable.

Bridging the Gap

Unless you really love pulling all-nighters (you shouldn't--they're awful for cognitive functioning!), don't save studying for the last few days before an assessment! Instead, spread that work over the entirety of the semester, taking time after each class day to revisit the day's material, solidify your understanding, add to notes if and where needed, and start forming those all-important long-term memories.

Then, when an assessment is near at hand, you'll find that you only have to spot-check your memory instead of starting practically from scratch.

So while everyone else is stressing, losing sleep, and skipping meals during their busy seasons, you can keep a pretty normal schedule, keep your stress in check, and enjoy life.

Doesn't that sound better?!