It’s sort of like flicking through page after page of notes with no memory of making it, no idea what it’s about, going, ‘I have no idea how to study.’
Coming from a structured school environment, Kirsten thrived when learning was externally guided. But at university, the shift to complete self-directed study hit hard.
“I didn’t know how to study independently… I would read, I would open the book to the pages that were recommended… and then I would write down anything that I thought was relevant or interesting to the essay question… It was just like, I just felt like it was complete luck.”
She pushed through 12-hour days, six days a week.
“I was just like a zombie, I was just like white as a sheet. All I did all day was look at historical texts and read books and try and write notes and sort of panic over exam papers… So yeah it was not great.”
Her results reflected the chaos. She got mid 2:1s with enormous effort, but her exam performance was much worse.
“I was incredibly insecure and anxious because I felt like I had no control over this thing.”
During her year, Kirsten developed glandular fever, an illness which would render her unable to study for months. Eventually, Kirsten couldn’t keep going.
“Shout out to my mum who came and lived in my student flat with me for a week on the floor on an airbed looking after me.”
She planned to retake finals the following year. But when she opened her notes again, something became very clear.
“It’s sort of like flicking through page after page of notes with no memory of making it, no idea what it’s about, going, ‘I have no idea how to study.’”
So, like many students in crisis, she turned to YouTube.
“I was going on YouTube, I was watching study videos… Justin Sung’s video on why flashcards are not the answer and why space retrieval isn’t the answer came up. And I watched it. And it made sense.”
Within just a few hours of watching Justin’s videos, Kirsten felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time: confidence.
“By about, like, probably two hours of watching his videos, I just knew that this system was the best thing that I had seen and also would work… There was just this really weird sense of this will work.”
“And also that real sense of I have absolutely nothing to lose. I have a year. If it doesn’t work, it’s a few hundred quid. Oh well.”
The first few sessions were humbling.
“You have to confront really rapidly how much you forget… you try and retrieve and you have five, 10% retention on what you read the day before. That’s like a real ego kick.”
But the realisation changed everything.
“Once you realise that without ICS, you actually don’t have a way of retaining this information, it like doubles down on doing the techniques properly.”
She wasn’t naturally good at the techniques.
“I really wasn’t very good at any of the fundamental techniques… So I came in with very low competency on any of it and had to learn it all through the course.”
But gradually, she understood the power behind them.
“You realise it’s a lot easier to learn 10 things at once than it is to learn one thing.”
Months into the course, Kirsten began using mind mapping seriously.
“When you begin to locate information spatially in your own mind, when you don’t even really need the mind map… That is so powerful because you have a relationship with your own mind you’ve never had before.”
“That is like unique to this program.”
Her entire approach to study changed. She began treating her focus, sleep, and stress as part of her strategy.
“I want to maximise the value of a session of studying for the learning output. And therefore, I am not going to study past 7 p.m… I am not going to study when I want to relax… because there’s no point.”
This allowed her to create healthier boundaries, manage stress, and enter exams in control.
“It’s the difference between I’m stressed and I can go into the room and do the final, and I’m so stressed I actually can’t face it.”
And when she sat her finals, she knew something was different.
“I had a few exams where I came out of it knowing I’d completely smashed it… Some of the points that I got, really, really cool.”
“So the immediate aftermath of the exams was I know I have done as good a job as I can and I know that those exam scripts are good.”
“So I got a first, which is the highest grade… three out of four of those written exams I did with iCanStudy skills, I got a first in.”
“All of the ‘why is this important’ questions and all of the higher order thinking actually was what I needed to be doing in order to engage with the material.”
“I fell back in love with my subject and I really enjoyed what I was doing.”
“I read books that I wouldn’t have had the ability to understand before… It was a pleasurable experience engaging with my subject because I felt that I could engage with it.”
“If you are me and you are at university and you have an enormous amount of self-guided study to do… you need iCanStudy.”
“iCanStudy is power. If you master even some of the techniques… those fundamental skills and some of the low-level growth skills will propel you through the intellectual, educational challenges that you will face.”
“Don’t be like my friend. Do it when your friend tells you to do it. Not a year afterwards.”
Join the iCanStudy program today and experience the transformation for yourself.
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