Before you ask, no, I don't have any studies or psychological findings to support this hypothesis, just the information and experiences I and people I know have amassed over the years of attending public school. Additionally before I begin, do not confuse any critique I posit about studying for a certain amount of time with a critique of cramming or last-minute-studying. Cramming is an incredibly efficient way to pass a wide variety of tests, if not most of them. With that out of the way, as the title also asks, how much studying is too much studying?
I think it's stupid to study for anything longer than four hours in one sitting and/or on a single day. You will not absorb everything fully when you continually shove more and more shit into your brain. Yes, some of the information that you fling at the wall that is your memory will stick, but most of it either won't because you're throwing it at such a rapid pace that you miss the wall completely (in the case of four-to-five-hour cram sessions), or it gets knocked off the wall by other stuff you throw at it later. The longer you throw stuff at that wall, the percentage chance that what you next throw will hit and knock off something you've already thrown approaches 100.
What're your thoughts, flood?
For the record, this is coming from a person in the middle of a seven-to-eight-hour cram session for his AP World History Test.
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AP World was a joke. And so was the APUSH test I just took. My teachers made them out to be way harder than they actually are. I spread my studying over 4 days before the test day - It doesn't really matter how long it takes, it matters that you review each section at least a little.