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When I studied Physics as an undergraduate, I would regularly spend 3 hours just to really understand the content of the notes I had taken in a 1.5 hour lecture.

The speed of consuming the content was never the limiting factor.

When I listen to an interesting podcast, I often pause the track to think about implications of what was just said or to formulate a rebuttal in my head.

I guess there are different kinds of learning and different levels of understanding something.




With three or four two-hour lectures every day, multiplying the studying time by 3 would leave at most six hours for eating, sleeping, and maintenance such as buying food and bathing. Never mind working. I doubt that many university students could do that.


There were only one or two lectures like this a day. The rest were labs and exercises. And only Mon-Fri.

But you’re right, this still comes out to 30 hours of lecture review a week, which seems a bit more than I remember. 20 seems more realistic.

I guess the average was less than 3 hours per lecture.


You probably remember the ones that did take 3 hours to understand but you’ve forgotten all those that were simple enough that you already left the lecture hall with an understanding of the material.


I know for sure that I had to go through every one of them in the first couple of semesters. :)

But you are right in that there is a bias in how I remember it: Not all of them took 3 hours.




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