[NathanielZhu]

When we think we've learnt something, say for an exam we stop reviewing. After the exam we put the chapters aside and think that we own the knowledge. Then final exam comes around the ones that have kept up with review do better than those who just put it aside. But after the year is through, even they put their textbook aside (or sell it) and come 5 or so years, it's like they've never taken the course.

My question to the more experienced members, do you still review what you've learnt 5 or 10 years ago (the textbooks or lecture slides) or do you no longer touch the material (unless absolute necessary) and learn more new material in the time it would take to review old material.

I find it funny that all study guides never mention beyond getting the A on the test. What would benefit a student more?
I want to research aging and cancer. Would it be beneficial for me to still remember everything in my textbooks on general chemistry and cell biology or should I not review (thus forget most of it) and learn more on aging and cancer?

[fledarmus]

One of the problems with a university education is that nobody really has any idea what they are trying to prepare you for in terms of the things you need to know to do your job in the future. The university's job is to try to prepare everybody for everything. Sometimes the professors are the curriculum committee are very conscientious and very aware of what the industry that most of their graduates are entering will want to see in their employees, and sometimes the professors have their own pet projects which in their eyes are more important than anything else and therefore deserve the most attention, and sometimes they are just well-meaning people who really don't have a clue what happens outside of academia and can only teach people to be just like themselves.

So you will end up learning some concepts and techniques that are so important in your field that you will use them over and over and continue to build on them until you've forgotten when or how exactly you learned them. You will learn some concepts and techniques that you just think are really cool and you will continue to be aware of them, seeing new ways to apply them to many real-world situations. You will learn some concepts and techniques that you will really have no idea how to apply until sometime 3 or 4 years later when suddenly it will be important to you and you will reach for your old notebooks and textbooks - if you still have them. (Otherwise you will google - actually, you'll probably do that first anyway. Google wasn't around back when I was hunting dinosaurs for a living). And you will learn some concepts and techniques that you will never, ever see or care about after the final in that class. If you're really lucky, you won't be taught much that later turns out to be completely wrong.

In short, I don't see any real point in constantly reviewing everything. Learn the principles and the applications the first time around, keep your eyes open for ways that they apply to the new things you learn, and have a good source to go back to if you ever need to relearn it.

[NathanielZhu]

Yeah that makes sense.
Still though, it just feels horrible to forget something after spending hours day and night to learn it.

Also there's one thing I'm not sure the textbook covers well in ALL textbooks I've read.
The textbooks focus on the concepts themselves, but not what I consider the most important of all which is:

 HOW something was discovered and why the discover chose to use those methods that lead to the discovery. I think this is especially helpful to aspiring researchers (like me) because it givens them/I incites into how to apply knowledge.

What's your opinion on this focus of learning (every knowledge or discovery I find it textbooks, I google how it was discovered but most of them return negative results. It's like no one cares to post it on the internet)