I am one of the fortunate ones who has not had to study much. While some of my success may be attributed to intelligence, I believe most of my success stems from the habits and procedures my mother has instilled in me. She is a career educator and has been instrumental in the foundation of my education. She has taught me to stay organized at all times and to be in class as much as possible. She has taught me different strategies for note taking, but I have developed a technique that works for me. My notes look more like an interactive notebook, with color and images that add to the content and help me remember and process information more effectively. I review my notes before the end of the school day or at least that evening adding to them for clarification. This, in turn, contributes to my studying. I am also in constant communication with my teachers and asking them questions. Oftentimes students struggle because they do not speak up in class and advocate for themselves. I also have a designated quiet space to study either at home or in our local public library.

With the advent of AI technology, I have been able to enhance my studying in ways that have been beneficial. I have been able to use AI tools to generate flashcards for vocabulary, this has been a time saver and can be easily accessed without toting around stacks of index cards. I have used similar sites to generate practice questions and quizzes for myself. There have been times in AP Physics or AP Psychology when I needed a little more information on topics so I have learned to use AI tools to quickly learn information; albeit cautiously. I plan on minoring in Spanish, there are wonderful AI tools for students to use when practicing a foreign language. I use several of them to tutor myself. In many of my engineering classes I have had to write code and use advanced mathematics that I may not have taken the courses for at the time. This need for assistance was the impetus for me finding AI that could evaluate mathematical problems to assist me in finding solutions when I did not have the needed background knowledge. And as for coding, not one of my strong suits, I have used AI to assist me in evaluating lines of computer code to find where the errors may be.

While AI is still new and I would venture to say being used inappropriately in schools by students, I have found ways to use it to enhance my studying while staying true to the paper/pencil methods I have found success using for many years.