Picture this: you’ve got a big math test tomorrow morning. You’ve spent all day worrying about it, and when you finally get home ready to study, your friends call you. You’ve completely forgotten you had told them you could all study together.
One major problem with studying in groups is that it doesn’t let you figure out a problem on your own. Studying alone allows you to fully work out problems at your own pace. When you study with a group of people, the group will often move on from the topic when the majority of the people attending understand it, leaving you behind and struggling to keep up.
Another issue with studying in groups is that you’re much more likely to get distracted when studying in a group. Productive conversation about the material can very quickly shift to random conversations about irrelevant topics.
One last issue with study groups is that people in groups rely on each other for help with tough problems. While there isn’t anything wrong with asking for help, my experience with study groups is they don’t let you think through problems on your own, ever.
What are you going to do when you get to a test and get stuck on the same problems your friends were helping you with while you were studying? It’s important to work things out on your own whenever possible, and study groups often don’t allow that to happen.
Although studying is way less fun alone, it’s much more productive in the long run because you are able to get more work done faster. This means studying alone actually allows you to have more time to spend with your friends doing fun things.
