Among the many things that COVID-19 has thrown a wrench into, your CPCU studies shouldn’t have to be one of them. If you’re struggling to stay motivated and on track, this post will help you figure out the best ways to adjust your studying so you can make the most use of your quarantine time and keep making progress towards earning your designation.

The Two Goals of Studying

Whenever you begin studying for a new course, there are actually two things you are trying to accomplish.

The first stage is to gain understanding about material. This is what happens when you first read the textbook and/or watch videos to introduce yourself to the content. Sometimes, the material is straightforward enough that you understand the concept quickly and can move right along. If, however, something isn’t sinking in right away, you may have to invest a little more effort to get past the “learning” stage, perhaps by doing research or re-reading/re-watching the material again.

The second stage is to improve your memory and retention of the material. This is what happens when you re-review your notes afterwards your initial pass. You’re not trying to learn the material anymore (or at least, this is not an effective way to do the “learning” part); you’re just trying to better remember it now.

So what happens when you’re applying the knowledge, like when you do practice quizzes and go through the white course workbook? You’re actually doing more learning, but it has the added bonus of naturally helping you with the retention part. By using the information in a different way, you are learning to understand it more richly AND the richer understanding you have gives you more details for your brain to cling onto, which ultimately helps you remember the concept better.

Ultimately, the CPCU exams will require you to do both, because there are questions that test your ability to apply concepts AND there are questions that test your ability to recall specific details about stuff (some questions will test both!)

The big difference between learning and memorizing

The thing with learning is that once you truly understand something, you’re basically done with the learning stage. In other words, it’s highly unlikely that you suddenly WON’T be able to understand it at a later date. Sure, you might need a refresher if some time has passed, but even if that’s the case, you’ll usually need way less time to get up to speed than when you were first trying to learn the material.

Memorizing, on the other hand, is a totally different story. Memorizing requires constant effort, and the results of your efforts are very short-lived, meaning what you “memorized” won’t stay memorized for long. To keep information memorized, you have to be very diligent with reviewing and the moment you stop, POOF, it fades fast. This is why many students review, review, review all the way up to the moment they walk into the test center, jam through the exam, and then forget half the stuff they reviewed within days.

CPCU study tips for quarantine period

So knowing all this, how should you adjust your study strategy while on quarantine? To put it simply: don’t waste so much time on study tasks that are designed for memorizing. Putting in effort to memorize and remember is a very short-term gain, and it’s only valuable if you are going to test soon. Since most of testing centers are closed indefinitely, it makes almost no sense to spend time on the memorizing aspect.

So, here are our tips for how to best get ahead during this quarantine period:

• Focus on the learning aspect of studying, and much less so on the memorizing aspect.
• Making your first pass through the material (whether it’s reading the textbook or watching videos, however you normally study) is the BEST use of your time now.
• Use practice quizzes, practice problems, and the white course workbook to practice applying the concepts and improve your learning, but stop once you think you get the material.
• Create your memory aids (notes, cheat sheets, flash cards, etc.), but don’t need to use them yet.
• Move on to doing this learning stuff for other courses you plan to take, to help stay on track.

In other words, you’re basically dividing your normal study tasks between the learning stuff and the memorizing stuff, and then just deferring most of the latter until test centers are back open.

Make sure your learning hasn’t faded

Once every 2 weeks, set aside an hour or two to check that your understanding hasn’t faded by doing a review-oriented task (going through your notes/flashcards, running through the practice quizzes that you already feel comfortable with) and make sure everything still makes sense to you, even if you don’t have it memorized. That way, when it’s time to go back to your normal re-routine, you don’t have to incorporate an overly complex refresher routine to get back into your groove.

Our study materials help with both learning AND memorizing!

Our CPCU study guide bundles include amazing study guides and bonus printables to help you learn the trickier stuff, check your understanding, and memorize like a champ!