How to study for biology type courses?

Question

I'm a college student and I usually get straight A's but I'm just looking for a better more efficient way of studying. Math and chemistry courses are easy (work out problems, memorize equations/reactions, etc...) but biology courses are more difficult just because it's usually more information and written in paragraph form. What I've been doing is writing an outline for each chapter i have to study for and i've gotten good grades doing that, except each outline may take a very long time to make - time that could have been used to actually study. Notecards are even worse in my opinion; you're writing short bits of information on small notecards that you will later have to flip through individually when studying rather than have all you have to know written out on a large sheet of paper.

Answer 1

Figures will help you.  Open up your textbook and study the figures that describe the biological process you're trying to learn.  Biology is not easy to memorize.  It's more of a conceptual/qualitative science.  Figures help break down the processes into steps.  

It's like explaining how a machine works (which is what all biology is right??? we're just machines that follow the same chemical and physical rules that all machines like cars and computers follow).  

Outlines and notecards will help you to memorize definitions and terms you may not be familiar with.  But they won't help you to conceptually understand how the biological machine works.  

You should also ask your prof or your TAs for help.  Good ones will help you till you get it.  

Good Luck