Aiming for mastery

In fluid mechanics today, the professor told us that the advice he received as a grad student was that the best way to study for an exam is to rewrite a "book" on the topic. If you're not able to do that, you don't have a sufficient mastery of the material. For this class, he didn't recommend trying to write a book on the topic, but he did suggest going through the notes and rewriting all of them, doing all the calculations yourself to understand how they work.

I'm a big fan of this professor. He's usually right on things, but usually they're things like getting those complicated equations right on the blackboard. The truth is, he's right about this too. Going through the notes and rewriting them all would be an amazing way to get a solid mastery of the material. But I probably won't do it, for the simple reason that I don't have time. I have other projects going on, for all six of my classes, and really don't have the 20-30 hours it would take to go through them as he suggests.

I really wish I had more time to spend on each class. I really wish I had time to do all the readings, spend as much time tweaking that algorithm, smoothing that essay, cracking that math problem. I really wish I could devote enough energy to each thing, to to take classes the way they're meant to be taken, to study for exams the way they're supposed to be studied for, to live life the way it's meant to be lived. But I have a difficult dilemma - when I have too much work I struggle to get it all done and to devote enough attention to each, but when I don't have so much going on, I get consumed by distractions and still, none of my work gets as much attention as it deserves. For now, though, I'm happy with the way I have it. I'd rather struggle, and put in the effort, and work my butt off and feel the frustration of only being able to devote 80% of my energy to each thing, than take things easy, be complacent, and never even feel the loss that I'm feeling now.