I recently sat for my master’s exams in International Politics, and they were the most difficult I’ve ever faced.

The remote lectures from my personal computer were plagued by network failures and an unstable learning management system. The absence of physical classes to encourage interaction made it worse.

It was only after the exams that I discovered NotebookLM’s interactive beta, even though it had been around for months. It transforms static PDFs into guided, conversational study sessions.

If I’d known about it earlier, my preparation could have been more directional and focused in the following ways.

A tireless machine for my barrage of questions

I had a thousand asks with no one to tender them to

I had multiple questions in the weeks leading up to my exams, which were expected given the nature of my program.

Each course came with handouts that ran over 200 pages and were packed with political jargon. They demanded hours of careful meditation I couldn’t spare.

Unfortunately, our LMS was unreliable. The technical team behind it couldn’t resolve recurring issues.

It cut off direct access to lecturers, who were already weary of students buzzing their phones endlessly with the same clarifications. So, I was left on my own to break down complex theories with little guidance.

NotebookLM would’ve been a lifesaver back then. I’d heard of it before, but I only dismissed it as another basic note-taking tool with not much difference from Gemini or ChatGPT.

Surprisingly, the interactive beta mode really brings uploaded files to life. It turns them into a live podcast where two voices walk you through your material.

You can interrupt with questions and get clarifications on specific sections. The interruptions are not as seamless as ChatGPT and Gemini live modes. You have to press a button to cut in.

But then again, it mirrors a real classroom dynamic where you don’t just blurt out questions and interrupt your tutor. Instead, you raise your hand and wait. It’s enough not to derail the flow, yet responsive enough to make the dialogue feel inclusive.

Reinforcing memory with repetition is a hack

And I’m not talking about cramming

Cramming is an act most students are guilty of, myself included. I would reread the same pages late into the night. It felt productive because I was busy, but the results were temporary.

The problem is that it leans heavily on recognition, so that you’ll recognize words on the page. But they vanish in an exam hall under pressure and without the text directly in front of you.

NotebookLM encourages active engagement, and that’s why it’s effective.

I would rephrase dense passages into spoken dialogue with the AI, and it converts them into auditory input. Then we revisit key points in conversation and loop back to the same idea from multiple angles.

The conversations are free of dry explanations. The voices are light and humorous. They slipped in jokes that made the process feel less like a stiff lecture. It was easier to remember concepts when they were tied to laughter.

Personalization at a large model scale

It’s proof that slow learners only need patient teachers

NotebookLM is powered by Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash. It’s a thinking model optimized for reasoning and unpacking concepts in layered detail. It now works to my advantage.

Every student struggles differently and has varying learning paces. I’ve always been a slow learner who needed things explained in the simplest possible terms.

NotebookLM’s inhuman strength is that it doesn’t get impatient with that process. It isn’t bound by the limits of human emotions and attention, which would otherwise become a problem in a crowded lecture hall and ticking clock.

One way I love to use it is to start a debate. Although it can’t contribute strong opinions, it tries to inject focus points that cause you to think hard.

We once argued about what research really means, and it pointed out how slippery definitions can be. Sometimes, a single phrasing fails to capture the many aspects of a principle.

Occasionally, I’d throw in my own counter-arguments, and NotebookLM would try to correct them with analogies. It wasn’t always consistent, and the model would mostly agree with me.

Still, I like that I’m left to reconcile the contradictions based on the facts it gave.

Learning never ends with NotebookLM

NotebookLM is a recommendable study crutch for any overwhelmed graduate student. It can just as easily organize your messy work transcript or summarize a bloated YouTube tutorial.

Simply copy the link and add it to your Notebook or upload a document. Then ask it to summarize and make comparisons.

That said, the tool has many real-world problem-solving uses. Explore them for yourself on the mobile app or on the web version via your browser.