NEW STUDENT IN NEED OF NEW ADVICE.

by stillAwitness 14 Replies latest jw friends

  • PaNiCAtTaCk
    PaNiCAtTaCk

    Hows your personal study of the publications? Maybe you should up your Watchtower and Awake intake. If your tired from classes the meetings tues, thurs, Sun, and field service on Saturdays will REFRESH YOU!

  • Joel Wideman
    Joel Wideman

    Remember, college isn't JUST for academic learning. There's a variety of people to meet and talk to - some good, some bad, but the experience is what's important. Although your classes and studying are your priority, socializing should not be neglected.
    At least, that's the lesson I learned in "A" school, when the guys who studied with each other at the bar got better grades that I did studying alone in my room.

  • garybuss
    garybuss

    I took a class on how to take classes. It was one of the best things I ever did. I learned not to be afraid of feeling ignorant. I'm supposed to be ignorant, that's why I'm in school. I learned I don't always remember what I remember. I learned to know myself and how I learn. I could ace a test if I took prolific notes in class and then the night before the test, I'd type the notes up on a manual typewriter. That's different for me than doing it on a word processor. It must be the tap tap tap.

  • rmt1
    rmt1

    Visualization: It covers a good deal of poor memory. When uploading new vocabulary (mainly new languages) into memory, I manually air-write it out on a blank surface while visualizing the letters I'm forming. If I visualize it, it can later be consulted like a physical image. When I'm required to remember a series of ideas that must be in RAM storage in case they are asked for on a test, I typically try to put each idea into a squadron with another 4-5 ideas/terms, so that they form a 2x3 matrix or a hexagon that can be visualized. As required, I also arrange ideas into internally visualized symmetric shapes like triangles, octagons and tetrahedrons. Regularity aids this method. Excess mental capacity is a symptom of our evolutionary success; there's no reason to avoid some apparently absurd things that do not require much additional processing power. (As for storage, you won't even realize that you're remembering things you couldn't before.) Not if you're _really_ shooting for top grade. Audio: use mnemonics, no matter how silly. Find auditory patterns. If a song occurs in tandem with a phrase, latch onto it as a mnemonic until you've taken the test and gotten the A. If a large series of data has to be memorized, throw your entire musical capacity at it until all the data is a sing-along. If apparently disparate ideas or terms must be memorized together, throw your entire narrative capacity at it: make up a miny story (or relational picture) of how they're related. Energy: Perhaps try studying while standing so that it's a longer time between fatigue. Daily exercise also means more energy without more sleep. Stressed-out R&R after midnight has a way of quickly turning into 3-4am. Be aware of when negative emotional energy means you really ought to turn in. Stress inventories: Get (the equivalent of) moderately smashed (salt to taste) at the start or middle of every weekend, but not the day before class. Get friends with whom you can laugh so heartily that you're adding years to your life. (I know, easy.) Teacher psychology: If you can ask the teacher a question after every other class, or at least once a week, you're well on your way to being evaluated upwards in marginal grade cases. If you can physically look good _while_ looking attentive/fascinated/focused/whatever, do so. The instructor is human and has the visceral unconscious Froidian and Faucaultian desire to implant their knowledge in attractive vessels where it will germinate. Be seen by them to be tracking their physical movements in the class space. A component of their career choice is performativity; acknowledge it not as an audience member who is duly surprised or predictably delighted, but as a seasoned observer who has already gotten in, and out, of their thought cycle, and who can show their seasoned appreciation by not showing novice appreciation. And depending on your academic aggression, I believe teachers do enjoy, in a masochistic way, to be challenged beyond their traditional ranges of knowledge by the new paradigm of adult student, even to be moderately disagreed during classtime with and to find a smooth transition out of the mis/dis-understanding. Find ways to push the teacher up to and completely beyond their range of knowledge YET allowing them every retreat for a smooth return. They will appreciate that YOU appreciate that the field is beyond any one person's ownership, and you will simulate a colleague if but for a second. Anyway, I believe I didn't type this out so much to help someone else as to see if I actually had some system I could document to myself. Some of this may be naive in hard sciences or mathematics. All I can say is that being an ex-Witness, I have my work cut out for me to get anywhere on this planet.

  • fairchild
    fairchild

    From the day I went to school. all the way through college, I could NEVER stay awake in class in the morning, no matter how hard I tried and no matter how interesting some of the classes were.

    I am 43 now and still have a hard time "thinking" before noon. It doesn't matter when I go to bed, how much I sleep and when I wake up. It just doesn't work. Perhaps you have the same problem.Try to take afternoon classes.

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