From the category archives:

Mind Shift

Passion in College, where do you find it?

March 18, 2010

I was speaking with quite a few students lately who have been experiencing a lack of passion with their degree. I recently spoke to two students in particular that were both facing the same problem in my program. A feeling that they had lost the desire they once had in their subject matter and didn’t know how to get it back. Here are the three main suggestions I gave them so they could regain the passion they once had in college.

Remember why you started this degree

After a few years of readings, papers, exams and labs many students forget why they actually started their degree. I asked one of my students this exact question and he couldn’t answer it. If you’re lacking motivation in your degree I suggest you go back to your last year of high school and find out why you chose your subject in the first place, did you really want to become a doctor and decided to enter premed? Did you have a passion for ancient history and decided to become a historian? Were you constantly intrigued with human interaction and wanted to become a sociologist?

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Top 3 Ways Premed Students Sabotage Themselves

January 6, 2010

I’ve been keeping a big secret from everyone over the last few months and now I’m finally ready to unveil what I’ve been working on all this time. I’ve been studying how premed students succeed (and fail) by talking to thousands of students, premed students, teachers, admission officers, medical students, doctors and education experts to put together a system that is going to completely change the way you see premed. The product is in my opinion amazing and we will be announcing the price really soon. In the meantime you can check out the product and get a free premed course component here.

I’ve been working on this project for 6 months and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed as we’re going to have a ton of free tips, tricks and content, even if you don’t want a copy of the paid program you can still try out the intro program absolutely free.  As an example, here is a free snippet of what you’ll get for free when you check out the free program.

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Happy Holidays Everybody

December 23, 2009
A youth enjoying his pudding on a firm's Chris...
Image via Wikipedia

Hello fellow students

As the holiday season is quickly approaching I wanted to extend my warmest holiday wishes to everyone that has been supporting us over the last 6 months and I’d also like to provide everyone with an update on my little company, how it’s progressing and what other education programs I’m putting together in the new year.

Virtual Teaching Assistants Progress Thus Far

As of today, I’ve gotten dozens of students, hundreds of emails and 12 employees. Our students have done very well, some students have gone from failing classes to passing those same classes in a matter of weeks. Others have gone from B’s and C’s to A’s in the same amount of time. Also, we’ve had zero refunds which is really a testament to my virtual teaching assistants and their commitment to help students achieve academic success.

Challenges Virtual Teaching Assistant Method Has Faced

We’ve also had quite a few challenges, we currently updated to a completely new shopping cart system, I went through a lot of trial and error with pay per click adverting until figuring it out and I’ve been putting way too much work into my little company while it expands.

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My Best Back To School Story

August 15, 2009
Where I worked and Stayed for Three Months

Where I worked and Stayed for Three Months

So with the fall semester quickly approaching Student Bloggers is encouraging bloggers to give their ‘best back to school story’ to be in the running for their HP Giveaway.  With that in mind I’ve decided to share with you the best back to school story ever!

My story starts back in my teaching assistant office, busily working away at the final marks for a second year ethnicity and immigration class that I was teaching.  It’s the end of the year and I’m ready to start working on my thesis over the summer for submission in October.  I get an email from my supervisor asking me to come down to his office for a quick chat.  Being a good research assistant and wanting to keep my supervisor happy I pop down for what I think will be a quick recap of what I should be working on while he goes to Italy for a few months on a work trip.  What transpired in the next 5 minutes would result in one of the most exciting and wild things that had happened to me in grad school.

The conversation went a little like this:

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Michelle Obama: The Future of Education for Women

August 6, 2009
Michelle as a teenager

Michelle as a teenager

Hello Fellow Students

I recently watched the Ted Talk with Michelle Obama who was speaking about the future of education for women.  The part of the speech that impacted me the most which I believe transcends sex is her description of her study habits.

She quote “never cut class” and “liked getting A’s” and thought that “being smart was cooler than anything in the world.”  What an interesting concept!

Now even though my book is called “Study 30 Minutes A Day and Get A 4.0 GPA” I’m still a proponent of Michelle’s standpoint of education.  I get a LOT of flack from people who don’t agree with the title of the book.  But, once I explain to them that I teach students learning techniques rather than studying techniques and that I suggest to my students to take a class they might fail to expand their learning, they usually understand.

Learning and effective study skills is in my opinion the most important skill you can teach students, unfortunately many of the students I encounter lack the basic study skills necessary to think critically, or even think regularly lol.

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Questioning Academic Authority

August 3, 2009

Hello Fellow Students

This will be a quick post but something I would love to get your responses on.  I recently was floating through the internet and came upon this gem from a teacher who gave a student detention for challenging her on the validity of her instruction, even though he was actually right.

I’ve included the letter here:

stupid teacher

Now it’s obvious that this teacher is an idiot, but more importantly I’m interested as to what you think about questioning academic authority.  Should this student be punished for what he did or do you think he was justified in openly challenging the teachers curriculum?

Liam McIvor Martin

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How Western Students Can Still Compete In Our Globalized Economy

July 30, 2009

educationHello fellow students.

As a tutor for university students I usually get hired not by unintelligent students or even lazy students but students that want to get ahead and truly compete in the increasingly competitive global economy.

I’d like to give you a few awe inspiring student statistics:

“Statistics indicate that the number of university students in China has increased rapidly in recent years, from 1.08 million in 1998 to over 17 million in 2003.” Asia Times

“The India Science Report, for instance, shows that India had a total of 48.7 million graduates in 2004, up sharply from 20.5 million in 1991. And while just around 29 per cent of those enrolled for graduate courses went in for science in 1995-96, this is now up to 35 per cent.” Rediff News

15.6 million students are enrolled in post secondary education within the United States in 2009 an increase of over 2 million from 2000 which saw 13.2 million students registered.  National Center for Education Statistics (Figure 10.2) with 2.2 million graduate students (Figure 11.1)

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3 Ways Freshman Can Avoid College Stress

July 16, 2009
A stereotypical freshman before midterms

A stereotypical freshman before midterms

Hello upcoming college students

Although almost all my students are already in college, for those students who are entering college there are a few important practices I believe you must implement and keep up if you want to have a stress free college life and avoid the dreaded college student stresses.

The first half of my university career was god-awful, filled with stress and worry primarily from disorganization and a lack of adequate study skills.  So I’d like to give up and coming college students about to enter the wonderful world of college some friendly advice on how to avoid college stress and keep it off for the next four years.

Number 1: Get a focused college study methodology and mechanize it so that it becomes automatic.

Mechanizing your college study methodology is incredibly important for long term stress free college careers.  Once the system is automatic it stops becoming a burden.  It becomes a daily ritual like brushing your teeth or taking a shower.  Here are some starting pointers that can get you started.

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Partial Attention Disorder

July 2, 2009

multitaskingYou’ve probably heard of Attention Deficit Disorder

Well I think many students have another condition that is wider spread and worse than ADD.

Are you ready for this one?

Partial Attention Disorder

In my 5 years as a teaching assistant and university tutor I’ve seen all manner of study problems.  From over studying and writing more notes than the text book has pages to notes written on napkins!

However, in my work the most common mistake I see in students study skills is a lack of adequate concentration on a single task, otherwise known as the dreaded multitasking monster or what I lovingly call ‘partial attention disorder’

Why is PPA so pervasive?

The main reason why PPA is so pervasive is because many students see multitasking as an advantage.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  For some reason, society sees the ability to perform multiple tasks badly an advantage over performing a single task properly.  If you check out Tim Ferriss’ blog he has an excellent post on multitasking and shows that ‘multitaskers’ get less accomplished than pot smokers… I’m not kidding!  I’m not condoning pot smoking as a study tool but this should show you how horrible multitasking can effect your concentration.

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Johnny Can’t Fail Policy: Why University students are becoming stupider by the minute

June 18, 2009

Ok, fair warning, this is going to be a rant post.

This should be Johnny

This should be Johnny

I’ve just read an article by Joanne Laucius on a new education policy called the “Johnny can’t fail policies”.  Very simply, the policy gives high school students the opportunity to redo tests and assignments and receive ‘incompletes’ for missed work and plagiarism instead of a zero.  These policies as stated by the Ministry of Education have been implemented to increase student’s success, quoting studies that failing students or giving them zeros does not cause them to learn their lesson and succeed in the long run.  This is ridiculous.

Why this is Ridiculous

First off, without viewing the evidence of student achievement vs harsh marking for plagiarized and missed assignments I cannot specifically comment from a quantitative standpoint.  However, from a qualitative standpoint I can tell you that this ‘policy’ is absolute bullshit and will only produce low quality, academically unaccountable students.

The western education system has made a choice in terms of how we teach students.  We have decided to use standardized testing in order to categorize and stratify students.  This is a very good way to let people who are good at crossword puzzles and rote memorization to float to the top.  I personally think our system is bullshit but unfortunately I’m not a university dean or in charge of the board of education… yet.

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