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?

Go back to that time when you were starting your degree and find the excitement you once had for the subject.

Concentrate on your end goal rather than your journey

A lot of students have what I call the “I just don’t wanna” problem. Many students concentrate so much on the journey that they forget to pull their head out of their work for a minute and really look at what they’ve accomplished and how close they are to their end goal. Stop right now, take a minute and look at what you’ve accomplished. Think about how far you’ve come! Even better, go take a look at some of your earlier essays, exams and labs; after you stop laughing take a minute to realize the improvements you’ve made in yourself and how much better you’re about to become.

Re-evaluate why you wanted to go into (X)

Unlike other tutors and student mentors, I personally think that sometimes you should absolutely re-evaluate why you wanted to go into your chosen subject and whether you should complete it. I knew a student who was really interested in becoming a doctor, she had the grades but she was so much more interested in design. After a long talk we both realized that it was her parents who had forced her into premed and she really wanted to get into architecture. She switched majors next semester and never looked back. Never get forced into a degree that you aren’t passionate for. Even if you complete the degree you’ll never be happy with the ensuing career. Follow your passion and money will follow.

However, remember that you can’t live on passion alone

You can’t live on passion alone, make sure you stay accountable to the fundamentals but also keep a keen eye on your end goal and you should be able to navigate the line between accomplishing the daily goals that your degree requires and motivating yourself towards academic success.

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.

The top three ways premeds sabotage themselves

I’ve been a tutor, teaching assistant and lecturer for a combined 5 years and I’ve learned quite a lot about how students succeed and fail. I’ve been throwing together a great program and talking to a ton of premed students. I’ve come to three big realizations when it comes to self sabotage in premed so here they are.

Premed’s working alone.

One thing I’ve found with premeds which is almost completely unique to their degree is the degree of competition between students. I’ve heard stories of students hiding library readings from other students, students refusing to help out a friend if they’re having trouble and even students purposefully being fed bad information so they fail! This has produced an environment of mistrust which I’ve only seen in law school. It’s a real shame as I feel like when I help others, I also help myself.

I came to the conclusion that premed students didn’t necessarily want to treat their friends horrible but were compelled because that’s how everyone else was doing it and they couldn’t trust anyone. To solve this problem I decided to produce a great community within the new premed program where you’d be able to get direct help from not just high end graduate student tutors and medical students but actual students who are taking the classes you are taking right now! You never have to feel nervous or unsure about sharing information because you’re not competing against these students and you’ll now no longer be alone.

Premed’s studying too much

Premed’s study WAAAAY too much. This is again a real shame as they should be enjoying university life but spend most of their time enjoying their university dorm room. The secret that most premed students never realize is that most of the studying they do is unneeded because of one simple realization.

STUDYING WON’T GET YOU ANYWHERE!

If you are studying, you need to stop, like right now! My good buddy Scott Young has this famous saying that encapsulates the general philosophy behind what I’m trying to say here. He tells everyone to “Learn More and Study Less”. I actually sat down with him and asked him about his learning philosophy which I’ve integrated into our new premed program and you can see it right now for free when you sign up.

Premeds never simplify anything!

The biggest way premed students seem to sabotage themselves is through lack of simplification. I recently taught a collection of medical students on the finer points of efficient study methods. I got a question from a student in the back that absolutely floored me. He asked me “What do you exactly mean by simplifying my learning philosophy? Why do I have to simplify anything?”

This question blew me away, not because I couldn’t answer it, but because I thought most students would have a basic idea of study methodologies, especially those in graduate school.

If you’d like to check out the program I’d highly suggest you take a look now before it’s taken down. I have 3+ hours of video and audio content specifically for premed students that are being giving away for free; just visit premedtutors.com and sign up for the free course.

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.

What’s coming to the Virtual Teaching Assistant Method

I’ve got a lot of new stuff coming down the pipe that we are all pretty excited about. Next year is going to be about specification. I’m going to offer programs specifically in tune with different degrees. I’m going to work on getting more tutors so I can serve you better and I’m going to start hiring some more people on so I can take some time off. For my students, thanks for staying with me and for those that aren’t what are you waiting for?

Liam McIvor Martin

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:

“Liam, you know I’m going to Florence right?”

“Ya…”

“Well I’ve got too many students to deal with this summer so I’m going to have to get you to come with me; I’ve set you up with an apartment for next week”

“…Sweet!” (I’m sure I said something better than that, but that’s all that was going through my head at the time)

So, with my thesis and girlfriend on hold I flew down to Rome the following week.  Before leaving I unfortunately had to take care of quite a few loose ends and therefore had pretty much been up for two days straight finishing off papers, finishing my responsibilities as a union representative and taking care of personal issues.  I leave in the evening and arrive in Rome for mid morning.  I was so excited with the trip that I again didn’t sleep on the plane (that makes it three days without sleep).  Not being familiar with Italian mass transit, I go to the main station and buy a ticket for Florence where my apartment has been reserved for me.  The woman at the ticket counter in broken Italian encourages me to hurry as the train would be leaving in the next five minutes.  I run to the station and find the Firenze train, climb aboard and take my seat, just before final call.

I look at my ticket to confirm that I am indeed on the right train and to check the arrival time; 5.00 pm.  This would be perfect timing as I could go straight to bed and get a full 12 hours rest as I had to be back on a train to Venice in the morning with my supervisor.  I don’t dare go to sleep on the train as I’m half excited and half scared that somebody would steal my bags on a government train which I was warned is filled with Gypsies and pick pockets (not true by the way).  I eventually notice that the time ends up going past 5.  I think that the train must simply be late but at 5.45 I decide to try to communicate with the locals to find out if such a delay is common place.  I eventually connect with the ticket master and he explains that there are two trains, the express taking three hours and the train I’m currently on which will take eight!  So I show up in Florence at approximately 9pm.  With no phone and being utterly exhausted, I jump on to the nearest bus which takes me to my apartment.  Unfortunately by this time it’s past 10 o’clock and the landlady who was supposed to give me my keys has left for the day.  I try buzzing her apartment repeatedly without a response.  After trying everything less of a bullhorn I decide to try for a hostel for the night.  However, another interesting fact about Florence is that hostels shut their doors at 11pm without exceptions and no amount of pleading, groveling, bribery or outright crying at 11:15 will get you in.

So it’s becoming incredibly evident to me that I’ve quickly run out of bed options for the evening.  I’m also literally passing out every few minutes as I’m now going on four days without more than an hour or two of uninterrupted sleep and dragging 3 months worth of luggage behind me.  To top it all off, in my haste to prepare for my trip I forget to release my credit card for international travel and when I sit down for something to eat in a café, I discovered that my card had been flagged and with only 40 euro’s worth of backup cash in my pocket.  I try to walk around the city to keep awake but realize that I can’t keep this up all night.  At around three in the morning I head back to the train station in order to wait for my supervisor and his students to arrive at eight.  I start wandering around the train station and find a homeless couple getting ready for bed on what looks to be a couple of yoga mats and some cardboard. I go over and explain the entire story to them and to my surprise, not only are they understanding but speaking perfect English.  They explained that they were backpacking throughout Europe and due to the easy immigration laws, had decided to simply stay in Italy for a few months.  They said I could stay with them until morning.  I even got them to take a picture of me at around 4 in the morning which officially made it 4 days since I had slept:

Me at 4 in the morning, still looking pretty positive!

At around 8 in the morning I got up, thanked my new friends for their help and made my way to the main station.  I hadn’t had a shower in about three days, I was sweaty, dirty, tired, without money and utterly exhausted.  My supervisor came up and asked me what had taken me so long to get here.  I started explaining the entire story, the train, the credit card issues, the apartment problems, the hostel problems, me being up for 4 days and dealing with homeless people.  In his usual style he had a very short response “Well at least you’re here now, which train goes to Venice?”

Liam McIvor Martin

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.

So for all those that are interesested, please take a look at Ms Obama’s speech with the following question in your mind.  Do you think the philosophy of education Michelle is espousing is possible in our current society?  Or do you think we have to coax our students into this kind of thought process by buying them off with flashy titles like study 30 minutes a day and get a 4.0 GPA?

Liam McIvor martin

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:

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

Hello 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)

Here is the reality, right now for every western student who has a post secondary degree there are 10 more in non-western countries, who are just as smart or smarter, work for less money and have gone through 10 times more hell to get to where they are now.  They are GOOD students; they are going to be even better employees.  As a western student who is either beginning or finishing off their university career, it can be scary to think about this.  I mean once employers figure out they can hire 10 Indian MBA’s for the price of one western one, it’s going to be a new ballgame.

So how can students stay competitive?

There are still many advantages to a western degree, as an example, usually if you belong to an international caliber school (a top 10 school like Harvard, yale, oxford etc) you’re probably going to be ok, you might not automatically be pulling in six figures out of your undergrad but you’ll be ok.  Getting one of those fancy degrees myself, it definitely opens up doors.

Now for the rest of you that go to a good middle tier school, you are simply going to have to adapt to the new reality.  The new reality being, university does not automatically mean you are going to get a good job or any job at all.  You are going to have to learn how to be competitive in this economy.  Here are my personal top choices:

Do NOT specialize in University

Almost all students look to specialize in university, hell I did it!  But I quickly discovered that going to graduate school and specializing in transnational immigrant digital diasporas wasn’t automatically going to get me a job as the 5 jobs in the world that demanded my degree were already taken.   Be adaptable!  Choose huge topics and learn a little about all aspects of it.  The more specific you get the less jobs you will be open to.  Oh and by the way, the more education you have the smaller your chance of getting hired into entry level positions as most employers won’t take the chance on training a highly educated employee just to see them leave three months later for a better gig.

Don’t count on your education as your first tool in the globalized economy

Education shouldn’t be your first tool in staying competitive in the globalized economy.  Many of your international competitors have had to invest 16 hour days since they were twelve to get into university.  You on the other hand have had the advantage of not being an education thrall and have been able to hopefully fill your life with varying experiences.  Take advantage of this and make sure you have a multivariate set of skills.  Contemporary employers are looking for students that can do anything and everything. They are not looking for specialists or people who just have a lot of degrees; they can find those in India at 10 cents on the dollar.  I had a student who just recently got a great position because he added that he was an SEO (search engine optimization) expert along with his degree in psychology.  This extra skill got him his social worker job and unofficial website tech guy for the office.

Try to learn something that can’t be outsourced

Do not turn your nose up at being a plumber or carpenter, some make six figure salaries and are more creative in their jobs than any cubical gnome.  If you want something a little more respectable, try a doctor, social worker, or educator (although I make a good living at outsourcing that).  Here is a good rule of thumb to pass the outsource test that I came up with after I read The World Is Flat by Friedman, ask yourself, can my work be digitized?  If it can’t you’re safe, if it can, prepare to compete against your new Indian and Chinese co-workers.

What will the future hold for western students in the globalized world?

The reality is that education is still one of the most important things I think anyone can do to improve their life.  However, education doesn’t have to start and end in a classroom.  Or be the be all and end all of getting a new job.  I know many students who after getting their masters in philosophy for instance, went on to be great company managers, or entrepreneurs or plumbers!  Be adaptable, be broad in your educational outlook and above all be wary of your growing international competition.

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.

Make sure you have a preset one page step by step guide of how to study for a test, repeat the same one page guides for assignments, readings and papers.  Make sure you have a pre-set study time each day.  Choose 30 minutes during the day that you know will be available and make sure you do nothing but study.  If you don’t have any work that day, you’re not thinking hard enough lol.  You will always find more work to do, make sure you keep that time of the day just for college work and you will see huge returns.

Number 2:  Don’t put to much attention into the first set of marks you get back.

I know quite a few students who get straight A’s throughout high school and expect the same result in college.  Usually if you are at a high end college, that won’t be the case.  Expect to get some B’s and even some C’s.  Although you want to get A’s, don’t freak out if you aren’t doing well from the beginning.  Adapting to college takes time and stressing out over the C isn’t going to help the situation.

Number 3:  Keep a proper diet

Many students entering university are for the first time, leaving home.  Without parents, many students end up making bad nutritional choices, particularly when you live off college cafeteria food.  This usually results in the ‘freshman 15.’  To solve this problem you only have to follow one very simple and easy rule.  You can eat whatever you want after you drink a full glass of water and a full plate of salad (no heavy dressing).  Or if that’s not possible, just remember to eat something that is actually ‘alive’ (i.e. raw veg) with every meal.

So anything I should add?  Want to know more?  Please comment below or check out my college mentorship program.

You’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.

How do you spot a PPA student?

I could usually spot a PPA student when one would come into my office and have an innumerable amount of questions and not necessarily want to hear any answers.  At the core of a PPA is the inability to focus, relax and truly engage in content.  A perfect example was a young student that came to see me and who was obviously very intelligent.  She said she wanted to talk about an upcoming paper and began to ask questions.

Her first question was on the length of the paper and the sources.  She then asked about the upcoming test.  She then asked a question about the paper.  Then she asked another question about the test.  This kind of went on for a while and she wasn’t taking any notes or really paying attention to what I was saying.  See a pattern here?

I finally stopped her and asked her why she just didn’t ask all the paper questions first then all the test questions, she looked at me with a puzzled look on her face and I could see she didn’t really realize what she had been doing.

When you do multiple things its hard to focus on a single task, therefore you end up asking questions about papers, tests and readings without really getting complete answers.

How I instantly cured her PPA

I got this girl to stop, relax and focus on a single issue at a time.  I asked her top three problems were with the paper.  Amazingly this took almost 20 minutes as she had never really sat down and asked herself that question.  We came to the conclusion that she was unsure about her main thesis statement and didn’t quite understand the question the professor was posing to her in the initial assignment.  She was unsure about the content she was using for her paper and was looking for a source that was more general which could explain some of the key terms.  She also lacked a clean distinction between her three main points which she wanted to make in her paper.

I reworked her thesis statement, gave her suggestions for secondary sources and asked her to talk to me again after she did the additional research so we could tackle her third question.

The Lesson Here

PPA isn’t a permanent problem, if you feel like you are doing ten things and not getting anything done.  Stop, relax and focus.  Ask yourself the following questions.

1: What is my most important task?

2: What the major problems I’m facing with this task and can I accomplish them with what I have in front of me.

3: How can I break that task down into action steps I can achieve in the next 10 minutes, hour, afternoon etc?

If you have a PPA problem, remember that getting one thing done properly is better than getting 10 things done improperly.

If you have any other questions, please comment and I’ll answer whatever questions you might have.

Liam McIvor Martin

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

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.

If we’ve made the decision to use this system we can’t go both ways.  We can’t tell students on one hand that tests are important and the way you move on to success in post secondary education and on the other hand… give students a card blanche pass to not participate in the very system that we’ve set up to stratify them.  I’ve been a teaching assistant for a long time and I have friends and family who have been lifelong educators.  Even though I don’t believe in standardized testing, if you’ve decided to go with testing students for all that is holy stay with it!

What the Teachers are Saying

A recent poll from teachers who were using the Johnny can’t fail policy showed that only 10% of teachers polled saw an increase desire in students to complete work.

- 84% of teachers saw an increase in late assignments.

- 62% of teachers saw an increase in students skipping tests.

- 62% of teachers reported increased absenteeism.

- 38% of teachers reported an increase in plagiarism.

Even though some selector bias obviously exists with teachers being polled, there is an obvious problem with this policy.  81% of teachers have also reported that this policy has increased their workload.  With the state of our public education system getting worse every year, I believe the less time teachers can apply to teaching the worse our education system will slip.

Why this will create stupider University Students

Let me state, over the years I’ve been a teaching assistant, students have gotten quite a bit lazier and generally stupid.  I’ve seen the quality and quantity of work fall behind and I’m not alone in this view.  Many of my counterparts in my company which provides online tutoring and have been teaching assistants have seen the same phenomenon in new students.  This is one of the primary reasons I started the VTA Method so that we could try to stop this ‘dumbing’ down of university education.  What the Johnny can’t fail policy is doing is encouraging the very things we are trying to stop in our online tutoring program and university in general.  Without a strong sense of accountability and intellectual tenacity I shudder to think of what will become of these students later in their educational careers.

What do you think?  Please comment below.

Also, if you’re interested in becoming a better student you should check out my program.

Online Tutoring Program