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Over the last few months I’ve had dozens of students join my program. For those of you that don’t know; when I sit down with a student for the first time by phone or over skype I ask that they have 3 pieces of information prepared for me.
- The courses they took last semester
- The courses they are taking this semester
- Their top three frustrations with University
With this information I’m usually able to match new students with a tutor that work relatively well with them. During this initial interview I really get to the core of what they are about. Many students don’t stop to realize what kind of problems they really have with university until I force them into confronting there demons by laying out exactly what their problems are. Therefore to help more students, I’m going to introduce a new series into effective study skills where I share the frustrations many of my students faced and how they conquered them.
During this series I will be concentrating on students’ individual case studies and how they are succeeding in speeding less time studying and getting higher grades
Sud, A great student who is trying to become an elite student
Sud (pseudonym) is a first year premed student, concentrating in classics from Yale. He has so far been doing extraordinarily well in most of his courses.
Here is a breakdown:
Bioethics: A
Constitutional history: A-
Gen Chem Lab: A
Ancient Greek: A
Gen Chem: B+
Sud’s three major frustrations with university were as follows:
1: Inability to understand what I did wrong and the ability to improve what’s not working
2: Time management, staying on top of class readings and not falling behind
3: Having energy to take on the day
Although Sud is doing well in most of his classes, he feels like he is constantly fighting the rising tide, combating conflicting schedules and preparing for courses that never seem to have an end.
Although, it appears at first glance that Sud’s frustrations aren’t necessarily linked, on review I would suggest that these frustrations all related to one overarching subject… planning. Fortunately, Sud has conquered the difficult part of a successful university career, commitment and work ethic. However, he lacks effective time management skills to understand where he has gone wrong, how to optimize his schedule so it doesn’t happen again and how to re-organize his schedule so he can be as energized as possible to take on the heavy course load associated with a premed program.
I made the following suggestions to Sud to optimize his schedule so he could keep his head above water academically and become a better student.
- Perform exam/test/quiz post mortems finding out exactly what you did right and exactly what you did wrong. Then take what you didn’t understand to the professor or teaching assistant immediately so you can figure out exactly what you need to know to succeed next time.
- Understand where you are going wrong in tests so you can foresee and anticipate your weak points and work to become better at it.
- Keep a strong reading schedule each week so that you can stay on top of readings and perform weekly reviews of exactly what you have and haven’t done so you don’t lose track of homework which can very quickly pile up if not paid attention to.
- Block out some time to disconnect from school through sports or exercise. I suggested he also change his college diet and start taking gaba supplement when he felt stressed out.
Just because you have great marks doesn’t mean their isn’t room for improvement
Just because students like Sud are currently doing well does not mean that high performing students shouldn’t be working towards less studying and more learning. By optimizing his schedule, continually keeping tabs on how his studying is going and by keeping his energy levels up and stress levels down, he should be studying less than ever before while still keeping and possibly improving his already impressive marks in premed.
Have anything to add, have a suggestion for Sud? Leave a comment!
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