Posts tagged as:

College success

Study Pulses: Why studying more is making you a dumbass

June 9, 2009

Study PulseHello all, today I’m going to explain why studying too much is actually turning you into a dumbass and an all round boring person.  I use to study quite a bit (about three hours a day) and this produced a solid B- average and a stressed out university student.  What’s more, I was amazed when some of my fellow students didn’t study much at all and were getting much higher marks then me.  I initially just thought they were smarter than me.  When I later realized that success in University had nothing to do with intelligence, I then started studying how they were doing so well and I was doing so badly.

I later turned what I learned into an online tutoring program.  One of the biggest things I learned was how to study efficiently.  So much so that I wrote a book on the subject “How To Study 30 Minutes a Day and Get A 4.0 GPA”.  Anyway, I just spoke to a guy that works for me and he had a great way of explaining one of the central study techniques within my book and online tutoring program.  “The Study Pulse”

Read the full article →

Past Present and Future: Cementing Your Academic Mind Shift

June 5, 2009

Hello Fellow Students.

In researching for my online tutoring system, The VTA Method, I interviewed dozens of students and asked them how they became successful so successful in school.  The one thing they all had in common was their mind shift from thinking they knew they were going to succeed to knowing they were going to succeed.

Difference between Believing and Knowing you will succeed in University

Let me describe the distinction between believing and knowing.  Believing you’re going to succeed at something is when you don’t exactly know how you’re going to accomplish a goal but you have the faith that you will be able to achieve it.  This, in itself is a rare and highly successful way to think.  Many successful students and people have this mindset and have accomplished great things by implementing this kind of mind shift.

Knowing is a little different.  Knowing your going to succeed is having the same mindset that you will be able to achieve your goal BUT having a fully laid out plan to accomplish said goal.  So believing you’re going to succeed is having faith that you will be getting an A on a paper, knowing you’re going to succeed is having all the research, brainstorming and essay outlines completed and refined ready to be used to write an amazing paper.  You first need to believe before you know, and knowing requires quite a bit of testing and refinement, but once you know it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Read the full article →

How to stop re-reading books in college

May 12, 2009

Hello fellow students

I have a special video for you today. It’s all about creating an academic database. I’ve used this method for years and it got me through graduate school and now allows me to write up and source an article in a fraction of the time.

I’ve been thinking about putting a post like this together even before I had the blog but I recently read a post at the cal newport blog on research wiki’s and thought it might be useful to show students a more simplified version of the same concept.

Endnote and how to use it

The program I use is endnote. If you’ve read the VTA Method you know I’m a real pusher for endnote as it allows any student to database any kind of academic material for easy referencing and implementation.  What endnote does is get all the demographic information about a source and then databases it for you.  It also automatically creates custom bibliographies which can be customized into any format you choose.

Read the full article →

How to study 30 minutes a day and get a 4.0 GPA

May 4, 2009

Hello and welcome to 30 minutes a day to a 4.0 GPA!

This is the first post of the virtual teaching assistant blog. I’ve put together a program (the VTA Method) which is going to help you get to a 4.0 GPA while only studying 30 minutes a day. This blog is going to serve as an update site for advanced study tips and methods for all, for free.  I’ll usually be trying to post one new article a week. I won’t be posting daily as I’m interested in producing quality content and quality requires time.

I’m a recent graduate from McGill University where I was finishing grad school specializing in sociology, social media and migration. I always struggled with school and didn’t really figure out the keys to success till later in my undergraduate degree and in graduate school. I became a teaching assistant during my undergraduate degree and grad school and figured out all the secrets that professors and teaching assistants don’t tell their students. During the five years I worked as a TA, I helped thousands of students through classes. I developed my knowledge into a tutoring service where students were paying me more than 100 dollars an hour to tutor them.

Read the full article →