Posts tagged as:

study secrets

Spark: How to improve your IQ by 20% in 20 minutes

July 23, 2009

sparkbookcoverSo in doing my monthly education readings as a tutor, I’ve recently had the pleasure of  reading Dr John Ratey’ ‘Spark‘.  I believe that every student and educator should read this book.  Ratey lays out the connection between physical activity and mental acuity and gives educators and students action steps to take to become better students through physical activity.

What Dr John Ratey Suggests

His findings suggest there is a correlation between physical activity and becoming smarter.  He suggests 20 minutes of aerobic activity at 65-75% of your maximum output will result in improved recall and comprehension.

In the VTA Method, one of the central cornerstones of academic success is the use of exercise to improve recall and comprehension.  Anyone who is interested in a quick way to boost your recall almost instantly should give his book a look.  Here are some links to help you out.

If you’d like to check out his book go here: Spark Book

If you’d like to get a sneak peak of his book here: Sneak Peek

If you want to help pay my bills go here: VTA Method

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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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Academic Goals: If you want to succeed, keep your goals to yourself…

June 12, 2009

goal-comicSo I just got a link to a great article which you can find here about how to achieve goals.  In the VTA Method goals are the first step towards academic success.  All the online tutors that work here also make goals a major component when they tutor college students.

Whether you’ve read the VTA Method or not, I’m going to give you one of the greatest secrets behind the VTA Method now confirmed by a New York University study.

Goals should be kept to yourself

Results from a new study from New York University suggest that whatever your goal, keeping it to yourself is a better idea than broadcasting it to the world.  The article goes on to suggest that sharing our goals with others doesn’t necessarily motivate us to achieve.  In actuality, by talking to others about our goals and plans we start to feel a premature sense of completeness about our goals.

The VTA Method on Goals

This directly relates to what I discuss in the VTA Method when talking to others about academic goals and who to talk to them with.  I teach that when you begin to become a better student, it’s crucially important to NOT talk to others about it, especially those people who can’t hold you accountable for your goal.  The reasons why you shouldn’t share your goals seem a little counter-intuitive, but let’s take an example.

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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”

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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.

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Parkinson’s Law: Why extra study time is your worst enemy

June 2, 2009

parkinsonslawHello students.  I have a post today about something that really pushed me into productivity through the end of my undergraduate degree and graduate school.  Let me premise this post with a small case study.

Two people are given an assignment to complete.  The first is given 2 days to complete the assignment and the second is given 2 weeks.

Student 1 freaks out over only having two days to complete the assignment and starts researching immediately.  He gets the assignment in but literally with only a few hours to spare.  He spends the whole two days working on the assignment.

Student 2 doesn’t freak out as he has two weeks.  He thinks about doing some work on the project right away but puts it off until 3-4 days before the due date.  He then proceeds to hold off the assignment till the last minute and ends up spending less time working on the paper cumulatively than student 1.

What can we learn from this?

Very simply, ‘work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,’ the quality of an assignment doesn’t really differ if you have two days or two weeks to accomplish it.  This is the core premise of Parkinson’s Law.

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Top 10 Study Blogs: Where Students should begin for Academic Success

May 29, 2009

 

Hello Fellow StudentsOnline Tutoring program

So instead of writing out a large and long article about my 10 favorite study websites I have instead decided to do a video.  These are my top picks for academic success blogs.

P.S. I don’t actually think I’m number 1… yet J But I mean COMMON, its my blog right?  I’m not going to rank myself last!

 

10: http://www.debtfreescholar.com/

 

9: http://www.brokegradstudent.com/

 

8: http://www.survivingcollegelife.com/

 

7: http://studenthacks.org/

 

6: http://studysuccessful.com/

 

5: http://www.academicproductivity.com/

 

4: http://www.zencollegelife.com/

 

3: http://theuniversityblog.co.uk/

 

2: http://calnewport.com/blog/

 

1: http://virtualteachingassistant.com/blog/

 

 

Anybody have any suggestions as to other blogs I missed?  Please comment below.

 

As always please help me pay my billirini’s (yes that’s not a word, but again my blog so I can invent words) by visiting my main site:

 

Online Tutoring Program

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Utilitarianism: A beginner’s guide to Utopianism Pt 2

May 27, 2009
The Ultimate Utilitarian

The Ultimate Utilitarian

So last post I talked about the fundamental aspects of Utilitarianism, if you haven’t checked it out, I highly suggest you do.  Go check out my post 1 on Utilitarianism.  Today I’m going to talk about the pro’s and con’s of utilitarianism and my arguments as to why it is so clearly a great way to run your own personal moral compass.

Why Philosophy Snobs don’t like Utilitarianism

Many philosophy snobs see utilitarianism as an ethical dinosaur and lacking any clear ideology.  Deontological ethics which does not see the consequences of an action as its moral determinant; and virtue ethics which focuses on the character of individuals to guide actions rather then looking at each action individually, pretty much think utilitarianism is bullshit.  I have had heated discussions with many philosophers on the subject and here are the major critiques and my rebuttals.

The Qualitative Nature of Happiness

Utilitarianism sees people’s happiness as a single factor when in reality each person experiences pain and happiness individually and cannot therefore be aggregated into a single variable.  It is impossible to quantitatively compare one person’s pain to another person, therefore choosing action that creates pain or happiness based on more than a single persons happiness cannot be aggregated and therefore should not be taken action upon.

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Utilitarianism: A beginner’s guide to Utopianism Pt 1

May 26, 2009
The Ultimate Utilitarian

The Ultimate Utilitarian

Hello fellow students.  I’m going to talk about a subject that has been near and dear to my heart for years.  I’m talking today about the philosophical calculation of utilitarianism and how students (and anybody for that matter) can apply it to make the world a much better place. This is related to chapter two in the VTA Method so go check that out if you’re interested in a more general overview of philosophies of life.

What is Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is very simply an idea that the moral worth of any action is determined by the contribution to its overall utility.  Therefore, the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome, or as Spock would say “The ends justify the means”.  (I’m pretty sure other people said that too but when I think of a pure Utilitarian, I always think of Spock)… Yes I’m a dork.

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The 90% principle: How to regroup after a bad mark

May 19, 2009

The VTA Method has placed a large amount of importance on how to maximize your academic potential.  However, I have been talking to some students about what happens to them after they get a bad mark back.  Quite of few of my students lose faith and start to self defeat themselves when they get a bad mark back on an assignment or test.

What is the 90% Principle?

One thing that I picked up on with successful students was how they regrouped after a less than satisfactory mark.  I’m going to call this the 90% principle.  Very simply the 90% principle is a way to look at your marks from a completely different perspective.  Instead of looking at marks as adding up to 100%, look at the marks you lose in comparison to your overall mark.  Check out the example below.

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