This Bear Is Up a Tree

This Bear Is Up a Tree
photo by Scott Granneman

Friday, January 15, 2010

Stealth Studying Philosophy

Study Hacks - a great study skills blog. If you are a blog-follower, add this one to your list. If you are not, you should be. Especially helpful this week is an entry about using your smart phone to maximize your free time so that you work in frequent brief study sessions wherever you happen to be. Cal Newport, author of How to Become a Staight-A Student, introduces you to Ricardo, a computer science major who maintains a 4.0 and studies only about 30 minutes before each test. Sound too good to be true? Read what Ricardo and Cal say, and then let's talk about it.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Read Every Day

The Christmas break was a good time to catch up on reading. I’m always amazed when I pick up a newspaper and find a story that parallels something I’m reading at the time. This week it appeared in the Tuesday edition of the NY Times science section – “Chimps and Monkeys Could Talk. Why Don’t They?” As it happens, I’ve just finished the chapter in Stanislaus Dehaene’s new book Reading in the Brain titled “The Reading Ape.” Dehaene, a French mathematician turned cognitive neuroscientist, cites research that indicates macaque monkeys respond to line junctions resembling some letter shapes, a first step in decoding written words. Observers have discovered that chimpanzees, apes and all their kin have distinctive sounds to communicate information. However, over the last 30 million years, as far as we know, monkeys have not spoken a single sentence.

The real point of this posting is not that monkeys apparently have the physical ability to speak and choose not to, but that the excitement of seeing parallels in what’s going on in our personal lives and what’s happening in the global community often leads us to greater understanding in both arenas. Often I even find information on the sports page that relates to study strategies, or on the cartoons page.

How does this translate to improving study skills? Frequent reflection on course material, even while strolling about campus, makes it more likely that we will make associations between what we see and hear in our everyday lives and what we study – a key element in creating long-term memories that produce quick and accurate responses to test questions.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Begin Preparing for Finals Today

Yes, you read that correctly. Today, the 2nd day of the new semester, is the perfect time to begin preparing for finals. By now you probably have attended a class from each of your courses. If you have not, surely you have checked out the syllabus on Blackboard. In any event, at the very least, you can plot your finals on a semester calendar. The finals schedule is subject to change, and sometimes professors select a different time for their finals. Now is the time to find out if that is a possibility (check the syllabus) and make your plans accordingly. You should also note all major exams, papers and projects on your calendar so that you can predict those weeks that will be particularly challenging. You can find a handy planner on the Academic Support Programs website.