It Is My Honor to Study Together Once Again in This Class
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Robert A. Hatch - University of Florida
T here's an old joke about three frat brothers discussing plans for the evening. 1 said, 'Hey, I desire to get out to the movies.' The second said, 'No, I want to go out for pizza.' The third said, 'Gee Whizz, fellas, I hateful, similar gosh, I actually need to stay in and study.' With this the fourth guy said, 'OK, let's flip a coin: Heads we go to a motion-picture show, tails nosotros go for pizza, and if it lands on edge (and stays there) we can study later on....'
N ot very funny, I suppose, just neither is studying. Fact is, learning is serious business organization, even if it is fun and comes like shooting fish in a barrel. Simply most students coming to the academy have never actually studied, and younger academy students often experience at a loss. Make no mistake, i way or another, surviving university life requires you learn to study. As clear, if you larn to acquire it will serve you a life time. To be blunt, much of the stuff you learn at a university is not important in itself. The reason is that most of the day-to-day stuff keeps changing. The play tricks is to learn to learn. You have probably heard the teaching cliche a dozen times: Give a man a fish he eats for a solar day; teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime. Enough clichés. What's important is developing disciplined report skills. And yeah, you have heard this before. Merely at present the question is: What have you have done nigh it? The following survey focuses on this question. Information technology aims to provide an overview, some preaching, and a few practical tips on 'How to Written report.'
How Much Written report: Serious students (studious students) report l-60 hours a week. Although this should exist no surprise (after all, in the 'real world' people ascension at 6 or 7 am and work 8 hours or more each day) many freshmen exercise not trust this figure. Just as a matter of record, University of Florida guidelines are clear: Undergraduates are expected to written report a minimum of 3 (3) hours for each one (one) hour of grade fourth dimension. The mathematics is simple. If y'all have a 3-credit hour class, you will spend a minimum of 12 hours each week in that course. It is likely you volition spend additional time with the mid-term and concluding exams, not to mention enquiry essays.
I f you lot are an entering freshman you should experience some pride in being welcomed into the academy community. And let'south face it, as a university pupil yous are privileged. Call up about information technology. Next time you take your seat in a university lecture hall consider how many people would like to exist in your place. But at that place is more. The honor does not brand you a particularly privileged character. Rather, it identifies a seat of responsibility.
Study Hours - Add information technology Upward: If y'all take an average course load of 15 credit hours the figures come to sixty (lx) hours per week. This is a suggested minimum. But make no fault, smart students spend more than, and please note: If you are non unusually smart y'all may need to spend more than than the smart folks. How practise you know if you are smart? The paradox was summarized long ago by Pascal (a clever guy now dead) who reminds us that a person who is lame can see he is lame; a silly person cannot see his problem and so clearly. If you are actually - really - actually smart you lot will report as much equally your torso can suffer. If you lot are not then gifted (or not so sure) y'all would be smart to written report your level best. The trick (given our short time here) is to learn all the best stuff we can and to put it to the best possible effect. Serious concern I suppose. Perhaps some other number volition help frame the game, if game it be.
Some other Statistic: The 2d fix of numbers is that for every three students entering the Academy of Florida one will non receive a degree. Many bug confront entering freshman. But the solution to the problem of studying is simple. Like a lot of things, it is difficult to do simply piece of cake to sympathise. For example, if you want to lose weight you need to accept in fewer calories than you fire. Simple to understand. And then besides, if y'all want to develop good study skills you need to diet your time and discipline your activities. But all the advice in the world is useless unless you apply it. Although you already know what to do, the following tips may exist useful reminders.
The Skinny: Report is hard work. If yous already sympathise that study is difficult work, the second step is to accept it as a daily fact of life and then, as the philosopher said, 'Just practise it.' Ane of the facts you lot will take to embrace is that study requires repetition. If study is extending and internalizing your interaction with course material, a key component is, I repeat, repetition: Reading, re-reading, writing, re-writing, discussing, re-discussing, thinking, re-thinking the course material. Bored? As well bad. A long-standing learning cliche is that yous need to push the aforementioned stuff by your encephalon in as many means every bit possible: See it, hear information technology, read information technology, write it, repeat it all again in as many unlike ways equally possible. It is no surprise that universities are designed to do but that. The fob is to help yourself learn as painlessly every bit possible. What follows are fourth dimension-honored suggestions. If the post-obit hints are non obvious, you might consider a different line of work:
one. Never Miss Grade: Come up to grade. When y'all are in class listen critically. Learn to accept skilful notes. Skinny: Attend (and attend to) all lectures. Listen to what the teacher ways.
two. Practise the Required and Recommended Reading: And do the reading earlier you come to form. Have notes from your reading {Cf. infra}. Don't take notes word for word. Don't paint over the words, uncover the pregnant. Practise the reading. Re-read difficult material equally many times as necessary to sympathise it. Outline the chapters. Write downwardly questions. Think nigh the total range of answers. If you are non satisfied, enhance questions in grade, discuss the questions with classmates afterward grade. Either way, if you lot have proficient questions they benefit everyone. Share your insights, your confusions, and your criticism. Larn when to speak and when to listen. If you're smart and articulate don't be silent and smug or overbearing and obnoxious. If you are shy and hesitant learn to trust your yourself and accept a take chances. How to Have Notes From Reading
3. Have Adept Lecture Notes: See the other files at this WebSite. Learning to accept expert notes is akin to learning to learn. Taking good notes is a ritual for thinking. Listen to what the lecturer means; try to sympathise what the author wants to say. Develop a workable system for all of your notes that combines reading and lecture notes. A ring notebook provides flexibility, it allows you lot to add and re-arrange material at a afterward date. Recopy your lecture notes the same evening; review all of your lecture notes each calendar week. Develop a semester plan and a list of priorities. Attend university, higher, and department-supported lectures. They are costless but could pay large dividends. Attention such lectures will help you expand your horizon and focus your interest. You will see how a university works. You will see genuine genius and educated idiots. You lot will learn to distinguish pepper corns from mouse terds. How to Take Lecture Notes
4. Study Every Day: Plant a daily routine where you study in one identify a minimum of 4 -5 hours each day. There are dissimilar kinds and 'levels' of written report discussed beneath. What is important is that report becomes the centerpiece of your mean solar day and the continuous element in your work week. Exercise not wait for test-fourth dimension to study. Exams offer the opportunity to refine what y'all know and to sharpen your advice skills. The best style to focus your view of things is to present it clearly in writing. Writing is a ritual for thinking.
5. When in Doubt: Read the Syllabus - Read Ahead - Enquire Questions: Read the correlated readings (designed to mesh with that lecture) before you come to class. The whole point of correlated readings is to gear up you for the lecture. If the readings are completed at the appropriate time you will have a 'Big Picture' framed by a general narrative and suspended by an ongoing line of argument. These readings should assistance you establish a set of expectations also as some unsettling questions. The lectures should help you connect ideas y'all take read virtually and, with any luck, they should help you call key issues into question. Your task is to arrive at an understanding you phone call your ain and tin can defend to a critical audition. Beginning to stop, you are the center of your education. You know where to brainstorm.
vi. Ask Questions; See Your Teacher Before or Later on Class or in Role Hours: Practice non sit and fret over an intellectual, institutional, or personal problem if there is someone who tin can aid. Communicate your concerns. If you have a problem do not hesitate to tell some 1. Chances are your instructor tin can aid or tin can put you in touch with someone who can. If you have questions, come to office hours and come well prepared. Recognize that others may exist in line (undergraduates, graduates, sometimes other faculty, media moguls, creditors) and that some accept fabricated specific appointments. Time is valuable. Come with notes, specific books you lot may wish to hash out, and a list of questions. Accept notes. If you return to function hours for follow-upwards, demonstrate that you accept done your chore since the last coming together. Life is short. Make your visit substantive. Simply making yourself known volition non, on the face of it, better your course.
vii. Find a Adept Identify to Written report: A skilful place to study varies from person to person. Personally, I like several gardens in Cambridge and a few parks and libraries in Paris. But I likewise reach quite a lot in my home function. I try to keep distractions to a minimum. I take a daily and weekly schedule; I program out each month in light of the semester. I effort to maintain more than or less normal human working hours, that is, I avoid 'all-nighters' and try to keep a regular slumber schedule. In the long run, if you take a regular fourth dimension and place for study your time will be more productive and pleasant.
8. Study Smart: Spend Appropriate Quality-Fourth dimension in Study: Study each of your subjects every day. Information technology is a good idea to keep a piece of work calendar for the entire semester. Block things out during the commencement week; note when the mid-terms, papers, and final exams will have identify. Don't avoid certain classes because they are difficult or of less interest; both judgments could change. Brand the semester a continuous effort; do no 'binge' written report or 'binge' play. Make your written report habits part of your life. Do not permit playtime and extracurricular activities get in the way of your academic life. There will be lots of time later in life to exist lazy and irresponsible. If you proceed a realistic report schedule you should brainstorm and end at regular times. When y'all sit down down to study, start immediately. Don't dally around and procrastinate. Your study area should exist just that. If you are surrounded by toys you will surely be diverted. Be honest with yourself. If you find yourself not making progress practise something else. When you sit down to written report, study.
9. Consider a Study Group: If repetition is important (remember: hearing, hearing over again; reading, reading over again; writing, writing again) say and maxim again tin besides help bring focus to your learning. A Study Grouping tin can assist yous identify, analyze, and verbalize problems. It often offers new perspectives and provides an opportunity to learn from your peers. It is important, of course, to selection potential members with care. Anarchy multiplies faster than society and discipline. Written report Groups can be an opportunity to avert piece of work in favor of unfocused fun. You may exercise ameliorate by yourself in a closet. Arguably, the best advice for a serious pupil is to read a few hundred carefully selected books. An orgy of reading 30 or 40 beginning-charge per unit books in a month ranks at the top of the usual list of man pleasures. If you wish, every bit an undergraduate, yous could practise it. You lot have time and energy, and with luck, y'all take the marvel and courage to risk a month or two. Read Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Pascal, Voltaire, Berkeley, Hegel, Marx, and Kanetz. Or you could only play Frisbee on the Plaza of the Americas. Life is choice and there is much to acquire. Non making a pick is a choice.
10. Utilise Your Head; Help Yourself to Assist: At that place are plenty of means to assist yourself. Accept advantage of resources at the library and elsewhere on campus, whether clinics for reading, writing, computing, counseling, and and then on. Use the spider web, go to help sessions, see your teacher. But in the finish it is upwards to y'all. Discover and create patterns of report that piece of work for y'all.
WHAT Nearly TESTS & EXAMINATIONS?
Tests are one method of attempting to gauge, assess, or measure what you have learned in a course. Doing well on tests begins with good study habits. If you want to exist a good student take time to develop your written report skills.
Before the Test
Adept arrangement, planning, and time management are essential to being a skilful student. Start planning your semester as shortly as classes begin and study without stop until the semester is over. Other hints: Read assignments in advance of each grade, attend all lectures, and larn to take skillful lecture notes. Review your notes each day and re-copy each night. Review all notes for all classes each weekend.If you lot develop steady written report habits, regular reviews will help yous avoid cramming for exams. It will as well help yous avert test feet and make you more effective. Reviewing your notes on a regular ground may seem like empty repetition. Arguably, at its best, information technology is a ritual for thinking, it is an opportunity to make connections, it affords time to blot data and a methodically means for reflecting on what information technology all means. Read difficult stuff two, three, or more times until you sympathize the material. If you understand the material y'all can explicate it to Mom or a stranger, to the resident specialist or the village idiot. If y'all are having issues, get aid immediately. Meet with your instructor later class, find an alternate text to supplement required readings, or hire a tutor.
Review, Repeat, Review, Repeat, Review ... {You Get the Idea}
Plan Your Entire Semester in Advance: Brand sure y'all sympathise the 'Big Picture' for the semester and plan each course with this in mind. This involves mid-terms, major projects, papers, and final exam schedules. With the Big Movie in heed taylor your weekly and daily schedule accordingly.Daily Reviews: Acquit short reviews of lecture notes earlier and after class. Begin reviewing after your commencement twenty-four hour period of class. Re-re-create your lecture notes each evening every bit a study practise. Review all of your notes for each form every weekend.
Weekly Reviews: Dedicate at least 1 afternoon or unabridged evening during the weekend to review all of your courses. Make certain you have an agreement of where each course is going and that your study schedule is advisable. Practise the 4x6 affair: One card for each chapter. Then ask yourself how each chapter relates to other chapters, and so, how the readings relate to each of the lectures. Are in that location contradictions? Differences of stance, approach, method? What bear witness is at that place to support the differences of opinion? What are your views? Can you defend them? A good do.
Periodic Tactical Reviews: On your calendar schedule special reviews. The calendar week before a mid-term or final exam should exist blocked out for special tactical review. If you take kept a skillful daily and weekly schedule, fifteen-20 hours should be about right for a mid-term, 20-30 for a final exam. Major papers take substantially more than time and endeavor.
Practical Review Tools: Wink cards, Chapter Outlines, 4x6 Summaries: You need to detect ways to repeat and rehearse information and ideas that work for you. Whatsoever number of artistic tools can be used to help you organize and remember data and get in manageable. I like 4x6 cards. They are sturdy, large plenty to hold succinct information, and you can scribble ideas that jog the memory. The dazzler 4x6's is that they can be carried anywhere. You can study them at the library, laundry, or lavatory. They travel on the autobus, they can save you from a boring date, they can be thrown away immediately without guilt or survive years of true-blue service.
Strategic Bookish Calendar & List of 'Things to do': Make a prioritized list of everything y'all need to know for each course during the semester. Link these priorities over time on your calendar. Your list should include a brief clarification of reading assignments, major ideas, skills to master, new theories, definitions, and then forth. If you lot are really with the program, consider keeping a diary or journal of thoughts, issues, and how your concerns develop over time.
How About a Study Group?
Developing a report group can be smart. Such groups allow students to combine resources, share thoughts, provoke discussion, and to make a network of support and encouragement. If you lot arrange a Study Group it should meet on a regular basis and it should be structured around shared rules. Select members advisedly. Your group should take serious members, ideally with different enquiry skills, complementary abilities, and creative perspectives. The goal is to learn from each other and to do good each member. Look for strong, dedicated students, often those who inquire adept questions in class and who take practiced notes. Dry out nerds and goofy freaks can acquire from each other; the trick is finding common ground and establishing a forum where genuine advice takes place. If you lot have an disfavor to certain intellectual and personality types it should exist a clue about yourself. Have some risks.How to brainstorm? Introduce yourself later on course; begin by suggesting a former meeting. If the first meeting goes well, begin to discuss group goals, meeting times, and other particulars. Group size should be five or six. Give it a endeavour.
A few warnings are in order. Don't utilize the grouping as a safe net or a security blanket, don't employ it for socializing or as an excuse to avoid study. Groups can become a social support organisation for delay and avoidance, at their worst, they underscore and solidify self-approbation and ritual stupidity. From the outset found an agenda for each meeting and a fixed fourth dimension limit with agreed priorities. Make a listing of the fabric to be reviewed; everyone should come prepared. The Report Group should help each member focus and develop disciplined habits. Follow a clear format and stick to it. As a grouping you might begin by comparing notes, or by going over the lecture outlines and major points found in your readings. Brand sure y'all agree on the issues, the questions being asked, and the bones themes. Hobnob with your professor after course about your agenda and the stuff yous talk about. If necessary, enquire for some suggestions.
To a higher place all, rehearse the 'Big Picture show' of the course, discuss the organizational narrative (general) and the key lines of argument (specific issues and master forms of interpretation). Y'all would also do well to focus on recurring themes, questions, and central problems that seem to link the class together. In one case you have identified these problems in some particular you may wish to spend xxx minutes of open-concluded give-and-take. Attempt to identify patterns and compare interpretations. How many different ways can y'all view the same fabric? If the answers change with the perspective, effort to formulate new questions and identify the assumptions on which they are based. Wrap-up the meeting by asking each other questions and press difficult for the best arguments and the virtually persuasive evidence. If you develop a adept rapport in the group you should be able to frank, forceful, and sometimes blunt. Test each other. Larn your strengths and weaknesses, acknowledge ability, learning, and insight in others. Point out weaknesses by offering solutions. Avoid erect-sure assailment and cool coy cunning. Life is too short for shirks and smirks.
Finally, just for fun, try to imagine what the mid-term or final exam questions might be. What makes a practiced question? What would you lot inquire? Why? Accept each fellow member propose a question each calendar week; then take each member critique each question. After perhaps two hours bring the meeting to a close. Stick to agreed beginning and ending times.
Side benefits of the Study Group is learning to mind to each other, developing exact skills, and finding ways to hold and disagree. Insist that opinions be defended with sound argument and detailed evidence. Don't stand for laundry lists whatsoever more than than the k merely superficial synthesis. Importantly, the Written report Group is yours. Make information technology work.
Applied Tips for Different Types of Exams
First Things First: Offset, I want to make clear my preference for essay exams. In my undergraduate survey classes, I crave an in-class written essay for the mid-term test and a have-domicile essay at the stop of the course. See this WebSite for farther information and suggestions. Only students often take other types of exams elsewhere at the university. I offer a few tips and opinions:Multiple Choice: Showtime, brand sure you lot know the rules of the game. Check the instructor'due south directions to see if questions allow more than than one answer. A standard dominion is to answer each question mentally before looking at the optional answers. If you think you know the answer in advance it is probably correct; if you expect at the answers start you may introduce some defoliation. Another standard practice is to skip difficult questions and return to them afterward. Don't waste time on a problem question. But marking it and move on. If fourth dimension permits, return to the question at the cease of the menstruum. Finally, be clear about ground rules, and don't guess if you are penalized for incorrect responses. If at that place is no penalty, eliminate optional answers you judge wrong then brand your best estimate. Information technology amuses me that some professors go on to call these exams 'multiple-guess.'
A few other mutual sense suggestions: 1) If two answers seem like, except for one or two words, choose one of these answers; 2) If the selection calls for a judgement completion, eliminate potential answers that appear to be ungrammatical; 3) In general, if answers cover a wide range (10, 29, 160, 800), select a number near the eye; 4) From a clerical perspective (with machine-graded tests) brand sure your mark corresponds to the question. Double-bank check the test question booklet against the answer sheet, particularly when you brainstorm a new section in the booklet or mark at the peak of a new column on the answer sheet. Start thinking about your GRE'southward, LSAT's, ETC's.
True-Imitation: I understand this type of test is still given at the university level! I'm nearly speechless. From high schoolhouse I recall the advice that if any office of a true-false statement is false, the reply is must false (at least equally stated in a well-known volume on testing). Logical but not without possible paradox. In language country, await for key qualifiers such equally all, virtually, sometimes, never, or rarely. Questions containing accented qualifiers such every bit always or never are often simulated and, as mutual sense suggests, they are virtually ever stupid. If y'all are so inclined, consider asking your instructor if such exams lead to useful learning. If there is equivocation simply say: 'Excuse me, this is a true or false question.' If you are serious, similar Voltaire, say it with a smile.
Curt Reply: Typically, testing of this kind asks that you provide definitions or short descriptions, often amounting to a sentence or two. If you find yourself in this learning situation flash cards may help with key terms and phrases. Skills of this kind could get you lot on Quiz Show or other media displays of synthetic genius. No doubt futurity employers will also be equally impressed with your recall, problem solving ability, sound judgment, and communication skill.
Open Book: Open Volume tests accept always seemed rather peculiar to me. Afterward all, if you own the book (and the real test is finding things you don't know in a express time) why learn annihilation at all? In whatever case, if you find yourself in this sort of learning state of affairs, the rules of the game should exist clear. Rather than make the material yours through study, the trick here is to HIGHLIGHT all the absurd stuff not worth remembering. One time your painting task is completed shift your intellectual focus. Now, the night earlier the Open-Book Exam, write downwardly all the stuff you can cram into the margins of the volume. You know, all the stuff that volition be on the exam that you won't remember by morning. Finally, the best practical strategy here is to purchase a couple packages of colour-coded page tabs and post 'ems. These trivial gizmos will salve fourth dimension during the examination. If you have been successful in studying you will be able to observe all the stuff you couldn't call up since the nighttime before. The problem, of course, it that you will have to keep all of your books until you die. Over the years check them occasionally to ensure the colored tabs haven't fallen out. Who knows, y'all may need to observe something important really quick.
Essay Exams: Past now you lot have guessed I favor essay exams, at to the lowest degree for about forms of testing in the humanities. Personally, I call back essays should play a larger part in informational, technical, and scientific courses. Essays are particularly useful in history courses. Studying for essay exams (and writing them under pressure) can be an of import learning experience not merely a form of testing and evaluation. The Skinny hither is that essays forcefulness a response (not necessarily an answer) that challenges assumptions while offer a variety of acceptable interpretations. The assumption of the essay is that organization, structure, and coherence add up to something more than the various parts, something more than the factoids we acquaintance with data rather agreement.
As a practical matter, when you lot reply to an essay question, information technology is important to be clear from the outset what the question seems to require. Take it autonomously. Understand each give-and-take and its possible meanings. Look for loaded or cryptic terms that may carry hidden assumptions. A good essay question is designed to open up the field to whatever number of circuitous possibilities. A good essay question, carefully taken autonomously, is completely stupid: No one can reply a skillful question. Your task is to provide an informed response that demonstrates the practical boundaries of the essay, to betrayal the intellectual traps that back-trail any meaningful generalization. Your job is to bring abstract generalization into line with physical detail show marshaled with power and grace. You lot need to strut your stuff. You lot need to deliver a fist in the forehead with the skill of a brain surgeon. Your answer (curiously) is your business organisation. Your response volition exist judged on substance, strength, subtlety, and seductive skill. Any idiot can write well. Aim to write with simplicity and sincerity.
A adept response involves taking a position on a meaningful result and defending it in detail with appropriate argument, evidence, and examples. Here the usual categories apply. Be clear about how you are to proceed. Essay questions usually ask that yous practice one or more of the following: clarify, argue, compare, dissimilarity, criticize, defend, define, describe, discuss, enumerate, evaluate, examine, explain, illustrate, translate, list, outline, and summarize. It is expert practice to have a strong thesis and conspicuously stated objectives. It is important to present a articulate argument with carefully marshaled bear witness. And don't forget. A good essay has a kickoff, centre, and end (As elsewhere: Tell them what you are going to tell them; then, tell them; finally, tell them what you told them). In my undergraduate survey classes I commonly require an in-class Mid-Term Examination {AKA: Blue-Volume Test}. For guidelines, Click: How to Write A Blue-Book Examination.
But enough already. You already know that studying is what makes a educatee a educatee, that it takes continuous effort to written report effectively, and properly pursued, that studying and learning are life-long occupations. Be hard on yourself but equally mindful of your strengths and your weaknesses. Work on both.
Finally, remember learning is non a game. At that place are rules, to exist sure, but yous brand the moves. Never cease learning and Always take heart. And, oh yes: Ever Drink your milk, Launder behind your ears, and Never - Never - Never take classes with Truthful - False tests. T
Source: http://users.clas.ufl.edu/ufhatch/pages/02-teachingresources/study/
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