When I went off to university there were many things for which I wasn’t prepared, and there are some lessons that I’m still, to this very second, learning. Like how to use the gazillion new Apps and tools and devices that facilitate online learning and conferencing. Lots to learn, not enough hours in the day - so how can we drink from the firehose with a little more grace?
I hail from a teeny tiny town on a very rural coastline, at the edge of the Atlantic. When I left my little hamlet and went off to the ‘big town’ university, my proverbial buttocks were promptly handed to me on a platter. My story is not unique. When you are a big fish in a little pond, and get heaved into the ocean, it can be much needed adjustment – truly a ‘sink or swim baby’ kind of moment.
I honest to God remember having this thought during my first semester Chemistry final: “This exam is really hard, nobody is going to pass it, I’m good”. Ah yes, the big old Ego of first year. I was not good. Plenty of smart shiny students aced it, but I was not one of them. MY grade plunged into a white porcelain hole. We’ll talk more about that at another time, but if you are a keen student and want to read ahead I recommend ‘Ego is the Enemy’ by Ryan Holiday. In the end I did get a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, but not without my fair share of bumps along the way.
My biggest issue was that I had been skating my way through high school and I had no study skills (or focus, or patience, or organization, or good sleeping habits). I had to spend many months, years, and perhaps decades trying to get a modest amount of mastery over those things. So let me save you the sweat, anxiety, and antacids and give you a 3-point plan to master your college experience.
1. Learn How to Learn. Yes, this is a thing. Cognitive Science, or how we think/learn, is a discipline in and of itself, one that many who sport an academic tam on the regular, spend time researching. With the increasing prevalence of algorithmic interactions in our digital world, this field is expanding dramatically, intersecting with machine learning, artificial intelligence, and human-machine collaboration, to name just a few. Wading into all of this, while immensely interesting, is not something you’ll necessarily have time to do. For the most relevant information for the purposes described here (Less pain, more brain gain), I highly recommend Barbara Oakley’s FREE course on Coursera called Learning to Learn. It’s a really good return on investment for a modest amount of your time. And did I mention that it’s FREE?
In this course Dr. Oakley discusses two different learning modes (focused and diffuse) and how we need to go back and forth between each one for effective learning. Focused learning is when we are crunched down on a topic, linearly gobbling up information in M&M sized bits, a la Ms. PacMan (pardon my dinosaury references, I don’t get out much). Diffuse learning is more of the stroke of genius, big picture, connect the dots kind that occurs when you are otherwise going about your daily business (showers, walks). It’s the one with the light bulb. In a very accessible way Dr. Oakley’s short course highlights how your brain forms and reinforces neural connections, and how quickly the ‘synaptic janitors’ sweep them away if you don't actively engage (practice) the content.
The big take-away from her course (IMHO) is this: daily or regular practice or touch-in on a learning task is infinitely better than the equivalent amount of time spent in a single crash study session. And SLEEP is critical for allowing connections to cement. Organizing your day so that you learn something from each of your courses in small bites will help you learn way more, in less time, than waiting to have a lengthy cram session right before a test.
2. Learn Your Learning Objectives. Every single course has them. They are those boring, often enumerated, tersely written sentences in academic-speak, packed in somewhere in the course syllabus, amidst all of the legalese that we need to give you these days. Print them out and put them on your bulletin board or pin them somewhere digitally in a way that will get your daily attention.
These learning objectives represent the contract between you and your professors. These are the things that your professors are committed to teaching you (and assessing you on!) and it is what you are committed to learn in order to level up. These objectives are discussed ad nauseum and decided upon collectively, in long boring faculty meetings. In the case of professional schools (law, engineering, etc), they are also blessed by some over-arching body known as ‘accreditors’ - fearsome entities for university administrators and faculty alike, but not your immediate concern. For you, these learning objectives are an excellent roadmap for WHAT to study. You don’t necessarily need to read an 800-page textbook to succeed. You do need to develop mastery of those specific learning objectives. Upper level classes build on them. We test you on them. Put them somewhere visible, and tick them off as you knock them out. If for some reason you can’t find them, hit up your professor. ‘What are the learning objectives for this class?’ Cue heavenly music. Your professor will likely enter a state of bliss, invite you to dinner, talk at you for hours, and possibly adopt you.
3. Learn Your Tools. Your tools are the Apps or software that you are going to use over and over in college. In many disciplines you have to write a lot of papers. In others it’s working with numbers, charts, and figures. Or it might be coding. I don’t recommend trying to deeply learn all the tools available to you (they are infinite), but you will have to be reasonably functional in quite a few. Talk to your professors and upperclassman and figure out which ones you are going to be using a lot and invest in truly mastering a few key ones. It’ll make everything else go so much more smoothly.
EndNote (referencing software) is a good one if your chosen profession is writing-intense. Another basic tool that I recommend fully mining is Excel. I firmly believe that mastering the Excel spreadsheet can make you a rock star in life, whether it’s handling your home finances, running a fantasy football league, or knocking out a graphic, statistical analysis, or pivot table for your lab report.
I also recommend learning how to use your ‘new’ library. Trust me, it isn’t your mother’s library. Libraries are re-inventing themselves daily, and many are even getting rid of paper books altogether. Libraries have disciplinary specialists that can teach you how to use online informational resources more efficiently and effectively. Find the specialist that works for your college or discipline and get to know them. They are working hard to interface with sparkly shiny students like you. Help them help you. Go find them online. Meet them in a chat room. Build a relationship. When it’s the 11th hour and you need an urgent ILL, you’ll have a guy (or gal) for that.
Summary: At the start of each semester you will need a roadmap for WHAT you need to learn. Find the learning objectives on your syllabus or course website. These are the droids you are looking for. Set up a schedule that allows you to make progress on them daily so you can minimize the number of hours you have to spend in earnest study. With the hours you save, master a few tools that are workhorses in your field to further amp up your productivity and make you a sought-after commodity upon graduation.
Sparkle on!
Professor Momma
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