Study Tips

I spend my entire freshman year in college getting over phobia.  It wasn’t fear of spiders, or fear of high places or even fear that I would never get a date in time for homecoming. It was a fear much deeper than those things. It was the fear of a blank page. Every time I would look at a syllabus and see to the words, “Write an essay about…” I would break out in a sweat. Another essay! Another blank page staring at me; daring me to start something.  Finally, with time and practice, I learned the formula to writing a degree essay. 

The most common college essay is the 5 paragraph essay. Look into the topic you were assigned and develop one main point you wish to make with 3 facets of thought to go with it. Make the first paragraph an introduction to the topic, the next three paragraphs show the three points of thought you have for the topic (one point each paragraph) and the final paragraph a conclusion.  This logical flow enables the reader a fast overview of your thought process, gives them supporting material for your point of view, and concludes the thought for a well rounded essay. The 5 point essay will be a critical component in getting your college degree. 

For example: I am assigned to write an essay about dogs.  I decide to write about beagles and three advantages to having one. I start my essay with an overview of beagles and why they are great.  Paragraph two informs the reader that if you have beagles you will never have to worry about leftover food. Paragraph three remarks that you will never need an alarm clock because they will wake you up every morning for breakfast and a walk, and I tell them in paragraph four about how you never feel alone or unloved when a beagle is around. Finally for the conclusion I explain beagles simply make life better. It becomes a college essay with five paragraphs, but one thought. 

The blank page never wins. Eventually when you realize your college degree means more to you than the intimidation of that silly piece of paper, you’ll get your thoughts down one paragraph at a time.

There’s nothing more earthshaking than going to college and spending four years on your degree then in the middle of your senior year hearing that the trend in education is away from your topic area.  How can that be?  I knew getting a degree in Communications would guarantee me a top paying job, until I read the paper and discovered the trend was technology and people with communication degrees were a dime a dozen.  Fortunately not all trend studies can dictate what happens directly to you, and there is always Graduate School.  Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we study trends?

Trends in college degrees help people have a realistic idea of where they will be when the get out and what kind of pay and employment options will be available to them. If you know that the competition for your degree plan will be really tight when you graduate, you can start to do things to distinguish yourself and your resume so you are tops in the running.  Trends also help you see if you are keeping up with others in your field and what areas of study they are combining to form their degree. 

The other reason we study trends is for the economic realities of the workplace. Simply put, it’s not always about us. Businesses want to know how many people will be graduating with specific college degrees so they can adjust their pay scale and need appropriately.  For example, when there are not a lot of students taking nursing, hospitals can prepare for a nursing shortage and offer incentives and recruitment perks to their employment packages. The college degrees of today are the workforce statistics of tomorrow. They are good to know. 

Trends in education, particularly in the field of college degrees, help us know a little more about the future. But the future is still a blank page. Hard work and determination can make anything possible.

I grew up hearing the expression, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” But the reverse is also true. “All play and no work makes Jack unemployed.” Since the whole point of getting a college degree in part is to get a lifework that is fulfilling to you, its fitting that college teaches you how to balance leisure and study. The key to that is really about perspective. College is a time for both leisure and study. To balance that time is critical to getting your degree.

When we look back at our time in school we aren’t just filling time or getting a college degree. We are making memories. Leisure activities help us to do that. We can spend time with friends, go to sporting events, dance or make music and keep those memories as part of the treasured collection of our experiences in college. We also need to study, to learn the skills, ideas and habits to help us in our future. In college, going to class is where we receive information. It’s the act of studying afterward where we really learn it and learn how to use it. Each is important in the balance of a healthy life.

Perspective is the best way to balance leisure and study. First, know what you need to learn and what time frame you need to learn it in. If you have 3 days to read a chapter, get it out of the way. For every hour of reading, promise yourself an hour of play at another time. It’s sort of like investing. For an hour of college work, you get an hour later of play. Use the weekends or time in between assignments to cash in those play hours. It’s best in college to put the study hours in first. Somehow, when we measure life by the leisure hours, it’s too easy for the study ones to stay in the bank!

The goal of college is to get the degree. But with a perspective that recognizes study is important but needs to be balanced with times of leisure, you can have both work and play and get your college degree along the way.

I remember the first time I tried to use logical argumentation. I was six, and I had taken gum from a store without paying for it. My mom caught me, and I tried to persuade her that since we pay taxes on all our food, it more than makes up for the price of the gum. Needless to say, I got in big trouble, had to return the gum and apologize to the clerk. While that was the end of my life in crime, it was also the beginning of my journey of persuasion. By the time I got into college I was a master of argumentation and writing persuasive essays. It’s all a formula, really.

The key to writing persuasive essays in college is to know what motivates you. If you are writing to get into college, you are motivated to get your college degree. If you are trying to create a change of policy on campus, you might be motivated by a sense of justice or fairness. Whatever motivates you will be the driving force behind writing your essay. Once you have identified it, you can proceed to look up facts and reasons to help you motivate others.

Argumentation also requires good communication, which is a must for anyone seeking a college degree or needing to write persuasive essays. Whether you are filling in a test question or sending a letter to a newspaper, the ability to communicate what motivates you to others is essential. Once you know what you think, and why you think it, set those out in a logical thought process. One of the reasons to have a college degree is to show future employers you can think and write in a reasonably logical way.

Your essay will start with your premise, provide your reasoning and conclude by inviting people to think the same way as you. After you get used to that formula, writing persuasively will be one of the easiest things you do in your college degree program, and will give you results as sweet as candy.

There is a famous Chinese saying about when the journey of a thousand miles begins. For me it begins when I start complaining about having to get out of bed. I am a creature of comfort. I like my food hot, my coffee fast and my work load to be light. Imagine what a shock it was when I entered college and saw the required reading list, including summer texts.  It seemed like my thousand miles just added 3000 more steps.  Managing the reading required for a degree course makes all the difference between having a rewarding college experience or making the hardest walk of your life.

College degrees require a high volume of reading in almost every class. Professors do not care if you have 4 or 5 classes. Their job is to see that you learn what you are required to in their class.  The volume of the assignments and variety of reading required will make you an accomplished juggler in no time.  First get the syllabus from each of your professors and write down on a calendar when things are due. The soonest due gets the highest priority.  If you have a novel to read, look at the number of chapters and split it evenly between the numbers of days until the day before it has to be finished (that way you get an extra day in case of emergency). If you get absorbed in the novel (it could happen) you can read over your allotment, but if it’s a struggle at least you get it done.

For each day’s required reading, put the hardest reading first. Anything that requires strong concentration and critical reading should be your first thing to tackle in your study session. Material you are going to speed read or skim can go last because you won’t need that much concentrative energy to go through it.  Finally, after a reading break to clear your head, review any class notes or related material. That will make your reading time more efficient.

No matter how much you whine, the ancient wisdom is still correct. The journey through your required reading begins when you open the book.

Just a quick post to help Send Andrew to LA in a blog fuel competition!#

If Andrew is sent to LA he will also get to star in a superbowl competition which will be cool…

He will also grant you a P6 backlink as a thank you, so get over to blog fuel and vote him up!!

When you think about it, we do critical writing almost every day. When I see a movie my habit is to email a friend of mine in another city and tell them exactly what I thought of it. She gets to hear all about whether the characters in the story acted the in a realistic manner, or what I thought of the ending. That is the essence of critical writing. It’s the ability to analyze some piece of information and created conclusions based on reasonable assumptions, argumentation and facts. Almost every class you take in your college degree will put you through the same exercise in thought and communication.

Critical writing first involves critical thinking. You have to be able to take an experience, art work, essay or event and analyze it with precision. Your writing should not be, “that story made me happy”, but rather, “what it was about that story that made me happy.” In the 5 W’s of writing (who, what, when, where and why) it’s the “why” that makes your criticism valuable. College level writing is about meaning making and sustaining your opinion with examples, reasons and rational. It is never enough to say, “That book was stupid.” What a critical writer would do is talk about why the characters didn’t act like most people would, and how the plot deviated from an intelligent point of view into a hopelessly jumbled resolution. Analysis and explanation are the bones of critical writing.

Critical writing is also technical in nature and follows an organized thought flow and pattern. A critical essay sets out the thesis of the thought clearly in the first paragraph then uses the rest of the essay to develop supporting ideas and evidence to support the thesis. The sign of someone with a college degree is their ability to reason and use reasonable judgments in the determinations that person makes. Every time you review a new song with a friend or write a letter about meaning in relationship, art or faith you are engaging in a critical enterprise. Learn to do it well and with this skill and your college degree you can write your own ticket to anywhere you want to go.