Study Tips

Whether it’s an email to a friend talking about a trip I’ve taken or a lunch conversation with someone telling them about a book I’ve read, I like to talk a lot.  Like many other talkers, I have had to learn how to read the signs of polite communication, such as when their eyes glaze over and they start staring out the window, its time for me to stop talking.  The human brain can only hear so much and once it’s overloaded it will simply shut off.  That’s why one of the things you will learn in your college degree is the art of writing a case study. Case studies are small versions of reports, issues or analysis that are focused on one particular idea or incident. They are the very essence of condensed communication.

The Harvard Business School has developed a style for case studies that is generally accepted as an appropriate formula for writing a case study.  A case study involves the subject in the first paragraph then through a series of steps, depending how short the case study is meant to be, focus on the situation, the problem, proposed solutions, and conclusion.  Each step should be clearly delineated with subtitles that keep a reader’s interest and lead logically to the next step in the process. If a college degree does anything for you, it should make more logical and process oriented.

The other key to balancing a case study is to ensure you have a good solution to the original problem or case in question.  It’s easy to get focused on describing the situation and problem in order the fill the word requirement because you have a week solution.  However a case study isn’t a biography and people wanting writing that is college level are looking for answers. Balance out the development of your study so each part of the text has the same level of development and merit.

A case study is a fantastic short form document for situational analysis which reveals your thought process and ability to lead in settings requiring solution-based thought. In this case, like so many other things, the shorter the better.

I’ll never forget my first college Literature class. I thought it would be like the classes I had in high school and early grades. I imagined there would be a few short stories collected in an anthology. So when I got the reading list full of individual novels from the college bookstore, I didn’t worry too much. I decided we would probably use a chapter or two for each. It seemed wasteful for me to buy a whole book for that, but I didn’t complain.  When the professor said on Monday, “On Friday we will discuss the first novel” I raised my hand like any good student and asked, “Which chapters?”  Boy did my world fall apart when he replied, “All of them.”  I realized to get my degree not only was I going to have to do a lot of reading, I was going to have to do it fast.  It was in that class that I learned the key to speed reading.

Speed reading for your degree course will be one of the most helpful things you can do.  It’s not a hard skill to pick up. It’s just a matter of training your eyes.  First, you must read by sight alone. If you have the habit of saying words softly as you read, you’ll have to learn not to do that. Speech takes more time than sight.  Your eyes should be able to recognize words as pictures and pick up their meaning very quickly.  The next technique is sight portion.  Don’t just look at each word and go to the next. Scan one sentence at a time and recognize the important words. You don’t need to pick up all the “ands, ifs or haves” just pick up the major words and thoughts in the sentence.

 The final technique involves eye sweep. When going across the page, your eyes will come to the end of the reading line. If you “sweep” your eyes back across the page to the next line, they will pick up stray words from all over the page and the message will become confused.  When reading for your college degree course, you will want to get thoughts, not jumbled messages you can’t remember.  Better is to learn that when you finish with one sentence your eyes will automatically start and at the beginning of the next line. This will keep the message clear and the process flowing.

Trained eyes know how to pick up word meanings automatically. As you learn to skip the surroundings and pick out important words then reduce your eye sweep so they become clear thoughts your reading speed will increase. There will be a time for lazy summer days looking at every word of a book for pleasure. You can read like that after you get your college degree.

When I write an essay or longer work and do the research I always find interest of funny things and I think, “Man, I wish I had said that!” Usually it’s a quotation that is funny or smart and I want people to think I’m that clever. But taking credit for someone else’s words is neither funny nor smart so I always make sure to include a reference. A reference is an indication of where the quotation, statistic, fact or idea came from when it’s presented in your work. As you pursue your college degree, its import you know how to write a reference.

There are three types of references: Footnote, where the material is assigned a number by page which corresponds to an entry at the bottom of the page that tells the source, author, page number or URL. Endnote, where the material is assigned a number by chapter and the source information is compiled in a list on the back. Parenthetical, where the source author and page number is listed in parenthesis right after the source but the author is listed on the bibliography in the back. When you are earning your college degree these are the three major types you will use.

When doing your research make sure to scan the index or publishing copywriter information to make sure you have all that down, and be sure to write the page number of the source or exact title of the website page so it’s available when doing the writing. A good reference is one where the reader could find the exact quotation or idea but using your reference as a map. If they can’t come up with the source of your quotation, then the writing is not the appropriate level for a college degree.

Plagiarism is a serious academic crime and to be avoided at all costs. Even if you wish they were your words, make sure that the reader can tell if they’re not.

When it comes to my shopping and tendencies to bargain hunt, I always have to tell my friends I am not “cheap”.  I am “value seeking”.  Value is more than a word we throw around during holiday sales and on used car lots.  Value is a formula that measures what up put in, versus what you get out. If you get out more than you put in, you have something with value. When thinking of the money, time, energy and effort you are putting into college the natural questions becomes, “What is the value of a college degree?”

Your college degree will be filled with many types of value. Financially, we know that people with college degrees make, on average, two to three times more money than people without them. College degrees also open the door to advanced degrees which add more capability for you to earn a higher wager and advance in your workplace.  A college degree opens the doors to employment wider and faster than trying to earn all the experience you can working but having no education to show for your time. A college degree also removes the barrier that keeps you from advancing farther in your work. Some jobs in your company require a degree. Even if you know the job backwards and forwards, without the degree, it will go to someone else.

There is more value than just financial and vocational.  Having a college degree changes you. It shapes the way you think and gives you skills for critical analysis, thoughtful response and insightful decisions. A college degree will also broaden the scope of your human experience by exposing you to new cultures, thoughts, arts and sciences. You become a well rounded person and are affirmed in the knowledge that you have the discipline it takes to get any job done.

When you look at the diploma framed on the wall with your name on it, you will always be proud and know that your college degree has brought you a lifetime of pride, accomplishment and opportunity. That is value.

Realizing that being in dorm rooms with 3 other girls was not always conducive to good study habits or quiet time; my college had placed study areas all over the university grounds. There where study carols in the library, tables in the commons, a study hall in the union and private rooms in the dorms. I could always tell where a study area was, because it was always empty. People simply don’t know how to study. However, for success in pursuing your college degree finding the best method of study is going to be a life-saver.

If you really do live in a dorm with other loud people, you may want to take advantage of your college’s study areas. If not, the best way to study is devising your own study area. Get a desk with space to write (your computer desk will be fine as long as it has space for books too) and keep a jar of pens, highlighters and other necessities. Once your mind connects that place as a study place it will help you get in the mindset to study. Concentration is the key to effective study time. Efficiency experts have said that every time your concentration is broken it can take up to 8 minutes of time to get refocused. So turn off the TV, and don’t study in an area where people will talk to you intermittently.

Many people cannot study in silence because our culture simply isn’t used to quiet anymore. The best thing to do is play music, particularly classical music, in the background. It becomes a kind of “white noise” which blocks out distractions and gives you the ability to think more clearly. Have a goal in mind for what you want to accomplish in the session and set a milestone. If your goal is to read two chapters, don’t get until you have done so. If you are working on a paper, don’t leave until you have 3 pages written. Decide for yourself a reasonable goal and stick to it.

Every person is unique and has unique study habits. Find the method that works best for you, and stick with it and your college degree will be done before you know it.

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.

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.

If your study habit is open your history book in front of a television blaring the latest reality show while you eat pizza and text a friend, you are not studying. You are playing in the presence of your homework. I know at home it’s difficult to find a time and method away from distractions to study even when your family understands hoe important it is to get your college degree. It’s not like you can tell your parents, sister or grandmother who is very interested in your life to be quiet and leave you alone. Well, I guess you could ask, but you might as well ask for a magic carpet to go with it.  There are good measures you can use to study from home.

If possible, find a private space (other than the bathroom) for you to set out your books and concentrate.  Time management is often a factor in maintaining a shield of silence for your studies.  Tell your family that you are going to study for 2 hours, then after that time you will be available to talk or make dinner or go to a movie. People tend to give you spaces of alone time as long as they know you have a plan to be with them later. Particularly children, who need to look forward to things.  It also helps them feel like they are helping you get your degree.  It’s good to take study breaks after a certain period of time anyway. Your brain has only so much energy and attention so giving it a rest every 2 hours or so is important to its overall care and your learning capability.

Using your computer to take notes or do online research can also be a helpful study aid. We are trained to stare and interact with computers intently and focus on the glowing screen.  You can’t blame that on your college degree, a lifetime of television has done that to us.  Make sure you are not instant messaging or distracted by non-study content.  Make sure to take occasional stand and stretch breaks to give your body and mind a time to rejuvenate. 

The keys to studying at home are really communication, cooperation and discipline. Setting aside the time, and letting your family know its important to you and you future to get this degree will help pave the way to good study habits, even at home.

Historically, every day had a natural ebb and flow to it. People got up when the sun came up and worked early before it got too hot. Then they would eat and share family time as the sun waned and when it went down, they went to bed.  Then the light bulb got invented, and it’s been downhill for nature ever since.  After the light bulb was the car which took you places faster, the convenience store which stayed open all night, TV and movie marathons, and then the computer and the internet - a 24/7 system of light.  So unlike generations of my farmer ancestors, I get up around 10:00 AM, sometimes sleep in the afternoon, and then run around most of the day and go to sleep around 2 or 3 in the morning.  For people like me who are earning a college degree, there are definite advantages to studying online.

Taking a class online is perfect for anyone with a job in daytime hours because of the increased flexibility it offers. If you work in the day, you can come home and read your assignments at night, making sure to send your homework in by the deadline.  This main advantage to online college education has allowed many working people who would not have a change to pursue a degree the freedom to do so.

As internet technology has progressed the availability of dedicated web space and chat rooms has allowed students to work in groups, even if they live far away or have differing schedules.  Email and chat functions make it possible to share ideas, collaborate on projects and even study together from places all over the country.  Now people from all over the world can be in your class getting the same college degree. Online study can lead to better diversity and interaction between students.

I might have lost touch with the natural way to do things. But as someone who likes to get online at night and go to the gym in the afternoon, all I can say is, “Thank God for that light bulb!”