She failed every class,
and this is why telling people to study more does not necessarily help.
In some cases, it might actually worsen their performance.
But had she done that over the course of six hours,
she would have got about five and a half hours of serious studying
and about a half hour of total break time, I really don't believe she would have flunked out.
I am going to talk about a person, because I'd also like to teach by anecdote.
A woman named Jeanette, I was a junior at Western, she was a freshman.
Because I was a junior, I could live off campus,
those days, college is where your parents’ in absentia.
She had to live in a dorm because she didn't have a relative in town,
we were dating, she got her first quarter at Western,
a D average 1.0. Fifteen credits of D.
She decided she really needed to buckle down, plus the school said,
“if you don't make it up, you're going to be kicked out”.
So the second quarter of her freshman year she set the following goal,
to study for six hours a night, nonstop 6 to midnight, Sunday night
through Thursday night. Friday, Saturday, she could party,
the rest of the week she was going to study. Now, one would assume, my gosh,
going from little studying to six hours a night, five nights of the week,
she should have aced everything, you want to guess her grade point, second quarter?
Zero point zero. She failed every class.
And this is why telling people to study more does not necessarily help,
in some cases, it might actually worsen their performance.
Here's what happens for the average student. For her 6 o'clock in the evening
after her supper at the residency dining hall, she plopped herself down at her little study area
and started studying, but here's what happened.
By about 6:30, she was in a major slump,
but what was her goal? To study 6 hours.
So she continued to sit on her little desk, and stare at pages until midnight.
She was at her desk six hours, how long did she actually study?
About 20, 30 minutes. Now, there's a simple concept
in psychology that all of you are aware of. Things that are reinforced, we tend to do more of.
Things that are punished or ignored, we tend to do less of.
You know, we operate by those principles to a large degree.
If you're sitting there for six hours, are you feeling good?
Once you get here, you're looking at your book going,
“I hate geography, I hate literature, I hate psychology”.
All the things we're trying to get you to fall in love with.
you're hating it. And so her actual good studying
was followed by five and a half hours of pain and misery.
I would bet you, I don't know for a fact that as the quarter progressed, she sat down
and finally she was done before she even started. She sat down and just stared at a book
and she flunked every class. Now, had she taken this little seminar
or figure things out on her own, she'd know what to do.
First rule. The moment you start to slide,
you’re shoveling against the tide. What you need to do is what?
Take a break. And here's what's cool about it.
You can study for a half hour, it doesn't take a half hour
break to recharge your batteries. For most people, about five minutes,
and this is where you go away, do something fun for five minutes.
Call a friend, talk to a child, talk to a parent, a roommate,
enjoy some music, do something you enjoy and actually say,
“this is my treat for having studied for 30 minutes, effectively”.
Go back and here's what happens. Your efficiency is nearly 100 percent.
Study a half hour, take a break, study a half hour, study a half hour.
Now, had she done that over a course of six hours,
she would have got about five and a half hours of serious studying
and about a half hour of total break time. I really don't believe she would have flunked out.
When you're ready to study, you've got all your materials,
you're back in your little dorm room or the place you live,
check your watch, start working. The moment you feel that sense of,
“I've read it, but it's not coming through, and it's like I'm wasting my time”.
We all get that feeling, note what time it is. Record that bring it back.
And yet probably most of the learning if it's going to happen
is in the first twenty five to thirty.
Now I get students complaining, ”I don't have enough time to study”.
Look for a break at work, look for a break at home,
those little 15, 20 minutes can be very efficient, if you apply them efficiently”.
The more active you are in your learning, the more effective.
And yet increasingly, I have students who think studying
is reading it over and over, and they're going to have some
magical thing where they suddenly understand it and remember it well.
When you're reading it over and over, or saying it over and over,
the term for that is rote memorization, spelled rote.
It can work, it is the way most of us were taught in elementary school,
the way I understand it, a lot of Asian schools depend heavily on rote.
And some of you may be darn good at it, and if you can memorize and
actually understand by repetition and it's effective for you, don't change,
but for most of us, it's not the most efficient or effective way.
The way to learn efficiently in college, first, you have to decide,
“what am I learning?” Is it a concept or a fact?
A fact, is a discrete little piece of information. Sigmund Freud is the father of psychoanalysis,
that's a fact. But understanding
what psychoanalysis is, is a concept, ok? Understanding the name of a bone is a fact,
understanding what it does in the body gets into a concept.
So in studying, sometimes there are a lot of facts,
in fact, I use anatomy is a good example. You got to memorize bones, muscles,
organs, tissues, a lot of it, but if you simply memorize
and don't understand the function of it, the comprehension of the actual concepts,
it's a lot of wasted learning, really, just to know a name of a bone is like,
“yes, so what?” What does it do?
How does it function? But in most college classes,
what we as professors are most concerned about is that you grasp the concept.
Because concepts, once grasped, will stay with you a lifetime.
Facts can easily get confused, but that's why we have Google,
why we have reference books, if you know the concept,
you can quickly look up the fact if you have to know that particular fact.
Young people actually often learn facts very quickly,
but they never think about the concept. Most of us, as we get older,
realize concepts are what are really important, to make our lives better,
to be effective in our work, to be effective in our personal lives.
Facts, though, we realize we can look up, we can get those if we need them.