| Dear Student We’re in the month October. Exams are round the corner. You are studying three or four hours a day, and fitting in some extra hours over the weekend. Halala! Well done! 😉 The next three newsletters will focus on study methods, helping you to use all those long hours at your desk in the best possible way. Learning anything new has an effect on your brain, creating new pathways and new connections. It is one of the most important things you can do as a human being. So, before we get down to practical tools and tips, let’s think about the process of learning and studying. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck distinguishes between people who believe that intelligence is fixed, and people who believe it is capable of growth. If you believe it is fixed, learning feels like a never-ending struggle against your own shortcomings. If you believe it can grow, learning feels like exercise to become fit, and failures (like a failed test, or something you initially cannot understand) are stepping stones to greater “fitness”, greater ability. (Click here to see a graphic explaining the two mindsets, and to read more about prof. Dweck’s ideas.) To put it another way: think of your brain as a muscle that you can train, not a bucket that you have to fill. Another famous American, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, said to an audience of students, “Whether or not you can become great at something, you can always become better at it. Don’t say, ‘Oh, I’ll never be good at that.’ You can always become better at it. And one day you’ll realise how good you actually became.” (You can watch part of the talk here. It’s about 8 minutes long and great fun. The comment I quote comes right at the end.) |
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| Dr Barbara Oakley failed maths at school, but now teaches engineering at Oakland University. She has made it her life’s focus to understand how we learn. (Go to barbaraoakley.com for TED talks and a free course called “Learning like a pro”.) She explains that your brain has two fundamental modes of functioning: focused and diffuse. Focused brain function is what we usually define as studying. You really concentrate, giving your full attention to understand and learn or solve the problem. You zoom in and do not allow distractions. Diffuse thinking embraces distractions. You let your mind wander freely and allow all kinds of crazy connections. This usually happens when you are away from your desk – when you go for a walk, or take a shower, talk to friends, or just daydream. It’s a good idea to go into diffuse thinking mode when you cannot crack a problem. You might see the solution while not really looking! The art of effective study is to have an interaction between the two modes of thinking. Think of a flashlight: you can concentrate a bright beam on a small area, or have a more diffuse beam casting a dimmer light on a wider area. The brain can concentrate on the details better if it has also seen the bigger picture. With that as background, we’ll get to practical tools and tips next week. Until then, happy studying! If you like our content, forward and share! |
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| GRAD – your guide to university success is a partnership project of Ruda Landman, StudyTrust, Van Schaik Publishers and Capitec Bank |
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