Academic Success: Enhanced Achievement for Average Students-Proven Techniques

By Jon Van Loon

This book is to aid the average student achieve enhanced academic performance. I have written 3 well received eBooks on methodology for aiding leaning disabled students and adults become special achievers and in this process perform at much higher levels academically and in the workforce. It turned out that many students without any special learning challenges were also finding the strategies outlined in these books to be of benefit in enhancing their academic performance. Thus this book was written with the average student in mind. What follows is largely gleaned from the above mentioned eBooks and recast here with appropriate modification. The latter were performed when necessary to better suit the format and content of a book for average learners. In addition there are newly written sections, for example on evaluation and recommendations of electronic technology which is daily changing the face of educational procedures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Van Loon
• Release date: Oct 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310061714

Jon Van Loon

My life has been complicated by 3 factors. A severe learning disability and a bipolar condition could have easily doomed me to a troubled, non productive existence. However a prodigious unrelenting manic drive was the burr under my saddle that propelled me to unexpected achievement in academia. Of interest here in this regard was that developments in my laboratory at the University of Toronto lead me to opportunities to work, teach and live for short periods in many locations on the 6 continents over a 25 year period. During these intervals, I chose to live in local category accommodation thus maximizing my exposure and participation in parochial experiences. In contrast to the calamitous relationships dogging present world interrelationships my experiences were entirely welcoming and solicitous.I was born in Hamilton Ontario Canada. My interests include jogging and other fitness programs having run in and completed 4 marathons together with numerous 5, 10 and 20 km events. My prowess in sport to say the least was very average. Non-the-less I participated in and then later coached ice hockey both in Canada and Australia. My reward for all this activity is that I have a healthy cardiovascular system and have endured 3 knee replacement operations. Most particularly I have a passion for work related to environmental concerns. In this regard I have 120 peer reviewed research papers in Environmental Chemistry, one of which nearly landing me in jail.

Book preview

Academic Success: Enhanced Achievement for Average Students-Proven Techniques

By Jon Van Loon, Professor Emeritus University of Toronto

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014, Jon Van Loon

Dedication

To the many average souls who like myself needlessly toil; tilting with the conventional educational windmills in a frustrating attempt to succeed at elevated levels.

Important Information about the Author and Book’s Content

This book is to aid the average student achieve enhanced academic performance. I have written 3 well received eBooks on methodology for aiding leaning disabled students and adults become special learners and in this process perform at much higher levels academically and in the workforce. It turned out that many students without any special learning challenges were also finding the strategies outlined in these books to be of benefit in enhancing their academic performance. Thus this book was written with the average student in mind.

Your author is severely learning disabled and bipolar yet devised learning strategies that allowed him to acquire a PhD in Chemistry and become a Full Professor at the University of Toronto now retired (that is-Prof. Emeritus). My IQ when measured in the 1940’s was 96 but more like 110 using modern IQ methodology. Basically I have Grade 9 level capabilities in important areas like spelling and Syntax and can only slowly type with 1 finger; often making many spelling errors due to poor memory and the consequence of using phonetic spelling. Praise be-Spell Check and an online Thesaurus-CleverKeys. This book is my 13th eBook that followed 120 research publications and 7 authored and co-authored hard covered research text books generated in my active University years.

Okay enough then with the details about my intellectual capability and limitations thereof.

What follows is largely gleaned from the above mentioned 3 eBooks and recast here with appropriate modification. The latter were performed when necessary to better suit the format and content of a book for average learners. In addition there are newly written sections, for example on evaluation and recommendations of electronic technology which is daily changing the face of educational procedures. Here and there I use the term ‘problem learner’, doing so only as a gentle heads-up but certainly not to demean the average students learning capabilities.

Preface

What really exasperates me off is the ostentatious blather accorded ‘Top Scholars’ in the media. Top scholar designation apparently is meant to define those very few students that obtain between 99 and 100% overall average in their university admittance year. If a mark of 100% is potentially attainable in most courses then some deficiencies in either or all factors including content level, expectation and evaluation must certainly exist. No human being can possibly master a properly challenging course perfectly.

Top scholars are certainly gifted in mastering content taught by paradigmatic methodology in today’s educational systems. Yet singling such individuals for super star academic status does a disservice, often being a discouraging factor to many other talented but nontraditional learners.

As a professor with a large research group I had several top scholars over the years as MSc, PhD and Post-Doctoral students. Some were well rounded high achievers who went on to commensurate success. Several had serious problems in nonacademic facets of their lives. Delayed maturation most often manifest in poor social skills was often evident. Problems of this nature often lead to unsatisfactory results in interpersonal relationships and other shortcomings the workplace. A few were much more serious in nature.

In the following true story, dramatically written for other purposes and purposely retained in this format here, I illustrate an extreme but very relevant collateral effect of a socially inept emotionally challenged, scholastically driven, top scholar. I feel that it deserves inclusion in this form as strong note of admonition. More than that because it outlines with dramatic clarity the tragic outcome of one such monochromatically skilled individual it is offered in this penultimate location in this book. In this way it delivers a cautionary shock to the minds of the parents who lap up the overblown media attention accorded top scholars.

A Top Scholar Tragedy

It shocked and pained me deeply but I was not surprised; his limp body there on the floor, a homemade mask pulled over mouth and nose and plastic tubing protruding therefrom. I didn’t even bother to check for a pulse, the dark blue pallor of his face screamed it out all too clearly. There was the end to it; Sasha could not endure his self-contrived tortured world any longer. That fine spring morning I had just arrived at the lab early expecting that nobody else would yet be present. I immediately called 911 and a few key University Officials.

Despite overt enthusiasm for his ground breaking research, Sasha conveyed a sense of dysphoria, together with the additional manifestation of being driven by a relentless internal engine that had only one speed and that was full on. Thinking back on the 1.5 tenure in my research group of this 16 year old PhD candidate, I realized that I shouldn’t have been surprised at the piteous tableau confronting me on the floor of his laboratory cubicle.

Sasha had no interest in my own categories of research programs, so why had I accepted him as a member of my research group? In fact I had decided during our first interview that I would reject him on these grounds and because of his immediately obvious and unsettling, pretentious mannerisms. That was before he informed me that the rest of the departmental staff had rejected him and I was his last chance to gain admission. This coupled with the recollection of a phone conversation with a colleague pointing out that Sasha was in fact a scientific diamond in the rough, whose distressing behaviour, like that of many prodigies had likely emanated due to lack of traditional social skills. My colleague went on to say that his only reason for rejection was based on Sasha’s emotional problems which he was unwilling to abide. Having suffered myself with repudiation from this same set of problems emanating from the consequences of my own bipolarity, I wasn’t surprised at hearing myself tell Sasha he was accepted.

Sasha began his work in my lab, by during the first few months, discovering and patenting a method for binding organic compounds to metals that had potential to revolutionize industrial coating procedures. Such an achievement, born as it was in the mind of a 16 year old, placed him instantly in the category of prodigy. The prospects of ancillary related fundamental developments spilled profusely from his brain.

Unfortunately this scientific largess was accompanied by an equal volume of collateral emotionally based problems. Sasha had joined an off campus group that specialized in a procedure called ‘scream therapy’. Try as I did to convince Sasha to adopt conventional assessment and treatment which was available free from skilled University Health service personnel, he rejected this approach in favour of alternative methods; scream therapy being only the most disturbing of the lot. In many ways Sasha behaved like a typical 12 or 13 year old battling the dynamism of entering the early stages of puberty. He had no serious commitment to any treatment, entering each just for camaraderie of likewise inclined individuals and the shock their outlandish practices rendered to outsiders.

Sasha became somewhat of a pariah around the department and I was under pressure by coworkers and my Professorial colleagues to take remedial action. I issued him a series of warnings which were often in poor judgment not enacted due to the success of his research. His bimonthly progress reports were astounding, highlighted by the end of the first year with his acquisition of 2 more patents and 3 publications in major journals. Even the Department Chair had to admit his work had been superior enough in quality and quantity to rank him academically near the top of PhD candidates.

He was a dynamo in the laboratory. Whereas most students needed about 8 meters of bench space for their experimentation, Sasha had multiple research stations, all simultaneously active, that occupied about 3 times this much area. I can still see acutely in my memory Sasha, laboratory water bottle in hand from which he constantly sipped, almost at a run servicing these multiple setups. Unlike most students he never seemed to pause to sit at his carrel to write up results; instead he scribbled scattered notes in lab books which were strategically positioned throughout his research locations. Creation of formal reports, publications and complicated patent applications flowed like magic. It was as though Sasha could coalesce rigorous scientific arguments from seemingly random observations his laboratory notebooks contained

Anytime was work time for Sasha. Sometimes when he was under sanction due to particularly severe emotional out bursts he would disappear for a few days. This would then be followed by a week or so in which he worked 20 hour days always at his double quick time. Finally in mid second year of his tenure after a serious of vociferous, salacious, threatening outbursts that could be heard by a large portion of the building, I told him he would be dismissed unless he received proper treatment. Miraculously he seemed to acquiesce and his outbursts ceased. During this interval Sasha was seldom seen around the lab, his excuse being that he was under intensive treatment. Strangely even during this interval his bimonthly reports contained the same volume of outstanding work. Just as suddenly came that fine spring morning that I found Sasha dead.

I was about to be arrested for possession and distribution of drugs. The police during their investigation had discovered drawers throughout my laboratory contained large but well hidden quantities of a variety of illegal drugs. It was only after assurances of University officials that I was definitely innocent that I avoided this catastrophe. Testimony of the building night cleaning staff revealed that during the above short period in which Sasha had supposedly been receiving treatment, he was in fact working all night. In addition he frequently put them to fright with his screaming; his practice of scream therapy no doubt. These kindly