So You Really Want To Make All A's This Time?

By David Wooster

A brief handbook of easy study methods for students who plan to go to college or are already there.  Learn in less than one hour how to memorize facts and understand concepts easily.  Also included are over 80 useful, tried and true study tips.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Wooster
• Release date: Nov 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386816867

Book preview

GETTING STARTED

Much of what’s in this handbook is taken directly from a lecture I made for first year university students when I was in graduate school toiling away teaching undergraduate chemistry labs.  Some of the study strategies came about as the result of trial and error; others are based on scientific research, while the rest rely on common sense.  Here, I detail many of the methods I wish I had known about before I entered college.[1]  One of the interesting and surprising facts about study methods, and by extension the human mind, is that adopting just a one can make a significant difference in any student’s grades.

As strange as it sounds, there exists little formal training on how to earn top grades in high school or college.  I don’t remember a single lecture by any of my teachers (or even professors in college) devoted to studying more effectively, or about the ways in which the college experience can differ so widely from that of high school.  

Our society wouldn’t think of sending newly graduated police officers straight out into the community without training on how to use a weapon or read someone their rights, or expect medical students who have never seen the insides of a body to remove a patient’s appendix.  Looking back on all this now, it’s not a bit surprising that I felt as if I was treading water the entire first half of my freshman year in college. 

I came equipped with no strategies that could have helped me memorize the names of all the classes of vertebrates in a biology textbook, or which city happens to be the capital of Ghana, only a vague sense that there was more to all of this than simply reading and rereading the notes I took in class over and over again.  Like a hamster trapped inside one of those stationary exercise wheels, without a sound study strategy it’s no wonder I was having such a hard time keeping up.  I know now that it’s best to have some sort of a strategy, even if it is an imperfect one because, if it’s an evolving strategy, it’s possible to find a way to make it work, as long as you keep at it. 

In addition to memorization, in this handbook I devote an entire section to test taking because, unfortunately, no one yet has found a better way to gauge the progress of a student other than administering a test, quiz, or examination.  While there are certain strategies for taking tests, nothing beats good preparation by studying smart well before the test begins.   Looked at one way, testing is a necessary evil, but in another, it can be seen as a useful tool for enhancing motivation and stimulating learning.  And one of the nice things about taking tests is that the more you do it – just like most things in life – the better you will get at it.

To improve my grades after that disastrous freshman semester in college, I first had to undergo a mind shift (also called a paradigm shift).   I needed to change the way I looked at studying from the point of view of a passive learner to that of an active one.  This change in perspective took time to get used to as well as a good deal of trial and error, which is what I hope to save you by writing this book.  Good habits can be just as powerful as bad habits, except that to develop good habits one needs to put forth effort to initiate and then nurture these habits into fruition.   I was never a standout student in elementary or high school, so if I can turn my grades around 180 degrees, then so can you.

Because I was trained as a scientist and then as a teacher, some of the examples in this handbook are about science, but the concepts apply just as easily to other subjects, from history to art appreciation.   Paradigm shifts are crucial to any significant progress, and by the time you finish this handbook, if you’ve decided to put into practice the methods I describe here, you will have undergone your own paradigm shift as well.

When Copernicus suggested over 400 years ago that the earth was not only capable of moving, but wasn’t even at the center of its own solar system, the paradigm shift that resulted brought with it consequences that reached far beyond the field of 16th century astronomy.  His (and Galileo’s after him) insight not only challenged what the church had been teaching for centuries, that humanity was at the pinnacle of all of God’s creation, it also relegated the place we live on to one of the solar system’s more desolate outposts. 

With the publication of The Starry Messenger by Galileo in 1610, the earth would from then on be thought of as another member of a group of planets revolving in the same direction around the sun.  This one simple mind shift that resulted from Copernicus’s moment of insight is why today the educational system throughout the West is influenced not by the church but by reason born of the Enlightenment. 

When you change from being a passive learner to an active learner, this too will be a paradigm shift no less important to your education than Copernicus’s was for Western civilization.  As your mindset changes, you will gradually go from skimming passages in textbooks passively, to reading more deeply and critically.  You will begin to listen and take notes during lecture more actively instead of continuing to function as some sort of a stenographer in class.  And you will study whenever and wherever you feel it is most effective rather than wasting countless hours dealing with counterproductive distractions.  You will, in effect, become more responsible for your own education. 

The good news is that there are dozens of changes you can implement to help you out along the way, any one of which is able to make a significant difference in your grades.  Many of these techniques are actually mental tools and one of the key points this book makes is that you should end up using whatever it is that works best for you.   In addition to picking and choosing your new methods, you also need to experiment continually with them in order to navigate your own unique path through academia.[2]

The first part of this handbook is titled Story is Everything because story is probably the single most important word when it comes to learning and memorizing effectively.  Once you can understand and use this simple method of memorizing by making up a unique story, you’ll never have trouble remembering anything you set your mind to again.    If someone like me – who has only an average memory – can sit down and commit the entire periodic table of the elements to memory, all 118 of them, in only about an hour after learning this simple trick of telling yourself stories, then you have the ability to do it too.[3]

I’ll explain how to use this simple method in part 4.  Keep this handbook close, either in your book bag or, better yet, in your mind, and you will always have a toolbox of sorts to rely on wherever you happen to be, whether it’s in the classroom or even in the boardroom long after you finish college.   

If you believe in and follow this advice, you’ll not only have better grades to show for it at the end of the semester, but you’ll have several stacks of flashcards to study from for as long as you want to keep them.  Homemade flashcards are one of the most basic – and yet underutilized – tools I’ll describe in part 3 and there are right ways and wrong ways of putting them into practice.  When I was in college, I saw otherwise bright and motivated students using flashcards the wrong way in just about every class I took.   I often wanted to reach out and tell them what I found out from trial and error, but I seldom did.   That’s one of the reasons I developed the lecture and wrote this handbook based on the lecture: so that my students (and now you) can avoid these pitfalls and won’t become one of those frustrated students who never improved their grades no matter how hard they worked at it.

In a nutshell, becoming an active learner is mainly about developing good habits, which is why at the end I