Studying

College Organization Part Four: Walking around while studying

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

What do you do if you are tired of sitting and you still have hours to study? Walk around a bit. Believe it or not, you can study while walking. Let me tell you how.

When studying for my qualifying exams, I devoted six hours a day to putting information into my brain. That is a long time to sit, so I made up note cards with the information I needed and learned to hold them at just the right angle in front of myself so that I could walk on my front porch (which does not have a railing) and continue to study while putting in some mileage and not falling off the edge of the porch.

I also run on a treadmill each day, so I wrote out pages of study notes, blew them up into 24 point font, and put them on the wall in front of my treadmill. Since I run for an hour and a half each day (Monday through Friday), I was able to get in an hour and a half of study time before I had even had my shower!

Another good place to get in study time is in the bathroom. After washing my hair each morning, I would look at some note cards  while blow drying my hair. That was a good eight minutes of work; I have been drying my hair long enough to not need to watch myself do it.

Note cards became my constant companion. Was there a line at the bank? Time for note cards. Did I have to wait at the grocery store? Time for more note cards. Minutes that would have otherwise been wasted were turned into profitable study time. Was I at the doctor’s office or dentist? Well, you get the picture. Guess what? My Ph.D. GPA was higher than my undergraduate or master’s program GPA because I figured out how to turn nonproductive time into study time. The result? My GPA for the Ph.D. program was 3.86 (out of 4.0). If I did it, you can too!

I see this blog is getting a bit long-winded, so I will put your next steps on the next blog, which I will go ahead and write today. If you have any questions or comments, please use my name in your reply, so that I will know that you are not a robot.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

College Organization Part Three: What is the oven timer for?

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Here we are at part three, where I will explain why you need the oven timer!

We all claim to spend xyz hours studying, right? Now you are going to prove it to yourself. The rule of thumb is two hours of studying for every hour of class time. I don’t know many people who actually do that (I wrote about the two ladies I found this semester that do spend hours studying in an earlier blog), but that is the gold standard for good grades.

So, pull out your oven timer and get to work. When you sit down to read your homework or write a paper, set the timer for 45 minutes or an hour, depending on how long you can sit down without needing to “fluff your pillow.” Focus totally on your school work. If the phone rings, or the mail carrier knocks on the door, or a family member sits down to chat with you, turn off the timer. You are not studying.

When the distraction is gone and you are ready to get back to work, turn the timer back on. Log your actual study time on your academic calendar or a notebook. Keep track of how long you devote to your studies. Make a commitment to spend so many hours per day and so many hours per week studying and move heaven and earth to make that happen.

Every 45 minutes or hour, get up and walk around a bit. It will help get the blood flowing again and prevent you from falling asleep. If you can talk to your significant other or family about not interrupting your study time, that is a great idea. When I am writing, every interruption takes me about 20 minutes of concentrated effort to refocus my full attention on what I was doing. If you are the same way, even the slightest distraction can really drain your study time.

When I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation, I made a commitment to write two hours a day, five days a week. I also tried to write at least an hour on the two days that I took “off”- these were days that I was teaching face-to-face classes all day and then coming home to make dinner, do laundry, and go to choir practice. I had discipline and, as a result, finished writing a 400-page dissertation with 20 pages of references in 12 months. Some people take years to do the same thing. Dedication pays off. If I did it, you can do this homework thing as well!

I see this blog is getting a bit long-winded, so I will put your next steps on the next blog, which I will go ahead and write today. If you have any questions or comments, please use my name in your reply, so that I will know that you are not a robot.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Success isn’t going to hit you over the head by surprise

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

It’s always a surprise to me when students think that success is going to hit them over the head as they just stand there. Nope, folks, success in college is no accident. You have to work at it.

How can you achieve your goals? By taking college seriously from the very first minute, you can increase the odds that you will do well. What does taking college seriously look like?

For starters, you get the book that is required and you read it, take notes on what you read, and study it. Attend the lectures and ask questions. Be engaged in what you are learning.

So, how do you read the book? Look at the Table of Contents and see what you will be reading about. Use a highlighter to bold certain parts of the text, but do not bold everything! I had a student once who highlighted the entire page…..so what good was that?

Keep in mind that you might be a person who is distracted by underlining and highlighters, so keep this in mind if you plan on reading the book more than once. Also keep this in mind when you go to purchase used textbooks. I used to sit on the floor next to the college bookstore’s used books and flip through them until I found a book with minimal underlining. Sometimes folks only underline or highlight the first few chapters, so you might find that the rest of the book is “clean” which is important to those folks who get distracted easily. Perhaps your instructor will emphasize different ideas from the ones that someone highlighted, so do not depend entirely on a former student’s notes in the book to help you this term.

You might find it more helpful to put notes in the margins, rather than underlining. Try underlining, highlighting, and margin notes until you find what works best for you personally.

After the lecture, try to take time that day and go over your notes, supplementing them from the textbook. Did your professor emphasize certain points more than others? It is important to him or her, so it automatically is important to you! Review throughout the semester, so that you don’t get stuck the night before an exam and have to cram. That’s no fun and it rarely works very well.

Are there any study habits you find helpful? Do you have any questions or topics you would like me to cover on the blog? I am as near as your computer and I am here to help you have success in college! It won’t hit you over the head by surprise, but is the result of hard work and dedication. You can do it!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Getting it done or getting by

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Have you ever wondered why some students excel while others, who seem equally intelligent, just get by? When a student did poorly in my class, I used to think it was me. Now I know that individuals have different goals for their education.

Maybe they are in college just to stay on their parents’ medical insurance policy. Maybe they are there to avoid having to get a post-high school job. One of my favorite reasons is the student who told me, “Well, the judge said I had a choice between prison or college. I chose college.” I thought, “Oh, goodie goodie gumdrops- you chose my class.”  He turned out to be a good student and a very pleasant young man…..but I never found out what crime he had been convicted of……

I have been teaching an online class recently and there is a student who always does the absolute minimum, no matter what the assignment. He seems talented but chooses to waste his time with the course, rather than apply himself. It is such a pity.

Why do you think some students just get by instead of getting it done? Have you ever done that yourself? I look forward to hearing from you and how you overcame it…..of not.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Note taking in college

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hello everyone:

Have you seen them? They are the clear-eyed students sitting about halfway back in the room who never seem to need to take notes. They tell themselves that they will remember everything the instructor says, so note taking is for wimps. I see them all the time, usually in a class that they are on track to fail.

In eleven years of teaching face-to-face classes, I have only run into ONE student who literally did not need to take notes. The fellow watched my every move and seemed to memorize the Power Point slides. He made an A on every test. He came up to me at the beginning of the semester and told me ahead of time that this was his preferred way to take a class, so that I would not be insulted by his failure to write anything down.

Folks, I usually have between 50 and 75 face-to-face students per term. Multiple that times two terms per year (fall and spring) times eleven years and you have a boatload of students. In all those years, only ONE student succeeded with this method. What does that tell you? (Hint: That this method does not work for other folks.)

What ideas have you found helpful to taking notes in your classes? It would be great if we could share tips.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

How to avoid flunking your online class

Posted on by Sheri Dean Parmelee

Hi everyone:

A student emailed me today, in a panic about failing the writing class I am teaching at a major online college. Here is what I told her about writing an assignment:

Please read all instructions carefully before you begin to write. Please write the document that the instructions call for. Look at each assignment as a separate and distinct document and do not mix them up.

Write one of them at a time, making sure that you have followed the instructions to the last degree before you submit them.  Ask questions as they come up, after you have read the instructions through numerous times.

Do not wait until the last minute to write an assignment because the panic mode clicks in and you cannot think clearly.

I hope this helps you as you navigate the courses you are taking.

Best,

Dr. Sheri