College Student Study Tips
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place To Study
Finding your perfect study place is crucial. Richard Klayman has an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor about it. He teaches in Boston and has done informal research over the years, asking his students where they settle in to study and whether that spot is conducive to the learning process. He’s found that college students these days tend to be so over-scheduled with school, jobs and family life, that there’s no room or time to do anything beyond cramming in the necessary information a.s.a.p. wherever they happen to be (car, bus, train, library, coffee shop).
“Nearly 40 years of classroom teaching has provided me a perch from which to appreciate what works — and what does not — in building learning skills.
Continuity is key in mastering a discipline, as is teaching oneself how to learn. The classroom is far from the only place that the process for assessing, attaining, or otherwise synthesizing impressions and information occurs.
A kitchen table, dining room table, a familiar corner of a room, or a few feet of flooring remain essential venues for the repetition needed to master any discipline.”
Klayman refers to modern-day students as “nomads”, studying where and when they can. He’s not at all convinced it’s a good or complete process. Students don’t have the space or the time to fully learn the subject.
He’s right, of course. But what can you do? Unless you’re fully funded (don’t need a job), have a normal course load and don’t yet have a family started, then an insane schedule and studying when and where you can is your only option.
I had two different college lives. Pre-marriage and children and fully funded was hard work and filled every moment, yes. But I was able to completely immerse myself and learn it fully. I was obsessed, but not panicked.
Our language doesn’t possess the words to even begin to describe how much my married-with-children college life sucked. I studied the way soldiers in foxholes sleep: in five or ten-minute chunks, always under extreme stress. Everything I read was absorbed with a huge dose of adrenaline. I was saturated with the stuff. I kept my books open on the dining room table and did drive-by studying whenever my family didn’t require my services.
It was brutal. That I had a 3.9 GPA I chalk up to unadulterated terror. That my marriage survived I chalk up to one of two possibilities: (a) my husband is not human and is actually a robot and cannot be destroyed; or (b) I’m not as bad-ass as I think I am and cannot actually shatter another human using only my eyes and voice. That my relationship with my infant daughter survived (she’s now almost six and miraculously still likes me) I chalk up to her being either a robot like her dad or a badass like her mom.
Here’s what it boils down to: pre-family I worked hard, got the good grades, was fully engaged in my education. I’d label that version of myself Focused. I learned the material, I absorbed it. Post-family me could recite every bone in the human body and knew differential equations backwards and forwards, but I wasn’t learning so much as I was memorizing as a panic reaction to an emergency situation. I had a newborn, I never had time to sit and study for a few hours at a stretch. If I had two minutes between diaper changes I had to take it and cram as much info into my head as possible before the next baby crisis. The word for post-family, second-degree me was Obsessed.
Suffice it to say, I learned more and I learned it well when I had the time and the space to settle in and study. It wasn’t just the lack of stress or the increased enjoyment (I adore school when ankle-biters aren’t involved). It was the entire learning process, and place plays a large part in that.
If you can possibly swing it (and these days, unless you were born under the Trust Fund Tree you probably can’t) try to just be in school when you’re in school. I’m not saying it isn’t feasible to learn with distractions (like a job or newborn-induced sleep deprivation). I’m just forcefully recommending learning with enough time and space.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
