How to Be a Better Student and Improve Your Learning

By:Royane Real

If you’re a student attending classes, you have probably experienced many moments when it was hard to make yourself settle down and study, even when an important exam was coming up.
If you’re like most students, you put off studying until the very last minute. The night before the exam, you’ll stay up all night cramming, getting little or no sleep. In the morning, you’ll drag yourself out of bed, psych yourself up with lots of coffee and some cigarettes, and go into the exam feeling exhausted, drained and jittery all at the same time. You’ll find it hard to focus or think, and you’ll be cursing yourself for not starting to study sooner.
And not surprisingly, unless you’re blessed with natural brilliance, or you happen to know the subject matter extremely well, you’ll probably do terribly on the test.
If this is your typical method of studying, you already know it doesn’t work. Every time you go through this ritual, you tell yourself that you’re going to smarten up the next time you face a big exam. Next time you’ll start to study weeks in advance, you say. But instead, you keep repeating this crazy pattern. Why does this keep happening? And what should you be doing instead if you want to get better marks?
A big problem for most people, especially those who are young students, is that life gets in the way. If you’re a student, you probably have a part time job, and like most young people, you also want to have a social life.
Studying can seem very boring compared to all the exciting temptations just outside your door. Or the games on your computer. Even watching old reruns of Sesame Street can seem more interesting than the biology text your teacher is expecting you to master!
One reason we often don’t start studying until the last possible minute is that we have misjudged how long it will actually take us to absorb and understand the material. If your mid-term is still six weeks away, that might seem like plenty of time left before you need to get around to studying. You might find however, that the subject matter is a lot harder to understand than you thought it would be, and all of a sudden there’s no time left to ask someone to explain it to you.
Another reason we often put off starting to study is that we are too overwhelmed with how big the project actually seems to be. Somehow we convince ourselves that putting off a tough study project can be the best way to avoid feeling overwhelmed by it.
When we are faced with a study project that seems exceptionally difficult and overwhelming, it can be to maintain a high level of interest and motivation for the duration of the learning process.
If you have been guilty of all these bad study habits, it’s not too late to learn some other habits that will work better for you.
First, remind yourself why you want to do better in your studies. Maybe you need a good mark to get into a good college. Maybe you want a chance at a career that will pay you well. Always keep your end goal in mind.
You can put little cards up around your room with inspirational messages, and attractive photographs that will remind you why you want to do well in school.
If you feel very overwhelmed, you can improve your motivation and your performance by breaking up the project into smaller sections, or “chunks”. Each time you accomplish one little bit successfully, give yourself a meaningful reward.
If you have a deadline looming, decide how much of the project you need to tackle at one time.
Let’s say you have six weeks to master the content of a difficult biology text. Looking through the book you realize that if you study one chapter each night, you can get through the book in 28 days, leaving two weeks in which you can again review the material.
With this knowledge you can pace yourself. You know what your assignment is. You know how much you need to read every night. Concentrate on the immediate task at hand. You don’t need to feel overwhelmed by the entire book at one time. Next, work out a system of rewards for yourself. Give yourself a series of small rewards each time you master one chapter, and a larger reward for completing the entire book.
For rewards to work they must be immediate, and personally meaningful to you. There is no point in rewarding yourself with a new fishing rod if you hate fishing.
Rewards don’t need to be material objects if there is something else that would really motivate and inspire you. How about attending a special concert, or taking a special trip? You decide. Get creative and think of something that will spur you to take action.
It’s very important that the reward take place soon after the work has been accomplished. This creates a sense of positive reinforcement. Give yourself a small reward every time you finish a small part of the job, and a bigger reward when the project is completed. If there is too long a gap between the activity and the reward, it will not have the effect of reinforcing the desired activity.
Besides motivating yourself with a series of external rewards, learn to motivate yourself internally. Tell yourself you’re a good learner. Tell yourself you enjoy learning. Tell yourself you enjoy giving your brain a good work out. Congratulate yourself for your efforts. Tell yourself you love acquiring new knowledge, and let yourself feel a joy in learning. Be proud of yourself for the work you do to gain more knowledge.
For information to sink into your brain and be accessible to you, you need to review it several times, and your brain needs to sleep properly for the memories to be encoded in your neurons. You need to reduce your mental stress. Your brain needs good nutrition and it needs to be in a peaceful, confident state. Drugs and alcohol don’t help the process of learning.
Write out what you are learning in your own words, and find a learning buddy. Practice explaining to someone else what you have learned. This will increase the likelihood that your brain will remember it.
If you start to cram the night before, you are putting your brain at a big disadvantage.
You’re increasing your physical and mental stress, and you’re not giving yourself time to review the material several times. By cutting back on your sleep, you’re not giving your brain a chance to put the information you’ve been studying into the hard drive storage of your brain.
By starting your studies early, and reviewing what you’ve learned, you have a much better chance of remembering and understanding what you need to know when you face a big exam.

Digg del.icio.us Blink Stumble Spurl Reddit Netscape Furl

Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Royane Real is a science educator and the author of several books to improve learning. This article is taken from her new short report "Your Quick Guide to Improving Your Learning Ability" Get the paperback version or download it now from http://www.lulu.com/real

Top Career Articles
1). Learn How To Draw Realistic Faces By : Adam Reeder Drawing a face isn’t as hard as it looks. To begin, you start with an egg shaped oval. Draw a line down the center of this egg. This line will giv
2). Pharmacist Resume Samples Will Help You Create An Unmistakable Resume! By : Robert Marcus Pharmacist resumes must have information of your experience relevant to the position in a quick and clear format. Employers are interested in a highly qualified person and customer friendly attitude. Apart from highlighting your qualifications, contact information, experience etc, the following points will provide a hint on how to prepare the resume for a Pharmacist position.
3). How To Write The Best Teacher Resume You Can By : Laura Adams It should come as no surprise that there is a currently a shortage of teachers in the United States. This unfortunate trend has been seen for well over a decade. To compound the issue, recent labor studies have predicted that teaching positions will likely continue to grow faster than the national average for the next several years due to recent government regulations to reduce class size and increase educational accountability.
4). Skilled Workers Needed By Auto Industry By : David Sanders An auto dealership job may put you on the road to a rewarding career-particularly if you're a veteran. Military veterans have the skills and work ethic needed for many careers. A new study by Harris Interactive estimates there are more than 100,000 career jobs currently available at auto dealerships across the country. The report also found that auto dealers hired more than 15,000 veterans since January 2004.
5). Reflections on "How to Do what you Love" by Paul Graham through Meditation. By : Swami Satchidanand I was reading "How to Do what you Love" by Paul Graham last night and because I loved it so much I decided to write a little more of me into it.
6). Keys To Getting The Law Enforcement Job You Want By : Don Cirillo These days, when uncertain economic times are putting many careers in doubt, an increasing number of people are looking to work in law enforcement. And there are very good reasons for this. As many industries have shrunk, North American communities have steadily increased their budgets for law enforcement. Police officers now enjoy better pay and often outstanding benefits.
7). Nursing facts that everyone should know By : Suzanne Verita Most people say it is a career about caring. Others say it is a job about professional administration of medications and cure to patients. Some say it is the duty to work out predicaments by using critical thinking skills. In whatever way you want to call it, nursing is, indeed, a conglomeration of all these beliefs and the faculty of many other skills.
8). The Female Firefighter By : Barney Garcia Firefighting is no longer just the domain of the male. Just like every other career, trade, or profession women have made inroads into this traditionally male territory.
9). How To Achieve A Balanced And Healthy Lifestyle In Retirement By : Cynthia Barnett Now that you’ve retired, you have entered an entirely new phase of life, a life filled with new challenges, adventure and hopefully one that brings you complete and total satisfaction. However, if you’re like most people, change isn’t always easy and is sometimes stressful. This stress is completely normal but may be compounded if you don’t learn how to balance all the demands on your time.
10). Career - Test Your Negotiation Skills By : CD Mohatta Negotiation is part of every professional’s life. To negotiate, means to arrive at an understanding with another person, so that both of you are satisfied with the results. Do you know what is your skill in negotiation? If not, why not test and find out because most of our interactions demand negotiation. You are negotiating with your love partner about which place to go for dinner.

New Career Articles
1). Quitting Your Job Can Be A Reality By : Jeff Schuman Thanks to the internet anyone living anywhere can quit their jobs and live their dreams. You just to need get started planning how you are going to do it.
2). Job Hunting On A Shoestring By : David Cassell Tips that you can easily implement to stay in the black during your job search
3). Unemployment Blues: Reframing The Pain By : Virginia Bola In addition to the anger and fear generated by job loss, there is the total emotional devastation of being figuratively thrown on a pile of human debris.
4). Employment Interviewing: Ask For The Job By : Virginia Bola During any interview, it is important to display unabashed enthusiasm for this position, with this company, at this time.
5). The Business Opportunity of a Private Investigator By : Robert Gravener In this article we talk about some of the opportunities that are out there for a Private Investigator and what aspects of this exciting career may be or not be for you.
6). How to Answer Interview Questions: A Guide to Job Seekers By : Dave Poon When seeking for a job, it is important that you are ready when you face your future employer. The most challenging part is the interview.
7). Are You In The Right Job? By : Garry Zancanaro If you become known as a person that can be relied upon to get a job done, who is efficient and productive, has initiative and is prepared to accept challenges, and has a positive attitude to your work and your co-workers, you will be considered a great asset by any well run organisation.
8). Unemployment Blues: Mind Over Mood By : Virginia Bola Unemployment plays havoc with our emotional system. We take a number of hits all at once: loss of occupational identity, economic pressure, family anxiety, and the humiliation of job search.
9). Prolonged Unemployment: Reconnecting With The Labor Market By : Virginia Bola If you have been unemployed for an extended period of time, you know that potential employers are going to look at your long period of unemployment with a jaundiced eye.
10). Your Online Home Internet Business By : james lowe The triumphs and traumas of starting your entrepreneur career on the internet