Getting the Best out of College or University

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Some Final Thoughts on attitudes to learning

Grasp Opportunities – it does not matter how bright you are or think you are, if you miss you opportunities then what you hope for might be gone forever. One might say here that we can all be blind to opportunities because we feel we have ’made it’ and then later realise we missed a golden opportunity.

Grow into an Expert – we all perhaps want this but forget we have to learn how to become one. No one starts out knowing everything or with high level skills, they have to be learned over many hours, days and years; there is no short cut for anyone and research suggests that to get to the highest levels will mean between 10-20 hours/week (not including holidays) study for perhaps as much as 10 years.

Acceptance that learning cannot be rushed - because some things are hard to learn so require perseverance and therefore recognise you must work harder rather than become frustrated and give up when at first you may be baffled and just can’t get to an understanding. You must persevere because you know that sooner or later and often when you least expect it the key to understanding will come.

An even temper when you start a new learning process. Rather than start out with the absurd notion that everything should be be understood straight away and when that does not happen (as is the usual case) throw a tantrum blaming the notes, the set book, the tutor, the dog, anyone or anything in range thus turning what should be an exciting, stimulating and self-rewarding experience into your own living hell. Cultivate what the well known song says “the strivings more important than the gaol”.

Make choices rationally and not be distracted by irrelevancies caused by what others have, say or do so that when things go wrong they realise that it was often about choices and so review them intelligently and do not seek to blame anyone or anything because you see that direction as futile and means you effectively give up the power to change (because always it’s not your fault).

Having an armoury of learning strategies because often when we get in difficulty it never occurs to us to make a choice (which may be a struggle) and try something else so we end up with a self-constructed boundary because although we know there are other choices we avoid them either implicitly or explicitly.

(I will spend the next few weeks outlining some of these strategies)
 
Two observations:

Awareness that in all learning there is an element of serendipity, but whilst it is important to recognise that leaning can occur at any time or place a good learner will understand and take serious steps to be systematic so their work is structured and organized rather than haphazard. Additionally, they will also see clearly that their work has to be systemic as well so that every part contributes to and helps every other part. In this respect as long as you are good enough (in the sense that you are prepared for it, you have got up to that level) to get onto a course then if you make the effort, put in the required hours of work, you can succeed at the very highest levels.

Expectation of one’s Tutors – it goes without saying that one expects the Tutor to be thoroughly knowledgeable, experienced and current in the subject being taught otherwise it’s is not really possible to have confidence in what they say by way of academic lessons, guidance and feedback. However, over and above these one can expect and in a real sense demand kindness, sympathy, encouragement and the respect that goes with simple humanity in the way you are treated – not to act in this way means the Tutors has failed you.

These qualities are not conditional but they are not to be strained and rendered worthless by a careless, irresponsible and lazy attitude to learning - that would be to ‘bite the hand that feeds you’ and to reject in this way a dedicated and genuine relationship with your tutor is perhaps the saddest of all attitudes to find in a student and in a very real sense but not academic sense; the student has failed. One might also say here that your tutors will hold the subject in high esteem and care very deeply about its content and quality and if they are aware that a student is careless, unconcerned or contemptuous in learning they might find that attitude offensive and unworthy and that may well strain their natural sympathetic tendencies because such a student attitude wastes valuable academic time.

One might say here that a Tutor must and usually does know what he has to do to enable learning to take place; however, that does not mean they can do it. But in the same way there is no excuse for a student not knowing what they have to do and turning that lack of knowledge into blame. A good tutor will give you the necessary resources including a syllabus, notes and reading lists and will offer guidance and feedback as learning progresses but they can never tell students every next step to take and therefore there is a responsibility on students to know what they have to do and do it.
 
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Re: Kewy

Key Pointers in Learning.
Here are some key pointers in learning but underpinning all these is a single principle: personal choices, conditioned by your mindset and self-awareness. You can act responsibly and choose to put in committed effort and learn thoroughly evidenced by setting aside time, knowing about due dates and deadlines, reading the notes, doing the exercises, reading books, steadily working on the assessments, asking questions, feeling you are part of a learning community and so on and that will inevitably bring success.

Alternatively, implicitly or explicitly act irresponsibly with no real commitment choosing not to learn evidenced by not setting aside time, ignoring notes and tests, waiting until the deadline is near before doing anything, trying to copy examples, guessing answers, using ideas in answers that you do not understand, skimming through notes and examples, wanting things always to be easy, finding excuses for not working or not understanding, blaming the resources or never knowing the deadlines and this will inevitably bring failure and disappointment.

Associated with the notion of choice are two further aspects. The first is a choice related to commitment to learning and if you are genuinely committed to learning you will find it spills over into many other aspect of your life; most of which will enhance it. Secondly, commitment is demonstrated by putting in real effort because learning will not always be easy or comfortable; this does not mean you work all the time, 24/7, but does mean you work steadily pacing yourself and allowing time for reflection. In summary, you as student must:

Accept responsibility for learning by knowing what you have to do and doing it.
Be aware that both success and failure hinge on making choices.
Learn what it means to read for your learning.
Learn the subject basics otherwise there is nothing to build on and progress will not be possible.
Be aware of your habits in learning and constantly evaluate their effectiveness and make changes.
Have an armoury of learning strategies because there is always more than one way to learn.
Admit failures and then find out the reason without resorting to the blame game and plan a way to recover
Appreciate that not everything is easy so be motivated and committed towards effort and struggle.
Appreciate that confidence comes from seeking challenges not avoiding them.
Appreciate that confidence comes from persistence in the face of obstacles and not giving up.

Understand that learning take times and it cannot be rushed as it moves from the simple to the complex.
Understand that rushing, looking for short cuts leads to superficial learning.
Understand that trying to learn by cramming because you have left things too late is impossible.
Understand that taking breaks from direct learning is essential to allow your brain to reflect and sort things out.
Plan your learning and when it gets tough for whatever reason, plan your way through difficulties.
Appreciate that learning is really about problem solving.
Don’t be afraid of doubt, doubt can be creative because it drives you to find the answer.
Know and feel that self-esteem comes more from effort than success.
Know that teachers and other elements are learning resources, but only YOU can do the learning.
Be aware of the benefits and contentment that follows getting learning tasks completed
Learn to negotiate with your tutors and others in order to deal with difficulties and obstacles.​
 
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Growth Minded Learning Strategies
Over the next few weeks I will discuss about over 50 strategies (many contain sub-strategies) that can be used to help you learn; there is no shortage of strategies and it’s only the will and the choice to take action can prevent you (other than exceptional circumstances) using them and gaining satisfaction by working and gaining success. One might say here that it is essential that you arm yourself with knowledge of these strategies and not rely on what you currently do otherwise we fall into the trap wisely stated by Abraham Maslow; "If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." So any learning strategies MUST be composed of one or a combination of the following (if you disagree then make a suitable post)

Five Basic Strategies - learning is a kind of problem solving activity with only 5 basic strategies possible. In learning and wanting to learn it helps if you like solving problems and will work at them as hard as you can avoiding the temptation to give up and always on the lookout for a new route to a solution:

Trial and Error – that is one guesses at ways forward and often this is how we start a learning process.

Top Down – we start learning by a process akin to simplification by breaking down the learning into small sections.

Generic – this simply means when we look at some new learning we ask if we have any similar learning to draw upon to help us understand new things.

Viewpoints – when in difficulty it is often a useful strategy to try to see the problem in another way and that often breaks down mind barriers we have to understanding.

Relationships – often one bit of learning is related to other elements and so we get in difficulty because we cannot or will not look for links between elements of learning.​
 
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Don’t be afraid that you might not have the brains
Sometimes, well very often really, we get stuck and convince ourselves that we will never ‘get it’ (and other people will confirm it) so we implicitly or even explicitly avoid work and of course that then guarantees we will never get it. But perseverance is omnipotent and if it’s a hard struggle all the better because the learning will be deeper and the achievement sweeter. Let me use an analogy, suppose you want to be good at Scrabble then it will take you about 200 games before you can really play well or suppose you wanted to learn to play Chopin’s piano Ballade No 1 then its an uphill struggle because it’s a very hard thing to do and you might need to play it a 100 times before it was half decent as well as hard practice of scales as well.

The same is true for any learning, all learning takes practice; you have to stick at it and do dozens of example and learn techniques and methods, read books and join in discussions – there is no easy route and if you think there is or ought to be then you are seriously deluded. There are of course special revision notes and sites but if you think learning is about those you are again on a very slippery slope and sooner or later you will fail badly. Think of it like this, suppose your medical doctor told you he did not work hard at his studies but got by with summaries and revision notes then I think my best advice to you would be find another doctor. There are NO easy route to learning, there are no quick fixes and the sooner you realise that the more efficient and more rewarding learning will be for you.

TIP
Some people, (like me) use a tally counter such as the Iphone App called Tallmander to keep a count of what has been done – so if I were studying mathematics I would keep a count in each subject area of how many examples I had done and I know that if I am to be really proficient I have to ensure that the count gets into the 100s. Similarly, I often use an App called Timebook to record every minute more or less I spend on my different activities (including non study ones) during a day – it’s not arduous, I just tap the screen to set the timer going and tap it again to stop it. If you try either or both of these simple counting and timing ideas I think most people will be really shocked at just how little time they are spending in study.

I think I am quite good at playing the piano but I used Tallymander for a month and found that my average daily practice time was 5.6 minutes - well let's face it, there is no way on earth I am going to get any better than I am is there and if one does not get better it is almost certain you will go backwards?
 
Read as much as you can
Reading is a major source for learning, so one must cultivate a habit of reading all the time, anywhere and anything. Nassim Taleb in his famous book ‘The Black Swan’ says how he gave up reading several newspapers in the mornings and it helped him read about 100 extra books a year. When reading, obviously we use subject area text books but if you limit your reading to those you will stunt your intellectual growth as well as possibly bore yourself to tears most of the time. Reading is about getting your brain working and so read anything that you can get your hands on from newspapers to novels to major text books to great works of literature and even comic books. Just as a little illustration some years ago now I struggled with how to help students see the difference between the notions of induction and deduction but light eventually dawned not when I was reading a learned text on logic but when I was reading a crime thriller called "All the Colours of Darkness" by Peter Robinson, so if you shut your mind into compartments you will miss great moments and deep insights.

A first step is to know the main authors and Journals in your particular subject area but then get going on anything that interests you. Consider the tiny list of available authors shown below and if you have never heard or read some of them then you will most certainly lose out by such neglect. You might note that many of these authors were banned, the knowledge in their books was regarded as forbidden knowledge, or suffered in some way for what they wrote, for example, Rushdie, Mahfouz, Voltaire, Machiavelli to name but a few. Some of these authors wrote almost 3,000 years ago and others are still living but these authors wrote for you, so don’t disappoint them.

If you read these authors or others you will often find the best times in reading is when you find something (and it will be often) that really speaks to you and it’s as if the author reaches out his hand to you with a precious gift, as if he or she wrote it just for you so be ready and eternally grateful for such gifts and if you miss them then you will miss out on some of the really great moments and thoughts that this life has to offer.

Aeschylus, Aristotle, Augustine, Austen, Francis Bacon, Balzac, Berkeley, The Bible, Boswell, Carroll, Cervantes, Chaucer, Chekhov, Christie, Cobbett, Conrad, Dante, Darwin, Descartes, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Doyle, Du Maurier, George Eliot, T.S.Eliot, Emerson, Euripides, Faulkner, Fielding, Fitzgerald, Gibbon, Gibran, Goethe, Grass, Haggard, Hardy, Hegel, Heidegger, Hemmingway, Herodotus, Hobbes, Homer, Ibsen, Ishiguro, Henry James, Joyce, Kafka, Khayyam, Kierkegaard, Lucretius, Machiavelli, Mahfouz, Mann, Manning, Mankell, Marx, Melville, Milton, Moliere, Nabokov, Nietzsche, O'Neill, Orwell, Pasternak, Plato, Poincare, Proust, Popper, The Quran (Koran), Qabbani, Racine, Rushdie, Rousseau, Shaw, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Spinoza, Sterne, Swift, Thoreau, Tolkien, Tolstoy, Twain, Virgil, Voltaire, Waugh, Wittgenstein, Wilde, Woodhouse, Woolf, Zola etc.​

The vast majority of books are written and produced in the Western world with books in English from the UK and the United States amounting to more than half of all books published but wonderfully, other countries are catching up fast. In 2008 the estimated number of books published was about 950,000 for the whole world. It is a good idea to tell yourself that these books were written just for you!

Do not fall in to the trap of saying only books in English or Arabic or German or whatever are any use or suggest that they are somehow the best because they are in a particular language for that would be to make available knowledge equal in measure to your own small mind - if a book is any good it will in my view be good no matter what language it get translated into, if that is not true then I doubt its value and so should you.

Sadly, some countries severely restrict what can be published and there is no doubt there are bad books but education is the answer not banning and burning. One might recall what Geothe said when a friend made moral objections over a simple romance he had written called ‘Elective Affinities’, Goethe replied "But I didn't write the book for you, I wrote it for little girls!" Meaning the book is altogether wholesome and romantic and that only a moralizing old man could find anything in it to object to!
 
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Take Personal and Active Responsibility
It is important for me to repeat again that some students believe that knowledge is passed on from tutor to students in some magical, effortless way that requires no struggle from the student. Learning cannot be done if you abdicate individual involvement and choices from the process so that taking responsibility for the ills of one’s own making, loses out to the ease of blaming anything and everything on others and in so doing you undermine the values of a successful education: personal discipline, independence of thought, worthwhile learning effort and simple curiosity. There are several important aspects:

Consider personal Learning Incentives – what are the drivers for learning; this was discussed earlier with possible incentives being: learning is an investment for the future, learning gives you more choices, appreciation of your own world view and its associated values, a good education is to be highly prized, employment prospects, learning can be a delight, a buzz and so on, your learning will be valued by others, learning is a shared experience and learning stays with you throughout life.

Setting Challenges and Targets – an excellent way to demonstrate that you are taking charge of your learning is to continually set yourself challenges then plan a way to achieve them and finally putting effort into realizing your plan. Try to do this in a structured, little by little way, gradually but continuously moving forward in your learning.

Be aware of the Consequences – when learning is rushed, difficult or work avoided there are bound to be consequences later on. It is interesting to note that we cannot know the future but we can work out the consequences of our actions with a fair degree of certainty. It follows that if you learn badly then it’s easy to see what the consequences are for further leaning and events such as examinations and job interviews.

Manage the Cacophony - our lives are full of moments, people, events, decision, deadlines, responsibilities, interconnections and sometime they can overwhelm us in much the same way that excessive noise can bring us to a standstill. It is said that our brains receive and process 11 million inputs a second so it’s not ever going to be easy to slow down and work steadily and reflect. But if you are aware of the cacophony we all live in you can plan your way through it or around it.

Don’t be, or Accept a Cuckoo – this might sound an odd idea but sadly there are plenty of people who don’t want to do any work themselves and they will, like the cuckoo, get someone, anyone else to do it for them including the tutor. Their methods might be as simple as to copy but more often it’s to badger everyone to help them or show them what to do next and such people can place huge burdens on everyone around them because they demand all the resources but give nothing in return and often we can feel obliged, just like the cuckoo’s foster parents, to help even to our own detriment. So don’t be a cuckoo and recognise cuckoo’s when you see them and avoid them or make sure they know you have recognised them. Learning is something one shares with not steals from others.

Avoid the negative – it is inevitable that in learning (and life) things from time to time will go wrong, you will feel let down, you will feel depressed or sad and in general these things cannot be avoided entirely. However, they can make one negative and if it remains unchecked it can become a total negativity where you begin to blame everything and everyone: they don’t understand, they are not helpful and so on. However, grinding out a list of things or people to blame on its own is not a way forward and you must begin to see your own part in all this and start considering the choices you made and can make and in so doing plan your way out of this downward spiral.

Often we can be like Cassandra in the play Agamemnon where she laments “Ah, mortal affairs: in times of good fortune you may compare them to a shadow; but ill fortune, a watery sponge wipes out the picture at a stroke”. This of course is true that one moment we see a rosy future and things look good and the next moment it’s washed away at a stroke. But even though this is the way things are in regarding how we might feel they will only stay that way if YOU let them.

A moment’s thought will show a rational mind that for example, blaming someone or something will not help get you out of a difficulty neither will pushing the responsibility of your plight onto someone else move you forward or just grumbling that you don’t know what to do. This does not mean that all you difficulties are your own fault but it does mean that if your only response is to grumble and brood over your situation, then nothing will change - you have to take some action yourself and that action might be to get advice, make a phone call, collect some resources or any number of small steps but you must do something positive!​
 
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Record your study time
This is really part of taking responsibility for many failures occur because too little time has been spent on study in all its forms or if you like practising your subject. We all learn at slightly different paces but there is very good evidence to suggest that if you really want to get to the top flight academically, really reach your potential then you need to put in about 1,000 hours study per year according to Gladwell (2008) or more simply about 20 hours a week or something like 3 or 4 hours a day (assuming a 5 day working week).

Research indicates that this has little to do with talent (though that might give you a better start) or how intelligent you are, it’s the same for everyone, to get to the top you have to be dedicated. Another way of looking at this is to say if you are good enough to start a course then you will succeed and get to the highest standard if you put in the required hours of work. The corollary is of course that if your make the choice (either implicitly or explicitly) not to put in the hours of work then you will never get to the top, it’s impossible.

One needs to remember that learning is not just sitting in a garret somewhere on your own night and day. Learning is about a whole range of activities including the most obvious ones: learning on your own, talking with others, spending time in a library, reading books (or Journals, magazines, reading anything), joining seminars, discussion over coffee, using message boards, meeting your tutor, classroom lessons, talking to someone in the corridor; the list is endless as one can learn anywhere, anytime, from anyone or anything. Daniel Goleman in his excellent book Emotional Intelligence recalls one of the most importance and unexpected lessons of his life and it occurred when he was in no mood to learn – it occurred on a bus in New York City on a steamy August afternoon and the lesson came from a middle aged, black bus driver. Believe me, if you think you can only learn from textbooks on your subject area or in classrooms or only from those you respect you are going to throw away huge amounts of often the most valuable learning time and the opportunities it brings.

One does not have to work all the time and it is just as important to take a break as it is to study. The problems occur when you are forever taking breaks. It depends how you work it out but it is a good assumption to consider that you have about 15 hours every day available to you for activities. Therefore, with just a little bit of discipline it should not be all that difficult to set aside say 4 hours a day on average. But I emphasis, this is about motivation, perseverance and discipline and these are the foundation of a good education.

So I recommend you keep at least for a few months a record of all the time you use to study in all its forms and then see how close to this golden figure of 1,000 hours per year you get and that will be a very good indicator of your likelihood of success.
 
I dont know, maybe its just that phase of my life, I feel that finishing my bachelor's degree (with success) has not benefitted me any more than what learning farming benefits a young farmer. Reading books is an investment of resources. Especially in the evolutionary struggle, all resources must be directed towards reproduction and survival. I am not sure how reading more books than those which I have already read will help me in survival.... not to discourage anyone, just my different opinion on the scheme of things in life. Maybe I'll change it when I become happy in few days.
 
Wa7abiScientist said:
I dont know, maybe its just that phase of my life, I feel that finishing my bachelor's degree (with success) has not benefitted me any more than what learning farming benefits a young farmer. Reading books is an investment of resources. Especially in the evolutionary struggle, all resources must be directed towards reproduction and survival. I am not sure how reading more books than those which I have already read will help me in survival.... not to discourage anyone, just my different opinion on the scheme of things in life. Maybe I'll change it when I become happy in few days.
Click to expand...

This is a very honest answer but may I tell you it is not uncommon. Often when you complete something you are left feeling a little empty, the struggle the excitement of the challenge is over and so you wonder was it all worth it. Winston Churchill, no slouch with regard to getting things done once said that "ambitions and achievement are like ice, it melts as soon as you touch it". I had a student with me the other day and he had just won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music - he should have been overjoyed, happy but he ran into the same brick wall you have - what does it all mean, is there not something else in life?

There is an old saying of Geothe "We are never further from our desires than when we imagine we possess what we desire." And Aeschylus writing 3,000 years ago said "Ah, mortal affairs: in times of good fortune you may compare them to a shadow; but ill fortune, a watery sponge wipes out the picture at a stroke." One might also mention OT prophets and the prophet of Islam who all went though tough times and paradoxically, often after success.

But although life is uncertain we can hold on to a certainty that comes through faith because God has somehow the future in his hands and you have a place there whether small or great but you can make a difference for good. You might find some help in the words of Isaiah for its is not ours to know the future (we are blind to it) but it is our privileged to trust God for it.

Isaiah 42:16 - I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.
 
Give and Take Feedback
Broadly speaking there are two kinds of feedback: positive and negative. In terms of value, negative feedback is typically more useful because it helps you see flaws and weaknesses in either your learning or your attitude or characters. So negative feedback in particular is essential information that allows you to make changes contrast, positive feedback tells you where your work is correct but that might not be all that useful to learning. For example, suppose the only feedback you get is “this is a very good answer, I like the way you structured it” what real value is that to you as far as growing your knowledge is concerned although it may boost your ego.

Now, I am not saying that feedback should not be positive but the point being made is that if your outlook primarily seeks positive feedback, confirmation that you are right then that may have a detrimental effect on your learning. Far better to seek even welcome feedback as a real aid to you getting better and better, then you don’t need ego boosts YOU know you are on an upward trajectory. Basically:

Seek Critical Feedback not Simple Confirmation – many students send work to the tutor but their only interest is in knowing if it is ‘right’ so they can stop working. Now, of course you want to know if you are on the right track but if you stop at that point your strategy is next to worthless; no true learner one hopes is silly enough to believe that his work is perfectly ‘right’ and therefore impossible to improve.

Give Feedback – a tutor’s job is to give feedback but often students make it impossible because they will not explain where they are having difficulty; it may be hard for you to do this but you must try and show that you really want to understand. It is impossible to believe that a student can have studied the notes, examples and exercises but not be able to show where their difficulties lay because then something might have been done.​
 
Learn to Debate and use Valid Arguments
We all need to become skilled in assembling our answers to questions and so one needs to learn about the way we assemble honestly evidence both for and against and then use persuasion and argument to reach a valid conclusion. This is not a simple matter and cannot be just learned from text books, it has to be practiced. There are of course rules of logic and they will help us avoid contradictions, inconsistencies, exaggerations (in our own arguments) and you can easily look them up. But it might be a good idea to join an on line discussion board on a subject you are interested in and start adding your own thoughts, reading what other say, listening to what others say, refuting arguments, proposing your own arguments – get practicing.

Be careful, this is not about you becoming a pain, not letting anybody else get a word in, thinking you are always right, you are always objective. It’s about learning and sharing even when you profoundly disagree with someone. It is as well to take to heart and warning from Francis Bacon said:

“The human understanding is not composed of dry light, but it is subject to influence from the will and the emotions, a fact that creates fanciful knowledge; man prefers to believe what he wants to be true.”​
Here are eight suggested modes of persuasion where you can use just one or more than one but they will be of no value unless you know what your main premises area with clarity. These I think apply to writing or speaking.
Mimic - the mannerisms if those you are trying to persuaded.
Framing - lead people to think about an issue in a way that advantages to you: instead of saying inheritance tax say its death tax if you oppose it etc.
Less is more - giving too many reasons in favour, hardens opinion against you - working on two reasons to support your arguments is optimal
Grind them down – nagging, keep at it but with reason not brute force.
The medium is the means, always consider what to use in you argument
Style over substance - don’t hesitate or stumble or give them time to think
Get them angry and feel a sense of injustice so justifying your ideas
Resistance is not futile – move toward a target bit by bit​

There are some things you should not do: don’t insult or denigrate, don’t accuse them of unethical motives, don’t say they lack knowledge, don’t say they are uneducated, don’t call them names, don’t say they are lying etc. Strategies like these will always look as if you are attacking the person not the arguments so we must always act with integrity and honesty.

Based on: Jones, D, L. and Motluk, A, (2008, May 10), How to get exactly what you want, New Scientist, Pages 32-37
 
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Keep it simple
Anyone can be organised by simply knowing what they have to do and then taking the time to write things down and make planning decisions. Everyone has the necessary skills to do this but often the habit of using them is missing. Allen (2008) suggests there are 5 stages to taking control of your workload: collect, process, organises, review (or you can say evaluate) and do. Allen then offers the following guidance.
Collection - the first and essential step is to gather together everything in your life that needs attention into a list or what Allen calls an ‘inventory’; this is really the same as knowing what you have to do and unless you do this there will be a gnawing sense of anxiety because you are not in control and often this leads to you hoping for the best, ignoring the need for effort and although by then you may know what you have to do you will not have done it and find yourself disappointed, looking round for appeasement or blaming the world around you.

Process – when you know what you have to do based on your inventory you must take time and as a first step, ask for each item, ‘do I need to take action’ and if the answer is yes, decide the physical action and get on with it. Often when you do this you will find the actions to be in principle simple but awkward or embarrassing; this is usually tied up with your personality; but you must get through that and make that call, delegate a task, get permission, set up a meeting and so on. The vital idea is to get into good habits and develop self-discipline so one is not just doing what we want because it gives us a kind of instant gratification and avoiding what we feel to be unpleasant.

Allen suggests you should also be ruthless with your inventory at this stage, especially if something does not need action; be aware that our lives are often filled with things like this and they can and do get in the way; they may be just rubbish that you should forget about, just things you need to file away for future use or a project ideas for the future so just set up a reminder and move on. One point here is that if you come across tasks that will only take a few minutes (Allen suggest 2 minutes) such as a phone call or making a note then do it straightway.

Simplify using Divide and Conquer – most people when they draw up their inventory and try to keep it going day to day will end up with huge lists of unfinished work. Partly this is because often we do not set priorities but mostly Allen suggests it’s because we don’t group similar things together so we contextualise the tasks. For example, put all calls on one list or all things you have to collect on another. This does not mean you have dozens of lists but you have just one but it’s grouped. As an analogy, my wife has a shopping list on the computer which she prints out every week and it’s organised in the same way as products in the actual supermarket, that way when she does the shopping she does not have to wander up and down rows, go backwards and forwards and rarely forgets an item she needs because similar things are grouped together.

Review – this means going through you list of tasks or reminders, your inventory, to keep track of long term goals, plan your next set of actions and see what is new. It’s like supermarket shopping, some things you buy every week and others less frequently and occasionally, a new need arises and you add it to your list or you decide that certain things are longer need so they get crossed off. One might notice here that we often buy on impulse and this tends to muddle our lists and this is how sometimes in our work we add things to our inventory and then live to regret it.

Systematic Filing – Allen suggest you get rid of your ‘pile file’ and instead develop and efficient general reference system because it’s a simple fact of life that if it takes you more than a few minutes to file something away carefully you will not do it and instead throw it into your ‘pile file’ and effectively lose it.

I cannot say what it might be for you: a labelled folder, alphabetic organisation, a cabinet but whatever it is, think carefully about its design and keep it as simple as possible. Using my shopping example earlier, one might have a very efficient grouped listing system to do the shopping but if you then get home and stuff all you have bought from the supermarket into your cupboards and pantry haphazardly because then all the gains you have made in efficient shopping are lost because you now never know where anything is when you want it. In a similar way, if you have a well organised personal inventory and then become haphazard in the resources you use to deal with it then the inventory is rendered worthless and will then be source of further anxiety because it reminds you just how inefficient you are.​
Allen, D, (2008), Making it all Work: Wining at the Game of work and Business Life, Viking Adult, ISBN 067001995X
 
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I'm somewhat new to this thread. :ermm:

But I love the content. Thank you for sharing!
 
Be aware of Wobble
It is unfortunately often true that when we make a mistake or a poor choice or we are ignored or get criticism it can shake our self-esteem and our confidence wobbles, tending to make us defensive when anyone points these things out so that instead of looking for solutions or resolutions we look for excuses or someone to blame. Be aware that wobble can occur even if you turn out to be in the right and that can end up as self-righteousness or pomposity.

This is all perhaps a natural reaction and we often cannot help ourselves but we can try to be aware of it so that we don’t misinterpret help, criticism or being ignored as a personal attack or fall into self-righteousness. So when something offends you and puts you into a wobble, be like a spinning top and wait until you settle down before you consider and respond always remembering that you may in fact be very much in the wrong or completely innocent but that of itself is not as important as to how you respond positively to what happens to you or what is said about you.
 
Learn to Value Effort and Struggle
It is unfortunately often true that students attach little real value or gain a sense of self-esteem because of the effort and struggle needed to learn. Yet one cannot have success (legitimately) unless you work hard so there is an unbreakable bond between effort and success. It follows, that effort is as much a reason for self esteem as success because one cannot have the one without the other.

If something is to be done well it seems that there is always struggle. Beethoven in his 5th Symphony, one of the most popular and well known works every written wrote many drafts over many months as he struggled to get it just right. In the “Rainbow” by D. H. Lawrence, we can see in almost every line of his original manuscripts there are crossings out, changes and additions. So if these intellectual and creative giants had to struggle so do we and one might recall those famous words of Frederick Douglass on the abolition of slavery but is every bit as true about learning, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress”

The whole point here as any one who has struggled to learn will tell you, the fact that you struggled and got there on your own is worth as much in terms of pride and self-esteem as gained by achievement - in any case no one who works hard and struggles will fail to get where they want to go in life.
 
Be Optimistic
It is easy to become discouraged when learning because of the effort needed no matter who we are and we realize how little we really know. But it is like this for everyone: Einstein did not discover relatively over a week end, James Maxwell spent a life time in Cambridge developing his four famous and earth shatteringly important equations, the Beatles spent 10 years defining their sound and so on - learning has a price tag and that price tag is your persistence, commitment through good times and bad.

Michael Thomas a famous language teacher talked about the effort to learn a new language but he also said that if we are committed and optimistic then the effort can be exciting, stimulating and self-rewarding and what is true for language learning is true for any learning.
 
Is anyone afraid of not being hired after graduation? Especially if you're in the social science field & taking something like politics/law/sociology.

It's not very often that you're flipping through the newspaper when you see an job-advertisement looking for someone with a Bachers degree in politial science.

I guess this is my struggle in life. SubhanAllah... one of the most difficult things is the inability to know what your future holds, and whether or not you'll be happy with it. It's so hard that it frustrates me.
 
heavenlyspot said:
Is anyone afraid of not being hired after graduation? Especially if you're in the social science field & taking something like politics/law/sociology.

It's not very often that you're flipping through the newspaper when you see an job-advertisement looking for someone with a Bachers degree in politial science. I guess this is my struggle in life. SubhanAllah... one of the most difficult things is the inability to know what your future holds, and whether or not you'll be happy with it. It's so hard that it frustrates me.
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In some ways that is what is exciting about life, that it is uncertain and whether we like it or not that is that way God has made it. Think how boring it would be if we could know the result of a cricked or football match before it even stated, how we would miss those highs and lows as the match progresses.

It is not often that job adverts ask for a degree name since they are advertising a job so that is what they will say and talk about - an employers wants to ask you what you can do not what your degree is.

So do some research, find out what sort of Jobs political scientist do, ask your friends, find out what the journals or magazines that go with your subject are, ask your tutors, go to the careers guidance or even think of another career - if you stop worrying and fretting and blaming the way the world works and start fighting and struggling for your future you will certainly get there. No one is going to offer it up to you on a plate.

Remember that is the way God has made us and to complain about it or get frustrated over it is to in effect put the blame on God when he has built it that way for you to reach the skies..
 
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