Getting the Best out of College or University

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Empathy
It seems that we are all ‘wired’ for social engagement and such engagement changes over time and it may be that our boundaries expand or sometimes become smaller. In the Enlightenment many great ideas emerged and one major strand was that we are all rational human beings, detached agents pursuing our own self-interest and typically nation states reflect that view. But this must I think be seen a one part of the picture and an empathetic view expand s the picture. We can see this is families and communities and perhaps in the modern world most importantly in written communication and it is easy to see how this expands or extends our social networks and because it bring understating, expands our empathy – that is why it is such a dangerous trend in any society or community to try to close the door on communication be it in restrictions on books, or what people say, or making people see the world through some social, politically, religious or any other form of self contracted or accepted lens.

Jeremy Rifkin said that it is a conundrum of history that a complex civilization bring more people together but they create more entropy (or you can say disorder) in the process so we need to find a way of increasing empathy but decreasing entropy. This can be done by having a law for everything and everything has a law but institutions and circumstances don't stand still so in a way is an impossible goal and in any case, human nature simply cannot tolerate such totalitarianism. One possibility is further more powerful and open communication facilities and so a greater sharing of information and through that resources and perhaps the creating of new institutions.
 
Reflect, Refresh without Rushing
Learning takes time and effort and that learning has to be refreshed from time to time; it’s not a once only experiences. The main way to learn and refresh is by reflection and that means looking back over what has been learned but what is often not understood is that reflection is the act of deliberately slowing down our habitual learning processes so we can take a closer look at our experiences and learning. We might summarise as follows:

Look for Ripples - When you get one bit right, one bit you really understand work from it to get other bits right because if you can work and understand one part you can with effort do that everywhere.

Learn Little by Little – learning takes time, little by little; one simply cannot learn everything in some intellectual ‘Big Bang’. Usually, we learn in small nuggets of insight and understanding, rather like jigsaw pieces, but eventually and gradually over time our minds, thinking and understanding are built up.

Treasure Constant Review – ask how your work has gone so far, has it been simple, what helped you, what did not help, were there any mistakes and can I avoid them in the future, were the notes useful and if not why not, has it been hard, have you shared it with anyone, did you make good use of your time, have you asked the tutor or anyone a question, can I change or improve my learning strategies and so on. Once you have done that make a plan to improve even more in the way you work.​
 
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Reflect on your Learning Habits
We all have certain ways or habits in which we like to learn; some of these will be good habits and some will be bad ones but all good habits can be improved and new habits created. We all habitually use a particular strategy because we feel comfortable with it but that does not mean it’s a good one or that it cannot be improved or even discarded. So it is necessary to look at our habits and review them for possible improvements or abandon them as no longer useful
 
Become self-aware
Most of us think we know who we are but often that knowing excludes or pushes into the shadows the uncomfortable things about our personalities tending to make us look for excuses rather than facing up to and fixing any failings we have.

This aspect was mentioned earlier but it is vital to know how you see and organises your world and generate meaning from your experiences. You may think of this as examining Weltanschauung, which is often loosely translated as world-view but carries the idea that our world view is shaped by who we are; our culture, our teachers, our religion, our family, our friends, our choices and indeed a whole host of things over which we have in general little control in their formative years and means that two people will not act in an identical way even when confronted by identical circumstances and indeed we ourselves may not think, feel and act in the same way from one more or less identical situation to another at a different time or place.

We cannot do much about who we are but we can become more aware of ourselves, our thinking, our feelings our actions; that will help us stop blaming everything but ourselves and over time our learning will change who we are because the meaning systems that people adopt, usually unconsciously, are as important or perhaps more important than logic in shaping their thinking.
 
The Woody Allen Reflection and Management Strategy
In earlier sections we have talked about reflection and some aspect of that activity but being practical, we do need a strategy to deal with it because one of the biggest obstacles to reflection is that most of us are reluctant to make changes in the sense of learning something new, modifying what we know or getting rid of stuff that is outdated or even wrong. You may think you are open to new insights but when we are really tested that is not usually the case because we like to learn something and say to ourselves more or less that certain work processes or learning is now complete, finished, done with, cracked but it never is and openness should help us expand, confirm and sometimes reject what we already know.

Allan Alda, who often worked with the Woody Allen, explained how Allen, the director worked and it was amazing and insightful. The method was simple, if the actors did not do a scene as expected Allen’s method was to go over that scene during the night and re-write and keep doing that night after night until the actors did what he wanted. Put simply in learning terms, you produce work and get feedback; you then modify the work and try again until it is a right as you can get it and you keep doing that forever.

The same applies when you are learning because you get to a point where you feel you have a complete or at least clear understanding and it’s tempting to stop there. But that is unwise, and so we must be continually on the lookout for new insights or examples or updates that will expand our leaning and when they come, go back and revise our notes to update our new or enhanced understating.

Be aware that many students never do this because they believe their learning is complete but almost always only those with a superficial learning ever think like this. This is perhaps best summed up by Rousseau in his ‘Confessions’, when he said “in complete contrast to theologians, doctors, and philosophers, they only admit to be true such things as they are able to explain; they make their own understanding the measure of all possibilities.” Although here I have focused on learning the same malaise affects the processes and structures we set up and we simply assume that they were right, perfect and tacitly resist any notion of changing them.

Finally, one must say that an argument against the Woody Allen method is that it looks like you are changing things all the time. This is however is not the case, one works as hard as you can to get started and produce something solid and typically, if you are alert modifications will arise very quickly after that and as you incorporate them things will start to slow down and a stable process or understanding emerges and from then on it is usual that further changes come less frequently – but they will always come and the secret of growth us never to resist or stifle them. A simple rule might be useful here. If you put in place a process or understanding and you subsequently discover it is clearly not working or wrong, change it straightaway but for all other things keep the updates until a convenient moment arises.
 
Be Systematic and Systemic
We know that serendipity plays its part in learning but it is wise to be systematic rather than haphazard about learning, starting with the basics and working from there plus organising and structuring your knowledge and skills via notes and practice. One needs to be systemic so that you are ever alert to links between one part of your knowledge and another and that alone will increase your learning powers and potential.

In a practical sense you must be systematic in your filing so repeating what was mentioned earlier, get rid of your ‘pile file’ and develop an efficient general reference system: a labelled folder, alphabetic organisation, a cabinet but whatever it is, think carefully about its design and keep it as simple as possible and don’t delay updating it because you “don’t have time” or any other reason because all that will do will be to render any organisation you have useless.

The world is a complex place and when you are learning there are 1001 things you have to remember and that is a next to impossible task unless you are organised and one of the best ways of organising is to use simple lists, checklist if you like and this can be on paper or you can use Iphone Apps
 
Review Personal Learning Strategies
Try a different learning strategy to the one you habitually use. If your strategy is based on always using examples and copying from them then change it to writing your own notes instead, if it’s about working with others then work on your own, if it’s your usual way to just give up and guess hoping for the best then try some struggling instead, if you can only work at night in total silence try working in the park or in the bus or train etc. If you put any arbitrary limits on where, how or what you can learn it’s like shooting yourself in the foot on the starting line of 1,500 meter race, you might still finish but no one will be there to see it.
 
Re: Learning an Investment

Appreciate that what YOU have to say will be valued
Too often students simply assume that if they memorize everything then that is learning which allows them to pass any assessment by just giving back to the teachers what he or she gave them. However, there is a huge difference for example between memorizing a definition and using a definition in a problem situation. Memorizing shows only partial learning but usage, being able to apply the definition in many situations demonstrates conclusively that you have leaned what that definition is really about. As a very simply analogy, someone might memorize a poem in German without understanding a word of what they are saying.

Teachers are interested in what YOU have to say, they find value in that, they want to see what it is you have leaned and they do that by seeing you explain, explore and apply the knowledge gained by diligent reading into and around the subject. This applies everywhere, if we were discussing a novel in class there is no value in simply repeating back to the tutor what he or she has told you – no, you must use what you have been given and researched yourself and then by exploring, and explaining and applying it add a new idea or viewpoint or insight of your own.

Goethe, the most celebrated of late 16/17th century German polymaths talked about other people’s work that he had assimilated and then used in his own writing when he said “what is there is mine, and whether I got it from books or life is of no consequence. The only point is, whether I have made a right use of it". This is a liberating idea and shows just how eagerly you tutors will be to see you assimilate knowledge from books, journals and life and then in your own writing showing that you made excellent use of it.

Similarly, if we were dealing with precise scientific things we still need to demonstrate what we know by application. For example, you might learn Ohm’s law for electric circuits and that would be easy but at some point you will be given perhaps a complex circuit and have to find out the various voltages and currents and the real test as to whether you know Ohm’s law will be shown if you can deal with any circuit not simply by being able to reproduce the law.
 
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Learning?
In the previous item it was stated that the tutor wants to hear what you have to say. Now this does not mean simply inventing things to say which have little or no foundation. It follows, that when you include your own thoughts and ideas you need also to show how they arose and that invariably means from your wider reading where you noticed something or a connection to something or it made you think of another direction. This kind of thing can occur anywhere at any time so keep alert and don’t despise anything. For example, at one time I had trouble understanding the real difference between induction and deduction and it was only when I was reading a detective novel and how they set about finding a piece of evidence that the ‘penny dropped’ and I finally understood.

Be warned, if you think that learning can only occur at certain times or at certain places or that only certain books have anything to say then you will be shooting yourself in the foot by adding such useless restrictions. The fact is you can learn at any time from anyone or anything. I once heard someone say they would only accept advice or information from someone they respected. This is understandable but nonsense because it means that you are putting the source above the information, presumably because it strokes your ego? This does not mean we accept anything but it does mean we listen sceptically and then see what can be leaned. In this way you let your own day by day experiences enhance your knowledge and understanding.
 
Re: Learning an Investment

Ask good Questions – the tutor wants to help you but questions of the form “please comment on my answer” are hopeless, just a different way of saying ‘is it right’. The trouble with just asking for comment is that the tutor will say what he thinks but it may still leave answered questions in your mind (which the tutor has no access to). If you have really learned the work you should KNOW that your answer is right, but if after a struggle you are still uncertain about one point or another then ask a question about those and then your learning will be complete.

Stop thinking that everything must be easy - and if not it’s you who are a bit dull or the notes don’t cover it or the tutor is hopeless or any number of excuses as long as you can avoid seeing that YOU need to work harder. Learning can be a pleasure even a delight, discovering new things and if it requires a bit of struggle or a huge struggle then go for it not give up at the first hurdle. Some things are of course easy but most are not and you will have to dig deep and work hard. Often students will find something hard and rush to the tutor asking 'show us an easy way' and that betrays a mind that wants to avoid the struggle that always attends learning. To avoid the struggle is to throw away the wonder of discovery for some kind of instant gratification with zero lasting effect.

I often think it’s like running the 1,500 meter race, the first 400 are fine but then it starts to get tough, people get ahead of you, you get ahead of people, there is barging and tactics and then the last 400 are a real struggle but in the end you get there and know you trained as hard and did your best - contrast that with getting there but knowing it was not your best. As the great Billy-Jean King said “don’t look back saying I could have done that, look back saying I did it and I tried my best”.
 
Teach a topic – it is an old cliché to say one only really knows a subject when one has to teach it. It is certainly true that one has to feel confident to teach and often when teaching two things commonly happen. Firstly, one gets insight about a subject as we teach it or secondly, we often suddenly realises while we are teaching a topic that we don’t really understand it. So one way of learning and checking your learning is to explain what you have learned to another student, group of students or indeed anyone who will listen to you.

Be aware of the source of Reassurance - you are not a dullard with low intelligence, you can learn BUT being assurance in this can only come if you are willing to put in the necessary struggle and effort and stop looking for the easy way: short cuts, a magic formula, hints and tips or more and more examples to copy.
 
Re: Critiscism is good for you!!

I will make a few post over the next week or so on dealing with your emotions in study because often one can get really down and start to fall behind.

Use Images, logic and Narrative – when one gets into difficulty resulting in frustration, anger, fearfulness, resentfulness and so on with learning or with life’s circumstances because things are not easy or not going your way, your emotions and feelings can start to dominate and often make it worse. So dealing with emotions and feelings is a part of learning (and life) and generally there are several ways of combating them. The ideas here can be dealt with alone or we can share how we feel with those we trust or indeed anyone who will listen.

Labelling – it is often helpful to label your emotions and feelings so you know what they really are and can take steps to deal with them. You may not be able to change the circumstances or fix what has gone wrong but you can deal with how you feel about them. There are of course a whole range of emotions both positive and negative: anger, outrage, vexation exasperation, indignation, acrimony, animosity, hostility, sorrow, gloom, melancholy, self-pity, low self-esteem, loneliness, despair, anxiety, apprehension, edginess, dread, panic, shock, contempt, scorn, distaste, revulsion, guilt, embarrassment, remorse, chagrin, humiliation, regret, contrition, no skills. We also have more positive ones such as: happiness. joy, bliss, delight, amusement, contentment, pride, thrill, gratification, satisfaction, acceptance, love, friendliness, whimsy, euphoria, trust, kindness, affinity, devotion, surprise, wonder and amazement.

If you can name feelings you can plan a way through them. For example, if you feel gloomy one might go and watch the ducks in the park, work in your garden or someone else’s garden, offer to help someone, have a good cry and talk it over with someone and so on but the key is to take action, it will not always be easy but this is where positive choices can be to your advantage because ultimately actions bring benefits. One might think that getting a bit down or sad is always a bad thing but we have to face the fact that as human beings that is how we are built. It follows, that sadness is a part of our ‘being’ and indeed it can often help because it makes us slow down and re-evaluate what it is we are doing or thinking and so enable us to plan a way out.
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Re: The past is over the future is not

Dealing with problems - a continuation of my previous post.

Logic - we can just work through the emotions and feelings logically, arguing as it were with ourselves to find a way through. The trouble with logic though is that it all rests on premises and if we are not honest with ourselves we construct them in such a way as to avoided the truth so this needs care and integrity.

Cycles – our lives are a series of cycles as we move through various events and Paulo Coelho helpfully describes them as shutting doors or ending chapters but what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? It follows, you can spend a long time wondering why this or that has happened, you can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain solid things that were so important in your life have turned to dust, just like that; you can blame yourself, someone else or circumstances. What has passed will not return and cannot be undone, things pass, and the best we can do is to let them go, before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished.

This is not about forgetting the past because it is often a warm experience to relive parts of it although often there are parts we do not wish to recover. So we can and must learn from our past but nevertheless we must let it go, so that we are not constantly reliving it and wasting the now. Living in the “now” may mean dealing with the consequences of the past but that just become part of your plan for the future.​
 
Dealing with problem, continued.

Narrative – this just means something like turning what is happening to you into a story in the hope that it will help, not necessarily to make things right (because sometimes things cannot be fixed) but narrating your own story may bring you a level of understanding so you can interpret events and move on. Often narrative is helped if its done as a dialogue but sometimes we or the other person is unsympathetic and so incapable of genuine dialogue and one or other of us end up ranting, scolding and lecturing the other. But incapacity for true dialogue implies incapacity for listening, tolerance, self-reflection and empathy and that can be totally destructive.

You may have found this idea hard to accept but in all relationships it is necessary to let others see at least a little of who you really are and one does this most often by talking and listening. Many of us like to ‘hide’ behind our personalities in case we let out something about ourselves we don’t like or don’t want others to know or we think it weakens our status or because we don’t want people to ask us to do things. This does not mean we ‘bare our soul’ to all and sundry but it does mean we have to show ourselves to be human, have some humanity and humility. One might say that often relationships are enhanced because of small and seemingly insignificant kindnesses and also sometimes because someone or some event shows us the truth about ourselves and that allows us to ‘open up’.
 
Imagery and imagination – this simply means recognising or creating an image or images (or you can say a picture) as to how you feel emotionally or how you feel about learning. You may also think of this as being rather like drama where one watches actors on a stage and as you listen and watch you are drawn into the action and your own thoughts and feeling get stimulated and often that experience can change how you feel and perceive things.

For example, you might struggle over something and feel it’s like an iron bar across your neck or you feel like a dried up flower or you are being treated like a rag doll. We all do this kind of thing instinctively but it’s worth reflecting on the image we create because often, very often that can open a new window, a new perspective on your troubles and therefore help you through them and gives you insight. Images work because they often capture the crux of a situation then shift you from narrative or logic to a symbolic structure (you can draw it as a picture if you like) and that can often spark insight and that insight may allow you to move on to action and the benefits that accrue from that. (Imagery can also be used as a direct learning tool).

Narrative and imagery are two essentially abstraction tools we can use to help us through hard times. As an illustration one might consider a mathematics problem we are stuck with, let say it’s working out the area of a rectangle with side 5 and 6, so think of that as your personal problem with its particular details. But if we can create an abstraction and instead of dealing with the actual number 5 and 6 we have the abstraction that area equals length times breadth it’s easier to stand away from the actual problem details and look at it more dispassionately.
 
Re: Choosing a major or main Subject thread

My last few posts have been about what kind of things you can usefully do when you get into difficulties of various kinds. This post is a summary and conclusion.

All the above are suggestions may bring you insight but if it stops there then it’s of no value to you, the insight must drive you to action and unless it does that whole experience may be wasted from a learning point of view. Action often expresses itself in two ways: its spurs you to plan a way forward because the image or narrative may give you direction and it should drive you towards your learning community so you can share what you have with them.

One final point; actions lead to consequences and if they are honest actions there will normally be positive personal consequences for you in terms of a sense of achievement and growth as well as a sense of peace and contentment that you are moving forward. This is not a new idea of course and one can find it in very ancient writing such as the Bhagavad Gita written perhaps 3,000 BCE where it talks about “loving the fruit of one’s actions because they bring peace”

One might also say here that it’s easy to become sad, depressed and anxious when things are going wrong or not as well as we had hoped but of itself those feelings may be part of your way of working through difficult times as often distressing events slow us down and make us re-evaluate where we are and that perhaps is a first step to planning your way through troubles, disappointments and worry giving you a renewed hope for the future. This also is not a new idea and Aeschylus 3,000 years ago said “hope forces back insatiable worry” and exhorted us to “throw off the vain burden of anxiety” and even suggested in one place that troubles past and present can be seen as “kindness because they teach us wisdom”.

A word of caution is needed here because sometimes things can get very serious and in those circumstances we need and must have medical help and advice. There is no shame attached to this and it must be treated like any other illness with care, time and action.
 
I hope now to make three very important post on learning strategies.

Focus and Learn the subject Basics - Be honest with yourself and ask if you really know and understand and can use the basics. For example, in research we might define them as: problem, target, actor, activity, data spotlight, study style and type, modes of thinking, research question, Research Methods, Data collection methods and processing methods. If you are ignorant of these basics, no strategy in the world will allow you to get to the right standard.

There is always plenty to learn but no teacher or text book can ensure that you know every twist and turn and nuance in a subject area so one needs to almost always focus starting with the basics and then moving on from there. It’s rather like watching out for shoplifters, we if try to watch everybody who comes into a store and watch them all the time you would need an army of people and technology and most of the time it would be a complete waste of effort. Instead, security staff look at customers for tell-tale signs, so they can pin-point who to watch more closely.
 
Re: Reflection & Ijtihad

Access the Learning Community
We are surrounded by a learning community: fellow students, teachers, family and we may extent this to authors via books and other resources. So access it. Share what you have and others will share and help you. The community is not for those who want always to take or copy the hard work of others but it is for genuine sharing and support. Learning can and should be a shared experience and often in a group we find that people have slightly different perspective or ideas and this can be a means of opening up a subject area and your mind to deep learning because in essence the problem solving power of the group is greater than that of a student working alone.

It goes almost without saying that sharing in a group is a great social experience and as you share you grow and you also share in one another’s success. Julia Chrysostomides, who died in 2008 was an outstanding scholar in Byzantine history and she (taught by no less a luminary than Iris Murdoch) called this learning community a “brotherhood of scholars“ and so emphasised the family like nature attached to fellow learners and like any family it’s for life. If you really engage with learning you will not only grow intellectually and open up your mind but you will make friends for life in the process. Good fellowship of this nature is like a virus, it spreads rapidly through the group and out of the group.
 
I have lecturers that are experts in their fields, and I don't fully take advantage of that. I don't really talk to them out of lecture hours but I'll try to do so from now on inshaAllah so I can fully benefit from my time at university.
 

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