Despite the fact that you can't control the environment there are definitely things you can do to deal with that environment. The environment isn't random; in fact, it's been honed for quite some time.
You are quite correct that students have individual styles- strengths and weaknesses. What works for me won't work for you and vice versa. Moreover, what works for me with math won't work for me with psychology.
But there are things that are more valuable to do than other things simply because of the way brains work. Rewriting notes, for example, is a waste of time. Re-organizing notes, however, is priceless.
This is one professor doing his best to help, and I appreciate that. But there is better information out there.
> Despite the fact that you can't control the environment there are definitely things you can do to deal with that environment.
That's not really how things like this work. Competitive, live-or-die environments will always have a group that will not be able to survive those environments. It's in the definition. If you create an environment which requires a near-perfect alignment of factors, there will be many people who do not have that alignment and those people will be at risk.
> You are quite correct that students have individual styles- strengths and weaknesses.
And some people have more weaknesses than strengths. For those people to survive, they need to have access to something other people do not, which is unlikely.
Professors should stop trying to help, and should instead ask struggling students, as well as students who used to be struggling but stopped, and vice versa. But I've never really seen anyone listen to a struggling student, they're usually just labeled lazy and ignored. Advice on studying coming from people who likely had very little issues with it due to the good alignment of factors is near-useless to people who do not have such an alignment. It's much easier to do your homework every time when you can quickly understand the material due to prior exposure or good fluid intelligence. It's a different story when it takes you 5 hours to solve problem #1 and there are 10 total. Something's gotta give.
Advice on how to study better is not needed. Studying better requires time, a nurturing environment, time, good pedagogy and/or structure, and time. It is known, it's just not done, because it's not the priority. There are techniques, yes, and different approaches, but they themselves require time to figure out, and time can smooth over such problems. When you take away time from people, you must admit the goal is less about teaching people something and more about trying to figure out who to toss aside. And you will notice also that in such an environment, the students can get better at studying all they want, and the filter will just get more stringent and narrow. The problem is the environment. If you ignore the environment, all you will see is better and better coping strategies combined with a mysterious lack of improvement of the overall situation.
And this is coming from someone who had it pretty all right compared to some people I knew.
Really appreciate your self awareness. I come from a lower-middle class family. I sleep on a couch in a small crowded house with a 3y/o niece constantly screaming at the top of her lungs.
The libraries near me are all really just rec-centers, my uni is a 70min bus ride away, so having a place to just "study" is incredibly difficult.
I still manage, but I can only imagine what having one's own roon must be like and the time saved from travelling to and from school...such is life.
Thanks for the reply, puts into words a lot of what I've been thinking about lately.
I wish I had an answer for you. To ease distraction you might want to try "brown noise." I use my mynoise.net (I'm not affiliated- I probably found it in a thread here on HN.) I also have some "nature" mp3s like ocean waves crashing and rainfall and such. It's remarkable how well it gets me in "the zone."
One word of caution: don't turn up the volume to drown out the background noise. You only need to be able to hear the brown noise, not overwhelm everything else. I did that and my hearing was off for a day and a half. I think that because the sound energy is distributed more evenly throughout the spectrum you're getting more intensity on your eardrum than you think.
My bus ride was an hour, riding a bike brought it down to half that [a], plus I got free fitness gains. Of course you trade the time gained for sweatiness etc. I don't know if that's an option for you, but just putting it out there.
[a] I only generalise because it's true for almost any chosen route in my town: bus time = 2x bike time = 4x driving time.
Competitive, live-or-die environments will always have a group that will not be able to survive those environments.
It's true- you can only do your best. The problem I have is when a student is capable but doesn't know how. If for exactly that student that I built studyswami.com
But I've never really seen anyone listen to a struggling student
Then you've obviously never been a struggling student in my class.
Advice on how to study better is not needed.
Yes- it is. There is a lot of info out there about how to do it that isn't filtering down. There is also something very weird going on that I personally don't understand. There is a reluctance on the part of the student to change what they do. That reluctance may actually be the root of the problem. Somehow, they will listen to a trainer tell them how to bench press, but they won't listen to a professor tell them how to study. Very weird, and something I'm actively trying to overcome.
EDIT to add: Indeed there are competitive environments, but most colleges that I'm aware of don't want to see their students fail.
>This is one professor doing his best to help, and I appreciate that. But there is better information out there.
It's also worth remembering that not all students have study skills, and so having an article that lists both reasonably useful advice (even if it isn't perfect) AND (even more importantly) gets the student thinking / reflecting about how to improve their performance can be valuable.
I'm gonna guess (since you're here on Hacker News) that you've got a paying job in the tech sector, which in turn requires a whole lot of self-management skills (like managing your time). There exist perfectly good people who are, say, 18 and terribly naive about what they'll need to do in order to get ahead. Maybe their high school wasn't terribly demanding, maybe they just didn't push themselves that hard. Sometimes they arrive at college, realize that they actually want to do better, and having something like this can sometimes help a light go on.
But yeah - if you're holding down a tech job then this probably all seems super-basic.
I've had a full time job in the tech sector for 4 years now.
I'm also studying part time. And I don't even know how I've made it this far. Studying has always been difficult for me. I have no problem understanding complex ideas or theories. I just suck at remembering them, and keeping a schedule to study so that I can do well in exams.
I'm the same way. Give me a problem, I'll find a solution or a workaround. Ask me to study for a project or a cert, I'm screwed. I'll forget what I have read and I'll have to start over again. It's quite irritating, changing the study venue doesn't really help me. So.....
Actually, I'm a former community college professor who has built a web site dedicated to helping people learn how to study, manage time, etc. It addresses exactly those people you are referring to.
I've been on all sides of the academic issue- good student, struggling student, and teacher.
You are quite correct that students have individual styles- strengths and weaknesses. What works for me won't work for you and vice versa. Moreover, what works for me with math won't work for me with psychology.
But there are things that are more valuable to do than other things simply because of the way brains work. Rewriting notes, for example, is a waste of time. Re-organizing notes, however, is priceless.
This is one professor doing his best to help, and I appreciate that. But there is better information out there.