Author: alexbswan

Posted on

That’s a Nap!

By Robin Hasty

We all know that starting college is a big, stressful step into life. There are seemingly endless tests, groups (sororities, fraternities, clubs), sports and theater events and oh, the laundry piling up in the corner of your room needs washed! Needless to say, things get a bit hectic. Time flies by and sometimes you’re so caught up in the whirlwind that suddenly the test you have is next week and you don’t remember when you last slept. Suddenly, you start to cram because you need to pass this test and a little echo of your older relative pops into your head of “don’t forget to sleep!” You want to push it out of your head as irrelevant because for one thing, it has been too long for them to be in school. Secondly, they can’t be right, right?

(insert buzzer sounds) You are wrong on a few things! Let’s see if we can fix these, shall we? Firstly, cramming won’t work. (Believe me, I know from experience.) Secondly and possibly the most important thing to take out of this, is do not forget to sleep! That relative was correct in their statement! (You don’t have to tell them that, though.)  Sleep is crucial to remembering all of that information that you picked up in class and everywhere else you went.

Continue reading “That’s a Nap!”

Posted on

Remembering Information Without Making Your Brain Explode

By Kendall Geuvens

Introduction
As a freshman entering college, it is a scary thought to meeting new people, scoping a bigger school, and not to mention, the different and harder information that will be learned. A lot of freshman fears are the studying that goes into class. How much do you study, what do you study, and how do you know that you studied enough? Not every freshman is going to study and be able to remember every bit of information that is in front of them. An important way that you will be able to memorize the information is through understanding how to effectively use short term memory.

Continue reading “Remembering Information Without Making Your Brain Explode”

Posted on

Improve Your Study Habits! Get Better Grades!

By Anya Bovilsky

Are you in need of reevaluating your study habits and ready to get better test scores? When I was in high school, I was constantly looking for new ways to study. I used cramming and waiting until the last minute, only focusing on one thing at a time, with and without music or background noise. For me, especially for definitions like in Spanish class or Anatomy, using flashcards and reviewing them over and over again was the best way for me to remember the material for the test and to help remember more for the final at the end of the semester. I had a teacher in my senior level Anatomy class that was convinced repetition every day would help us learn the material, so when we were learning all of the bones in the body, we would go over a different section every single day to help the information encoded into our brains better. I brought that with me to college and it has helped me maintain good grades. Continue reading “Improve Your Study Habits! Get Better Grades!”

Posted on

The Trick to Studying: Categories!

By Azure’Rea Hike

When I was a kid I used to play a pool game called ‘Categories’. The game went a little something like this:
-One person is ‘it’. This person has to pick a broad category. A category is defined as “groups of objects that belong to the same class of objects” (Goldstein). These classes are created by similarities of characteristics. Some examples could be favorite food, nickelodeon shows, Characters from a specific T.V. show, etc. The goal is to make the broad category as narrow as possible.

-The other players have to pick something that falls under the category. For example, if the category is favorite food someone might say pizza.
-The player that is ‘it’ has to turn his or her back to the other players and stand in the center of a pool wall. They have to guess which item in the category that the other players pick.
-If the player that is ‘it’ calls your item, you have to swim across the diameter of the pool and hope not to get tagged.

Continue reading “The Trick to Studying: Categories!”

Posted on

Do Yourself a Favor and Sleep–Your GPA Will Thank You

By David Cale

Introduction
Welcome to college! From making new friends, binge watching Netflix, and late-night Taco Bell runs, college is possibly the best way to make memories that will last forever. Since classes are during the day, most people reserve their evenings for these memory making occasions.
While a few late nights every now and then may not have any significant impacts on your day-to-day lifestyle, making a habit of staying up late can be incredibly detrimental to your ability to think, react, work, learn, and get along with others (1).
Not only does a poor sleep schedule make you susceptible to chronic health problems, it will also hind your brain’s ability to perform in class. Let’s go over the importance of sleep and a few tips to help you maximize your college experience.

Continue reading “Do Yourself a Favor and Sleep–Your GPA Will Thank You”

Posted on

Solving Problems With Problems

By Kali George

Picture this: You’re in your first abnormal psychology class learning about endless psychological disorders, and possible diagnoses. Your brain is cluttered with new information and you’re not sure how you’re going to recall it for your first test. Come time for test day you’re struggling to remember examples of obsessive compulsive behaviors, but sure enough you remember a prime example that your professor had given you on the famous show, Hoarders. Without a doubt you are able to use the analogy in order to remember the original concept discussed in class.

Continue reading “Solving Problems With Problems”

Posted on

I Can Only Imagine—Using Visual Imagery to Get That A

By Michelle Knepp

Congratulations! You’ve made it to college!  A whole new adventure stretches in front of you.  New friends, fun times, and oh yeah, that dreaded word, TESTS.  You have probably developed some system of studying while in high school.  Maybe that has worked well for you, OR maybe it hasn’t.  One of the challenges new college students face is the AMOUNT of information they are asked to learn in a short time.  How are you going to learn all that information and RETAIN it for the test?  Researchers have learned that HOW information is learned and put into our long-term memory is very important!  This is called ENCODING.  Using VISUAL IMAGES to get information into our long-term memory can be a real benefit when trying to RETRIEVE that information later.  When we retrieve information, we are taking it out of our long-term memory and putting it into our working memory (1).  This can is very helpful at test time! Continue reading “I Can Only Imagine—Using Visual Imagery to Get That A”

Posted on

Cell Phone Nation

By Angela Watson

The modern debate of how much cell phones distract us from everyday responsibilities can be settled by cognitive psychology. Researchers found that the average person only studies for approximately six minutes before moving on to a new task, which was primarily linked to cell phone and media usage (1). The prefrontal cortex is designed to only focus on a single item, leaving us to “swap focus” between items at a rapid pace when we multitask (2).

Continue reading “Cell Phone Nation”

Posted on

Stop, Drop and Roll Your Way Into a 4.0 GPA

By Kyle Oakes

Have you ever left class and wondered why you can barely remember a thing? I want you to try to remember what you were doing in that class. If you are like most college students, you probably snuck in a text message during the class, or maybe you clicked on that Facebook notification that popped up. Maybe you just dozed off. All of these could be affecting your grade drastically. In order to help your grade, you want to set those notifications, and ringer, on silent for the duration of the course, and stop dividing your attention to the wrong thing.

Continue reading “Stop, Drop and Roll Your Way Into a 4.0 GPA”

Posted on

What Does That Mean?!

By Drew Carter

In the field of psychology, there are multiple ways to encode something into long term-memory. While the process of committing information from stimuli to memory is important, what is arguably more important is what types of information causes individuals to be more attentive. To go a step further, what is also of interest is how the meaning of the stimulus can affect the difficulty of committing that stimulus to long-term memory. This pertains to the Levels of Processing Theory. However, before we get to discussing how the levels of processing affects us, I would like to take a moment to explain encoding, as it is crucial to this whole topic.

Encoding is the process of converting stimuli, whether it be visual (light stimuli, perceived by the eyes), acoustic (sound stimuli, perceived by the ears), or semantic (sensory stimuli that has a particular meaning to the individual) stimuli, into memory1. When the different senses, for the different types of stimuli, are activated, neurons in the brain fire to the area of the brain that recognizes the information. For instance, if the eyes perceive that light is reflecting a face, different areas of the brain will be activated then if you saw a pretty sunset2. While this description may not be incredibly enlightening, you just need to understand the basics, so we can move on to how the meanings of words can affect your ability to encode them to memory. Continue reading “What Does That Mean?!”