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Imagine that!

By Katlyn Arrenholz

So it’s time to go off and get ready for college, YAY! So many new things to learn and encode into your brain. What expectations do you have for your first day? Do you see yourself walking to your first class and sitting at one of the many tables set out for you? Well even if you hadn’t you have now! The act of mentally seeing how your first day of college will go is a form of mental imagery. But mental imagery is not just used for future events it’s used for a plethora of other things that we do daily as students, and just as humans, and we don’t even notice that we are using it!

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Attention!! Stress is Limiting Your Potential

By David Schultz

First days of college are exciting times, but college is an ever-changing world. However, there are two things that will always remain constant, stress and homework. Sadly, there is nothing you can do about the homework but there are things you can do to alleviate your stress. Each student suffers from some sort of stress and that stress strangles a student’s attention. Research has shown that ordinary chronic stress limits the flexibility of the student’s attention. Also stress temporarily reduces the connectivity of the attention regulating area of the prefrontal cortex. (1) Considering attention is one of the main processes that drive cognition, stress is going to be a huge issue for student’s grades. Attention is commonly referred to as a spotlight, and stress is shown to be like smoke, limiting the effectiveness of the spotlight. High stress could be like trying to use the spotlight during a soupy fog. But exams and tests are not the only issue that students face during stressful times. Being able to pay attention to the questions asked on exams are not the only effected area. But stress can affect the amount of information that a student can collect during lecture. It is common to see students bored by lectures or drifting off during reading assignments, we all have done it at least once. This is yet another why that attention is impaired by stress and there is data to support that. Research has shown that a person who is suffering from even acute stress can be imparted in attention allocation and distractibility during situations that involve information collection. (2) Stress can pull your ability to focus on the information in lecture and next thing you know you are in a daydream.

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PORN! And how it can affect your GPA

By Emmalyn Paul

Introduction

It’s the moment of truth. You’re sitting in your seat, ready to open the test booklet for your first COLLEGE final exam. You’re sweating, breathing heavy, the end is NEARLY in sight. You hear “All I Want For Christmas is You” playing in the back of your mind as you take the FINAL leap before Christmas. You open the book and stress overwhelms you. You can’t seem to remember ANY of the questions on the first two pages. All you can remember is the information from the chapter you JUST finished last week. This, my friend, is the perfect example of retroactive interference (RI). This occurs when new information that you have recently learned makes it difficult to recall old information you have learned (1). Somehow you manage to push your way through. As you move from question to question the information starts to come back to you. You begin to remember all you studied from those first few chapters…so much so that when you get to the end of your test booklet, you find yourself having a difficult time recalling the chapters you just learned last week! WHAT?! How could this be possible?? Well, it is, and it’s a process that is called proactive interference (PI). This occurs when old information you have learned gives you difficulty remembering new information you have learned (1). In order to find ways to combat these interferences, you must first fully understand them and, most importantly, remember which is which. Well, all you little freshies with your mind in the gutter are in luck, because have I got an acronym for you! When in doubt, just think “PORN”: Proactive=Old, Retroactive=New. Continue reading “PORN! And how it can affect your GPA”

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Don’t Be a Fool, Interleaving is Cool

By Summer Inselmann

Ah yes, high school. The days where you could study for a test the class period before and still feel confident in your work. The time when you had your teacher every day to go over every inch of material. When cramming was the easiest and least time-consuming study habit for you. What was even better you may ask? The fact that it actually seemed to work! All of that multiple choice and matching questions were a breeze. You thought that you would have no problem with college. You have heard a million stories of people saying they cram their studying in the night before a test, but you know what they did not tell you or what you did not read on their twitter? The grade they actually got on that test because believe me, it was not pretty. So here you are starting your college career, you crammed for your first big test, thinking you are already to ace it. Fast forward thirty minutes into class when the exam has been handed out and your face looks like that SpongeBob meme when he is trying to write his essay on what not to do at a stop sign. News flash here is something you did not know, the test is not multiple choice, or maybe the teacher does not word things the same way you do so suddenly all of that quickly memorized information means nothing. It is not stored in your long-term memory, it is barely even in your short-term memory. So good luck!

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Elaborative Rehearsal, But You Already Knew That!

By Kaci Kingman

 Introduction

Are you a new college freshman and are you freaking out because you just cannot seem to remember things like you used to be able to in high school? Well, you are not alone! Most freshman are going to have problems adjusting to how to correctly study the new material in college. You are not going to be able to remember everything you study, even if thats how you rolled in high school. You need to find a balance between a more in depth approach and a more shallow approach(1). You need to figure out if what you are trying to learn needs to be put into your brain for a long time or not. This will help you in determining how you should study the new information. If you need to make information stay in your brain for a long time, boy do I have an answer for you! Have you ever wondered why you can keep repeating the same thing over and over in your head to try and remember it, just to forget it a few minutes later? Yeah, stop doing that! That is not how you are going to succeed in college, but don’t freak out to much, I have your back. I have a way better way for you to memorize things and it’s called elaborative rehearsal!

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To Cram or Not to Cram: Massed Studying vs Distributed Studying

By Ashley Shookman

Does the following image look like a snapshot of you trying to study for a test the night before it is to occur? If your answer was yes, keep reading. I may have the cure for your studying woes.

 First of all, congratulations on getting into university! Much excitement awaits you as you will surely go throw many changes throughout your next four years of life. College can be a fun time to make new friends, learn new things, and go on many new adventures. However, college is not all fun and games. College actually requires a lot of hard work, dedication, and motivation. If you are anything like me, High School didn’t require too much time studying outside of the classroom in order to get decent grades. I am here to tell you, unfortunately, that college is not the same in terms of studying. I learned this the hard way and that is why I am here to teach you the easy way!

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Because who reads

By Paige Shepard

Have you ever taken a class in high school where you were given some kind of material to read, and of course, you didn’t complete it..right? We all know it didn’t matter if you actually read the material because the teacher would go over it the next day in class. Or something like that. Well, don’t get used to that. Soon, you’ll get to college and it is a repeated cycle of going to class, sitting down, watching the power point presentation, listening to the professor speak about it and taking notes about what is being seen, read and heard. Sometimes, get this, the professor doesn’t even USE a power point. You have to take notes on the words that come out of their mouth. Therefore, you have to PAY ACTUAL ATTENTION in class, crazy right? All the while, you’re wondering if any of this is benefiting your ability to remember the new information being taught and crammed into your brain.

We have all experienced classes that we have attended and left the room and felt confident that we have actually learned absolutely nothing at all. If you haven’t yet, you soon will. However, be smart, because when it comes to studying and getting good grades, most students think all it takes is to read over the material last minute and believe they will remember all of that fresh incoming information when it comes to the time that it needs to be recalled. When reading over all the materials for the exam that you’re taking tomorrow in class, you are probably not going to retain any of it unless you engage in active thinking and be creative. According to the generation effect, we should change the way we study for exams or study to remember information.

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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.

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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.

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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!”