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Study Smarter Not Harder

By Savannah Little

So, you are a freshman in college now. How exciting! Everything is about to change, and you will be surrounded by so many new things such as new people, new classes, and new responsibilities. Something that changes when entering college classes is going to be how you study. Whether you needed to or not in high school college is a whole new adventure and to pass the classes you are enrolled in you need to make sure you are equipped on how and where to study. There are many things to do to help improve your test scores, but there are a few simple things to do to make your next test run a little more smoothly. You can improve how you study which in return will improve your test grade simply by learning about a few simple things such as: context dependent memory, state dependent memory, and the encoding specificity principle. By incorporating these things into your daily study rituals, you will be sure to get an A on that next college exam!

Digital Camera

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Easy as 1,2,3

By Jhariana Floyd

It is no secret that math tends to be the subject that most students struggle with. There are numerous reasons as to why that is so, but there are steps that can be done to develop stronger math skills. Math teachers are taught to present concepts in CPA format. That means concrete examples, then pictorial examples, and finally abstract examples. It is believed that this allows students to best comprehend new material. However, there are many debates on how information should be delivered to students. It is believed that it is best to teach information with concrete facts and work up to abstract material. Think back to when you first took algebra. Sorry if I am forcing you to relive horrific memories., but it’s to help you.  You were prepared to learn algebra your whole life through the use of concrete methods. Your teachers taught you how to solve equations, then how to graph equations, and then how to guess what a line would look like given facts. Guessing the line requires mental imagery, and I’m going to help understand how mental imagery contributes to one’s success in math.

Breaking down math visuals to gain a better understanding.

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

By Emma Overton

Picture this: you’re sitting in your first final of the semester. You can hear your heartbeat in your ears, you have no idea what to expect on the exam your professor is carrying towards you. You take a glance at the first question: What are the three categories of depressants? Immediately an image of a dark, fluttering bat invade your mind. BAT! That’s the image you used to remember this topic; Barbiturates, Alcohol, and Tranquilizers. Your fear dissipates, because you realize your studying habits have achieved just what you need to ace the final.

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Illusions of Learning are Plaguing Students

By Brandon Porter

Studying and learning effectively is one of the most important things a college student can learn to be successful and earn those grades that everyone strives for. This, however, is a lot harder than it sounds, and unfortunately, many students go about it the wrong way. If college students were asked how they studied for a big exam, the majority of them would most likely say they reread their text and go over their notes. This is a common fallacy and is also often referred to as an “illusion of learning”.

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Test Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself (or Your GPA)

By Anna Rule

We all have the best of intentions when it comes to preparing for an exam, am I right?  I mean – no one sees a test date on a syllabus and says, “Okay I’m going to wing that one.”  We study, we prepare, and we pray to the founding fathers of Eureka College that they grant us some semblance of a working memory to recall the information when we need it.  While our intentions may be great, we need to ask the question; are we preparing effectively?  While we’re cramming our brains with information, how do we know it will stick?

In my years of studying for tests, it never occurred to me that re-reading my notes wasn’t sufficient.  I thought that because I was going through the material, it would be fresh in my mind and “learned.”  Some can get by on this wildly common practice.  Others (like myself) are not blessed with the good memorization gene.  So, what can you do?  Test yourself.  Of course, this is in conjunction with the wise words of Alan, trusty wolf-pack leader, to ‘check yourself.’  But for the sake of retaining information long-term – stick with the first recommendation and test yourself.

In all seriousness, our academic experiences thus far have allowed us to safely assume that everyone learns in different ways.  Some are visual learners, some learn by doing.  Some are extremely lucky and skim over a note or two and ace a test (I am extremely envious of those people).  One review of how we learn carves out a solid list of 8 effective learning strategies backed by a ton of research (1) which you can view here.  We’re going to dive into one of those 8.  Let’s see how we can retain more by testing ourselves.

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Divergent Thinking: May the Study Odds Be Ever in Your Favor

By Katie Van Dettum               

Freshman year of college. The times of adjusting to college, figuring out where your life is headed, and overall attempting to stay sane even with all of the changes in your life happening. One of those changes happens to be trying to figure out how to solve problems now that you’ve taken your first steps into the scary world of being an adult. As a junior, I have learned a few things when it comes to solving problems that I can pass on to incoming freshman. Specifically, when it comes to studying and doing homework. College has caused me to readjust my strategies in order to become a more productive studier and a better student as a whole.

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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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