by Alethea Gnanakan, first-year student
Most students are equipped with the ambition, passion and the drive that stems from a genuine desire to serve communities through utilizing medical skill sets. The challenge on the road toward our dream is to accomplish all of our minor goals such as excelling on a test or a quiz. Learning how to excel as a student is a vital part of the journey to success. Study strategizing is an important tool to have in a skillset. Dr. Julia Halterman conducted a seminar to help students discover new strategies and remind us of old strategies that could be implemented.
She researched extensive educational literature and compiled a series of tips that could be successfully incorporated into a study strategy. Her overall learning objective of the seminar was to identify new techniques to help students study and learn. She encouraged the student participants to begin by orienting our minds into a growth mindset. This mindset is the outlook a student should have in order to be successful. Our attitudes should be such that we can learn anything we put our minds to. The challenge given to us was when we are frustrated, we should persevere. We need to challenge ourselves. Lastly, the mindset we should have is to know that when we fail, we are still learning.
Dr. Halterman emphasized that repetition is the key to learning. The act of learning is much like building a house. We want our house to have a good, strong foundation, which might be analogous to a good background in biology. From that firm foundation, we want to build scaffolding for our houses. We can create a scaffold by reading the textbook before class, which would give us familiarity with the topic matter before class. During class, we would build on the scaffold that has been previously created with the information that has been taught in class. To solidify our understanding of the new information, we should review and read through the notes and presentation materials within 24 hours of the class.
Now that our house of understanding and knowledge is built we need to make sure that it is strong and will weather the storm of exams and quizzes. We were advised to start with making a plan and scheduling our time accordingly. Another helpful tip was to talk it out. She emphasized vocalizing the information while studying. If you are an auditory learner, this will help you greatly. Dr. Halterman informed us of other strategies that included: teaching someone, summarizing the information, using concept maps, flow charts and compare and contrast techniques. She encouraged the student participants to explore other resources that might supplement learning in the field of biology and chemistry such as Khan Academy videos or resources that come with the prescribed textbook. We were encouraged to just pick one new strategy and try it.
The road to fulfilling dreams might be tumultuous and paved with difficult tasks. Sometimes you can work extremely hard but your strategy is not working, and you don’t see the results that you had hoped for. Here is where I would urge you to re-strategize. Try something new! If your strategy isn’t working, then change it. Someone wise once told me that the road to success is often not a straight one. These twist and turns on the path will eventually grow within us a spirit of resilience and resourcefulness.