Academic Success Blog

…write about what’s making you anxious, for 10 minutes, immediately before you take your exam.

Really!

Speaking recently to a number of students worried about the anxiety that might derail their ability to do well on exams, I remembered a study that any student suffering from exam anxiety will want to know about.  Researchers at the University of Chicago discovered that anxious students can address their anxiety–and perform well on their exams–by taking 10 minutes to free write about their anxious feelings before an exam.  Check out the Globe and Mail’s article on the study.  The gist is this: get to your exam early enough to write for 10 minutes about what’s making you anxious.  Do the 10 minute write immediately before the exam.  As one of the researchers of the study reports,  “We showed that students who are normally test-anxious were able to perform just as well as their other classmates.”  By freewriting before exams, anxious students improved their grades.

–Michelle

Recently, Erin, a blogger with UpbeaT, wrote about why she makes a point of sharing notes with fellow students when they ask.  If whether to share or ask for notes is something you find yourself thinking about, check out Erin’s post, “Note to Self: Why I Don’t Mind Sharing My Notes,” as well as the comments.

Michelle

Throughout my undergraduate degree, I struggled to keep up with my lecturers when I was taking notes. I always found myself a step behind and never had time to completely finish my thoughts before rushing to write down the next point. Borrowing friends’ notes didn’t really work, either, because what they thought was important to write down wasn’t always what I thought was important, leaving me with missing information. I eventually found a solution, though: the Livescribe Smartpen.

Have you heard of this pen? The Livescribe Smartpen completely changed how I took notes. Not only does it record your lecture while you’re taking notes, but it also connects what you hear to what you write. It allows you to come back later and play back your lecture at any point in time by tapping on a particular note or on the uploaded version on your computer. Another benefit to this pen is that you don’t actually need to write notes: you can draw a picture on the page and the pen will still link what you hear to your drawing. Finally, if you are someone who takes in more information from just listening to a lecture, by using the Smartpen, you can record the lecture and highlight any important information you hear by using the star feature on the tool bar at the bottom of the Livescribe notebook. Sound too good to be true? This pen actually works, and I strongly recommend it for anyone who needs to take notes, whether in class or in a meeting. For more information on the Livescribe Smartpen, check out their website.

-AR [Written by Ashley Ross, guest contributor, who will be at the Academic Success Centre on Tuesdays from 1:00 – 3:30 pm for the next few weeks.]
For more information on “The Pen That Never Forgets,” check out this article by Clive Thomas in the New York Times.

Here we are at the start of a new lunar year.  It’s nice, I think, that living in such a multicultural city affords us so many opportunities for fresh starts: if you haven’t managed to stick with the resolutions you made for January 1^st, well, here’s a second chance.  Why not turn over a new leaf, or waggle a scaly water dragon tail, at the start of the new lunar year?

My interest in this particular new year is, admittedly, tinged with more than a little self-interest since I was born in the last year of the water dragon.  So,… let’s see: people born under the sign of the water dragon are perceptive, patient, make smart decisions (oh dear, is my scaly chest puffing up like an overstuffed alligator purse???), but, uh-oh, “their actions can go wrong if they…  do not finish one project before starting another.”  Hmmm. Guilty as charged: finishing projects that I’ve started is definitely NOT one of my strengths.  If this is a trend that we’re all going to be subject to between now and the end of this lunar year, help is at hand.  Last week, someone (knowing me, ahem, all too well) sent me the link to this entry in the Lifehacker blog on “How to Prioritize When Everything Is Important.”  It might help some of you other water dragons—as well as the assorted rabbits, rats, pigs, dogs, tigers, snakes, monkeys, roosters, horses, and goats who also have trouble prioritizing and seeing projects through to completion—actually get things done this year.

-NP

I had “fresh starts” on my mind this morning when I picked up Mary Oliver’s Blue Pastures.  Even though I was thinking about “fresh starts”–the New Year, the start of a new semester, the return to regular posting on our Academic Success Blog–I turned to Oliver’s “Afterward.”  Here she is:

Writing this book has been like bathing the dog–with every go-around it has come out a little cleaner.  Still, there’s a time when the dog is in danger of becoming too clean, and losing his dogginess altogether.  Just so, in similar fear of washing too much away–for I hope some bits of the actual world, chaff and grit, will cling to these pages–I put down the towel and call the book done. (Mary Oliver, “Blue Pastures,” p.119)

I’m thinking about how a fresh start is a chance to begin our work with energy, hold onto the “dogginess” of our work, and also to look forward to completing work.  Wishing everyone a great semester!

–MF

Although “The Official SAT Question of the Day” is not meant as a teaching tool for university students, it happens to offer excellent exercises for testing and improving your knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary (as well as mathematical thinking).  There’s good variety to the questions, and you can gain a lot with a small effort: just one question a day.  Try it.  Here’s the link: http://sat.collegeboard.com/practice/sat-question-of-the-day

MF

Last night, I was lucky enough to go to the screening of the People’s Choice Award Winner, “The King’s Speech,” at the Toronto International Film Festival.  The film played to a full house at the Ryerson Theatre.  One of the things I was struck by in this often quite moving story of a relationship between a stammering prince (Colin Firth) and his speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush) was its pointing to the importance of a sympathetic audience.  This resonates for me perhaps because I so often see students struggling with their academic work because they have too strongly internalized an inner critic–a voice that tells them everything that might possibly be wrong with their work in progress–that isn’t balanced by what I have come to think of as an inner listener.  For students, as with the prince in “The King’s Speech,” the ability to conceive of, experience, and imagine a sympathetic audience can make all the difference in being able to overcome obstacles and get on with one’s work.

One of the lovely–and helpful–suggestions of the speech therapist to the king: Read the speech to me, as a friend.  I think there’s a lot in this suggestion for students.

MF  

While watching Jane Campion’s film “Bright Star,” I thought about writing papers and how, sometimes, a kind of premature focus of energy on wanting to produce a finished draft can distract from the work at hand.  Campion has poet John Keats answer his sweetheart’s request to help her understand poetry:

A poem needs understanding through the senses.  The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water.  You do not work the lake out.  It is an experience beyond thought.

How does this idea of approaching poetry apply to the writing of papers?  A first thought is that it’s so important to begin the work early, to work calmly, with room to explore and develop ideas.  Focus on the work; keep the deadline in mind but in the background.

“Revision is a search for closer and closer approximation of the truth you seek…you will never reach the perfect text you’re striving for, because it exists only in fantasy.  What matters is that you work your way toward that text, toward the truest narrative that you can achieve, one that speaks clearly and fluently to your chosen audience” (Bolker, 1998, p. 127).

Bolker, J. (1998). Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day. New York : Henry Holt and Company.

AG

Summer Sylph slips silently

Tween pages damp from heat

And speaks in whispers softly through

The tree leaves while you sleep

Summer Sylph is waiting for you

In your midnight mind

Step out of doors and into gardens

Campus nooks you’ll find

Sparrows, dapples, blooms and breezes

Wait for you out there

Courtyards, stones and waterfalls

Summer’s coolest fare

Take up your work and wander out

To listen for the Sylph

She’ll stir your mind and soothe your heart

The season’s mindwork gilt

A. Graham,  2010