As the entire campus community realizes, in a post-turkey haze, that the end of the semester is rapidly approaching, we present some of our best end-of-semester strategies for graduate students. If you are not a graduate student, we suggest you continue reading for the bits of universal wisdom sprinkled throughout.   

MAKE A MAP

One of the best ways to get some perspective on a project or to begin preparing for an exam is to return to a blank slate—either a whiteboard or a large piece of paper. It feels daunting at first, but reconstructing (from memory!) your argument or outlining the essential concepts covered in a course shows you what you know while exposing the gaps that you’ll need to prioritize.  

WORK IN SHIFTS

An unscheduled day sounds great but is often difficult to productively manage. Planning to “work all day” often leads to procrastination and a guilt spiral. Instead, plan to work in 2 to 3 shifts. Pick one task or a set of related tasks for each shift. Work for 1 – 2 hours, then step away. Initially, you may resist the idea that you can get more done in less time, but concentrated effort always beats pseudo-studying.  

SHARE YOUR GOALS

Willpower isn’t a thing. Or, at least, it’s a finicky, unreliable, limited-to-the-point-of-being-irrelevant thing. You can’t trust it to come through for you when you need it, so you’ll need some support. Tell a friend, family member, or the person sitting next to you at the Graduate Student Center what you plan to accomplish today, this week, or this semester. They might not care, but articulating your goals is the first step to achieving them.   

CARE FOR YOUR OFFLINE BRAIN

If you’re asking your brain to intensively focus on challenging tasks, you should be nice to it when it’s off the graduate school clock. That may mean turning off notifications and reducing screen time so that you’re not pinging your brain or bathing it in blue light when it’s trying to rest. Sleep is a must. Writing takes longer and is usually worse when you’re very tired.  

BUILD UP TO THE HEAVY LIFT

Sitting down to a blank document with a flashing cursor is intimidating. Perfect sentences and fully-formed ideas may not immediately pour out of you. Consider a soft launch: a few sentences scribbled in a notebook, a terrible first draft of an introduction typed into your favorite note-taking app on your phone, or a conversation with a friend over coffee about the argument you’re trying to make and how you’ll defend it.  

REMEMBER WHAT’S EXPECTED

The worst thing ever is spilling coffee on the laptop that carries the only saved copy of your paper that you never bothered to email to yourself or connect to a cloud-based system. The second worst thing is casually glancing at an assignment description after you’ve written three-fourths of your essay and realizing that you’re totally off-track. It is worth your time (right now) to re-read that prompt and ensure that you’re doing no more and no less than what has been assigned.

SET A MINIMUM

If you just can’t get yourself to sit down to do the work—you’re not alone! Set a minimum task for each study session. Something, you know, minimal. You could write 5 sentences, read the abstracts of 3 articles, or create a table from your data. The idea is to start. You’ll at least do the minimum and maybe you’ll get on a roll.

If you’re not ready to adopt all seven strategies in the remaining weeks of the semester, we suggest focusing on one or two. If it’s too hard to choose or you just want to talk about a paper, project, or exam—make an appointment with a learning instructor. We’re happy to meet with you through the end of the fall term.

By Staff Writer: Ryan Miller, Director, Office of Learning Resources

The Fall semester has begun, triggering an increasingly consequential question for students given the availability of technological resources for note-taking:

To TYPE or HANDWRITE Academic Notes?

There is no right answer for every person and every context. What works for one person, may not work for another. And what works for one course or assignment, may not work for another. Knowing yourself in each situation and the requirements of each course and assignment is key.

Whether you’re working on your dissertation, studying for an exam, or considering a manual or digital method of note-taking, storage, and archiving, we caution you not to reinvent the wheel, if a particular method already works well for you.

That said, if you’re still deciding between handwriting or typing notes, weighing mainly a factor of speed optimization, consider Baer (2014), “By slowing down the process of taking notes, you accelerate learning“.

Wait a minute! Slow down to accelerate???

Yes, it has to do with the brain! “When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated” (Baer, 2014). You mean… there is something unique about the act of slowing down and writing that automatically activates neural circuits?

Actually, it’s a bit more nuanced than that. In fact, it is what the slowing down of time makes possible. What are the affordances of time? What can you do by stretching out time? Research suggests that the learner should do something active and stimulating–that is, the opposite of copying, typing, transcribing, and rote memorizing new information.

Baer (2014) suggests that by getting off of the keyboard, and note-taking by hand, “you’ll have to look for representative quotes, summarize concepts, and ask questions about what you don’t understand.”

So… What’s the verdict?

Is it Best to TYPE or HANDWRITE Academic Notes?

The answer is to do something new with the information, to APPLY or SYNTHESIZE it. This is an active and actionable method that the slowing down of time by note-taking can accommodate, if not require.

References:

Baer, D. Here’s why writing things out by hand makes you smarter. Business Insider. December 16, 2014.

By Staff Writer: Min Derry, Learning Fellow

Maybe you are taking an alternative summer break and doing community service in a remote pacific village, and taking time in between to soak in the clear ocean air. Or maybe you have accepted an internship position with a financial consulting firm in New York City. Or maybe you have joined a summer co-op opportunity with a technology start-up firm in the CA bay area. Or maybe you are back at your childhood home, getting re-acquainted with your town and civic organizations. Wherever you may be this summer, and however you may have chosen to spend your time, we hope that you will carve out a little time for academic reflection. Here’s a simple framework for reflecting, and doing some meta-cognitive self-assessment so that you can reap the benefits of lessons learned and start your Fall semester in gear:

Reflecting and analyzing your writing

It’s so easy to dust our hands off, catalog our papers away, and turn a new page. And it’s completely natural and understandable to do that since you’ve just spent so much time intensively researching, drafting, and revising your paper. You did your best, submitted your paper, and accepted your grade. Well done, and do step away; however, be intentional about scheduling time to return and assess the product of your labor:

• What type of feedback have you received from your teaching team or peers? What was helpful? Are there areas for further development? Would it be helpful to schedule a follow-up appointment/call with your professor during the summer or in the fall?
• Was the process of conceptualizing your ideas, thesis, and argument coherent for you? How close did you stay to your original plan or how far did you depart from it? Looking back, was the initial scope of your main thesis realistic? What can we learn about zooming in or out in our scope given the requirements of the project?
• Which resources were most helpful? Are there integral literary sources that have become a critical part of your interpretive lens and you know you will be returning to? Are there new journals, research, or professional organizations that you will be utilizing more henceforth? Is there a new theory, practice, or research/data analysis instrument that you have adopted?
• Have you shifted your thinking in any way? Have you added a complementary perspective that helped further stratify or nuance your thinking? Have you developed a deeper understanding of your guiding principles? Have you moved away from your prior positionality to think in a new mode or from a different perspective?

Journal, journal, journal! Keep a writing reflection journal. I know that writing may be the last thing that you may want to do during your summer break, but you may be pleasantly surprised to realize later in the new academic year that these reflections have planted seeds that will germinate new ideas for your forthcoming papers. And most importantly, through reflection, we grow as writers and analysts!

Wishing you a Happy Summer, speckled with opportunities to reflect on your academic writing!

By Staff Writer: Min Derry, Learning Fellow

At Weingarten, we like to ask, “What’s your favorite form of procrastination?”

The question is often welcomed with puzzled enthusiasm. Students are at first taken aback by our directness, but find relief in the straightforward candidness and empathy. The discussion that ensues is always lively!

This is the time of the year, Spring semester, when things are ramping up (e.g. 2nd mid-term examinations, finalizing mid-term projects, and launching final term papers), and many students struggle with procrastination.

Perspective is important. Let’s first acknowledge that there are many varied and legitimate reasons for procrastination, with differing impact on the student-scholar. For instance, procrastination can often be a form of perfectionism. Also, procrastination is often a direct result of additive and competing demands upon our schedules. In other words, it is never a character flaw. It is a response, and often, an internal coping mechanism.

Today, I’m offering a fresh take on procrastination: “Is procrastination keeping you from reaching the world or is it helping you to stay connected to the world?”

For instance, if you know that a task only actually takes you 2-hours to complete, is it really necessary to spread it out over two-weeks or 8-hours just because of an arbitrarily imposed external norm?

Imagine instead, what you could do during those extra weeks or hours to nourish your wellness or enrich your other personal, academic or professional goals.

This requires, of course, self-knowledge and (evidence-based) discernment. But no one is born with this precise form of calibration and insight. It takes commitment, mindfulness and reflection.

At Weingarten, we recommend keeping a procrastination and productivity diary. Take an inventory of your habits and life. When, how, how often, and in what patterns do you procrastinate? It reveals what you value, what you crave, where the redundancies are, which gates (e.g. activities, tasks, relationships) require opening up…

A strategic, intentional and mindful reflection on procrastination may actually help us to “march by our own drumbeat”, with the result being self-knowledge, awareness and acceptance instead of criticism and guilt. So, “What’s your favorite form of procrastination?”

By Staff Writer: Min Derry, Learning Instructor

Are you afraid of failure?

I am. At times, terrified.

Have you ever felt like a failure?

Countless times. More than I’d like to admit.

Do we talk enough about failure?

Probably not.

That last question is a tricky one. There isn’t a lack of literature about failure, especially when it comes to organizational failure, performance analysis, process improvement and case analysis.

What is more needed in educational contexts, especially in highly selective higher education environments like PENN, is open discourse about failure. I once heard about a college professor who kept a copy of her curriculum vitae along with a comparatively voluminous 3-ring binder of her failures. Another college professor posted all of his rejection letters along his office walls for plain view. In both instances, the professors intentionally revealed and shared their academic and professional vulnerabilities, inviting conversation with students about success that did not preclude, but preempted failure.

Failure can be predictable or unpredictable, but often unavoidable. 

Failure can be policy-centric, process-centric, technical, relational or communal, but always feels personal.

Failure can occur in the context of uniformity, inadvertent oversight, contention, change, and complexity: Context Matters. 

In order to nourish that which can only be seeded, sprouted, grown, and blossomed through failure, focus on the specific type of support that you need in each step of the failure-to-success process:

a confidant? a shoulder to cry on? an empath?

a relative? a friend? a colleague? a neighbor?  

a devil’s advocate?

an accountability partner? a supervisor? a guide? a counselor? a therapist?

how about a failure mentor?

Know that you’re thoroughly equipped with all of the personal, academic and professional attributes, wisdom and discernment, to design and navigate through your failure to growth pathways. Be good to yourself. Embrace failures, like successes, as stepping stones to your journey.

At the Weingarten Center, we are committed to supporting you through all of your academic successes, failures and things in between that come to mark and shape your wonderful, authentic and humane self.

By Staff Writer: Min Derry, Learning Fellow

We often get questions about preparing for exams. “But, how do I know if I have studied enough?” is a familiar refrain from students in our workshops. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. One thing we don’t recommend is the practice of “cramming,” or intense studying for a few days or a few hours before an exam. When cramming for a test, you are only learning in the sense that information goes into short-term memory, meaning that you may or may not retain the information on test day — and you definitely won’t be able to use the information for any “real-life” application or situation down the road, such as a job, research fellowship, or summer internship.

Instead, preparing for exams starts at the beginning of the semester. From the first week of class, you should be engaging with active study strategies, and setting aside time to review. But what do we mean by “active study”?

1. First, create a plan for yourself.
   • If you are not used to setting your own schedule, don’t be too discouraged if you go off course.
   • Notice where you might need to make adjustments.
   • Each week is a new opportunity to create a plan for when you will study and stick to it!
2. Next, make sure you are spending some of your study hours going back and reviewing old material.
   • For classes focused on problem-solving, this may mean going back to old concepts that caused you difficulty.
   • The trick is finding new problems to keep you mentally active, instead of reading over old problems and their solutions.
3. Finally, Weingarten is here to help you succeed!

By Staff Writer: Jennifer Kobrin, Learning Fellow, Weingarten Center

How many times have you said, “I’ll get this done during Reading Days?” I know I have said it at least ten times this semester. Reading Days are a great time to get prepared for your final exams and papers, but those two days go by very quickly. In this post, I’ll share some dos and don’ts for Reading Days success.

DO create an action plan. As soon as you can, look at all of your syllabi to get a better understanding of what exactly you have to do for your final assessment for each class. Do you have a final paper? How long is it? What kind of outside research does this paper require? Do you have to do a presentation about your paper in class? Do you have a final exam? Is it cumulative? Is there a study guide? Create fake deadlines for yourself before the actual deadline by bringing your paper or study plan to the Weingarten Center or by taking your paper to the Marks Family Writing Center. Making an appointment will create an accountability measure for yourself.

DON’T start the day before. The worst time to start looking at exam material is a few hours before you take the test. If you create a plan and familiarize yourself with your professor’s expectations for the final, then you will know how much time you must devote to studying for that particular exam. Similarly, starting your paper the day before the deadline won’t yield the best result. You may need to get books from the library or interview someone to complete your assignment, so advanced planning is critical when completing these papers.

Do prioritize. The end of the year comes with lots of fun activities that may get in the way of your exam and paper preparation. You are encouraged to balance work and fun, and the best way to do this is by putting all of your activities, fun or not, onto a calendar. We have April-May calendars in the Weingarten Center that are perfect for this activity. Once you see when everything will be taking place, you can make some choices. Perhaps choose one fun activity to do during the weekend before finals, and sandwich it between study/work sessions for your exams and papers.

Don’t try to cram. Depending on how much time you have to study before your exam, you will have to make some choices about what you study. If you are short on time, focus on reinforcing the material that you know well and reviewing the topics that you can easily learn, rather than getting held up on the most complicated parts of your coursework. This strategy is the best way to get through as much as possible in a short amount of time.

For more tips on making the most of your Reading Days, visit us at the Weingarten Center! We’ll be holding two “Study Hacks for Reading Days” workshops on 4/23 and 4/24. Additionally, we are open for 50-minute appointments or shorter walk-ins if you would like to consult with a learning instructor individually.

Best of luck on your final exams and papers!

By Staff Writer: Cassie Lo, Learning Instructor and Fellow

When you go to do your homework (reading & problem-set)…

1. Start with a homework problem first, not the reading.
2. Read only if you need to. Read only what you need.
3. Then get back to the problem and solve it.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM-SOLVING SANDWICH?

Read-Then-Solve: A Bad Idea

Unfortunately, many students do their homework using the read-then-solve strategy—they read the entire assigned reading, then start on the problem set.  This may make for reading more than you need and likely zoning out while you’re reading. Read-then-solve is often wasteful and boring. You may ask, “But don’t I need to understand the concepts first?” I ask in reply, “Do you read-then-solve in real life?”

The Problem-Solving Sandwich – What You Do in Real Life

In this “real world” scenario, suppose you are writing a report on a Word document, and run into trouble with the formatting. Say it is a problem with making bulleted lists in Word. You have a problem you intend to solve. Here are two strategies you can use. Which is best?

Strategy 1: Read-Then-Solve

1. Read an entire chapter on formatting in Microsoft Word
2. Attempt to solve the bulleting problem

Strategy 2: Use the Problem-Solving Sandwich

1. Attempt to solve the problem with what you know. For example, you might right-click and see if any of the options make sense.
2. If can’t figure it out, THEN search for a solution to your specific problem. For example, you might google “how to make bullets in word for mac 2011”
3. As soon as you have what you think you need from whatever reading you find, get back to the Word doc and solve the problem.

It’s a sandwich—see?

Staff Writer: Nicholas Santascoy, Learning Instructor

Often, students spend all their time studying and preparing for exams before they take a test. Did you know though that some of the most important studying and preparation comes after you take exams?

One of the best ways to prepare for future exams and to ensure that you understand course material is to analyze your exam after you take it! Using our Exam Analysis guide ensures that you are thinking critically about your learning and preparing the best way possible for your next exam.

When you receive your test back from your instructor, first examine the questions you answered correctly.

Think about:

• How did you study for this information?
• Why did you get this question right?
• What can you learn from it?

Use this information to help you prepare for your next exam. Identify what strategies worked for you when you were preparing for this test, and be sure to use them again.

Next, look at the questions you answered incorrectly.

            Identify why you answered incorrectly:

• Was it a content mistake? Meaning:
  • You never saw the information.
  • You didn’t study the information.
  • You studied the information but learned it incorrectly.
  • You studied the information but could not recall.
    • From these content areas, see if you can identify if your mistakes were coming from the same section.
    • Do you need to go back and review a chapter section?
    • Would it be helpful for you to review this with the professor, a TA, or a tutor?

• Was your error in the application of the material? Meaning:
  • You studied and recalled the basic information but could not apply it to higher-order thinking problems.

• Did your error have to do with how you approached the tests? Meaning:
  • Did you misread or misinterpret a test question?
  • Were you too impulsive or overconfident on certain test questions?
  • Was it test fatigue?
  • Was your pacing off for the test? Were you running out of time?

Use this information to help you adjust your studying for the next exam. Make an appointment with a learning specialist at the Weingarten Center for more help on how to make the most of your exam analysis. We are happy to help you think more critically about your class, what you learned, and how to prepare for your next exam!

By: Kelcey Grogan, Learning Specialist

Many students come to the Office of Learning Resources (OLR) at Weingarten (WLRC) looking for strategies and tips on how to take better notes.

While the jury is still out on whether handwritten or typed notes are better, what we do know is that what matters more than how you take notes is what you do after with your notes.

Even if you are a student who is prepared for class and takes incredibly detailed notes, within 1 day of class, our minds forget nearly 75% of what we learned:

• See the graph below for a visual representation of Time vs. Memory:

• If we don’t return to our notes until the week before the exam, we have already forgotten much of what we have learned. Instead of actually studying, we are stuck relearning the material.
• The good news is that there is a simple solution to make sure you retain much of what you have learned during class:

Actively review your notes within 24-36 hours of class!

• By taking the time to review notes for just 30 minutes within 24-36 hours of class, you can reinforce what you learned and prevent this memory loss.
• Make sure you are actively reviewing your notes (don’t just re-read or skim your notes, it’s too easy to just glaze over what you originally wrote).

Here are some tips for how to actively review your notes:

• Create an active recall study sheet:
  • On a blank sheet of paper, spend 5 minutes writing down everything you can from class and your readings. Then go back to your notes to fill in the gaps)
• Annotate your notes in a different colored pen
• Synthesize your notes into a study guide or summary
• Use the Cornell method
• Create a Concept Map
• In a vocabulary-heavy class, create flashcards or a Quizlet

The hardest part of this strategy is actually fitting this review time into your schedule!

• I recommend making this a habit by scheduling time to review your notes from the last class before you start your reading for the next class or before you begin your related homework.
• Making this a routine will go a long way in improving your learning, strengthening your memory, and increasing your grades.

By Staff Writer: Kelcey Grogan, Learning Instructor