The Secret To Being A Successful Student.

You know, I still remember going to St. Al's HS 1982-6. And it was a very concentrated learning environment.

It seemed all the teachers and staff had doctorates. And you know, St. Al's was third on a list of students who went onto college (I forget if it was statewide, or nationally).

Because you know, if you failed, it wasn't your fault. It was theirs.

 

The secret to being a successful student is.....

If you're male, do not date a female. Ignore all of them and concentrate on studying/learning.

I have no advice to give to females.

 

1. Have a work ethic.
2.Have realistic career goals. Choose appropriate school subjects.Consider these subjects to be stepping stones to a career.
3.Get hold of exam paper and do mock exams. When you come to do the real exams, you will have had plenty of practise.
4.10% of the population has low blood pressure.One of the symptoms is difficulty concentrating. Looking back, I think I would have done better at school if I had consumed more salt.

 

I am not proselytizing but there are many academics who think reading the King James Bible improves your English, both comprehension and writing abilities. I am not one for organised religion, but I would have liked to have been introduced to the King James Bible at high school, instead they wanted to tell us about every religion under the sun other than Judaism- Christianity.
I don’t think doing art as a subject is a good idea. Doing artwork can be very time consuming. Time better spent on other subjects.

 

my strategy has been a. find library and fall in love with it b. major in something stupid youre already in love with c. smoke by the river with every 1/4 of people you meet

 

I found college to be "cooperate and graduate". 50% of the curriculum had nothing useful to do with electronics or getting a job - what a waste of my time and money. Why any genius who never had a real job in industry thought it was best I needed three years of calculus and differential equations instead of sitting in a lab learning and designing real things is beyond me. You take the classes to pass the tests to meet the requirements of your degree so you can get out of there.

 

A sad sign of the times.
A student recently showed me his final dissertation for his PhD. Looking for something new, he stumbled on twin electron fluorescence. He spent his time explaining that it was totally random, had no relationship with temperature or pressure and had no practical use.

 

So, he spent two years working something that had absolutely no use and he gets a PhD. The education system is as broken as much as the health system is here in the US. My daughter is head of school in a private system here and my son in law is the dean of the local community college system...the things I hear.

 

So sad. So many folks today regard a college education as a kind of glorified vo tech, which is "useless" unless it directly and narrowly relates to their job. And yet they don't hesitate to opine on politics. No wonder we're on the verge of dictatorship!

 

When I started college my objective was to become a forester…and I did. But because of finances I had to spend my first two years living at home and attending a branch of the state university. No forestry classes, just meeting all the general requirements for a BS…..English, math, economics, geography, science etc. I was pretty resentful that I could not take classes in my major. The final 2 years I transferred to an out of state university with a forestry school and took all the forestry classes for my major and lots of field classes.

So my first professional job was almost exclusively field work and my forestry classes served me well. But after about 5 years I began to think now what….a Masters program in natural resource economics led to a major shift in my job and career path. And a gradual shift to relying more and more on that plethora of liberal arts classes I had taken with such disdain.

Fast foreword to the end of my career with a natural resource agency. But since I was relatively young I wound up teaching geography at a local community college. And I found out that over specializing in undergraduate school wasn’t such a hot idea, that a firm foundation in liberal arts was valuable, and that the future unfolds in ways unimaginable to a college freshman.

 

The whole educational system need a re-boot. Think of what you really could have been learning towards a career instead of all the useless classes we "had" to take for our BS. For God sake, why oh why would I ever have needed 3 semesters of differential equations?? It's the good ol' boy's club. "Well, we want you to be well rounded...." Bull shit.

 

Regarding the politicians, never a truer word spoken.
They are far too busy preparing speeches that mean nothing and combing their hair in the mirror, to ever bother with an education.
As a result, during covid, we did not have a single politician with a single medical qualification, followed by a prime minister (for a few weeks), who thought that she could prepare a budget, without so much as a phone call to the governor or the bank of England.
Who needs comedy films, when we can watch it live on the news.

 

As someone who works in higher education, there are three things you need to do to be a successful student in my class:
1) Show up and pay attention.
2) At least TRY do do the homework.
3) When you get stuck, or don't understand something, TALK TO ME! That's the reason I'm here! I'll do my level best to help you.

 

As someone who taught at the college level for a decade I might add a fourth….Leave your I phone in your back pack or pocket! And the Talk to Me….sooner rather than later

 

Successfully dropping out of a propaganda system that teaches people what to think not so much how to think I believe is a form of success ( teach yourself as much as you can and dont blindly trust the system )

 

The present administration is expected to outlaw the use of the term "liberal arts" and require it be called "mandatory training".

 

I use different modern tools like chatgpt to get good grades and save my time. That's convy. I was completely overwhelmed with multiple deadlines, and this essay service www.customwritings.com/ was a lifesaver. The paper came back well-researched and thoughtfully written, with proper citations and a clear thesis. It didn’t feel rushed or copied—it was original and carefully done.

 

Study?



Mzzls