11
MAKE USE OF YOUR PEN AND JOTTER
All through my years at secondary school, I never learnt the art of studying but I had noticed one attribute with my mom who is an academic scholar. She had lots of A4 papers which she folded in some way and wrote down everything she read. I never asked her why and that was my undoing. If I did, my studying habit would have improved and I would have had immediate success at the university.
When I got to the university though, I had trouble developing the best studying habit that suited me. I had a challenging first year and however hard I tried, my result turned out poor. I was quick to recognize the best students in class after our first year and I quickly began to attach myself to them watching and trying out what they did.
I noticed this attribute amongst all of them. They each had a way of making new notes from the lecturers’ notes or their personal studying textbooks. They developed thorough dedication to writing everything out the best way they’d understand. One of them was Amos, he would often rewrite the notes afresh in his exercise books using very small writing fonts. Another was Lagos, Lagos made key points with bullets and arrows to direct him to their meanings. Nathan had penchant for using A4 papers as his jotting paper. He’d divide the papers into two and make use of very small fonts. Everyone each had a unique way of rewriting what they had being taught. I began to try out the techniques and soon I developed one that worked for me
I tried my hands first with using notebooks. The challenge I had was actually taking care of the books. They’d go missing many times and I’d have to buy new ones. I knew I was a good failure there and I’d have to start afresh making notes. I decide that using notebooks wouldn’t work. I began to make use of short papers which I carried with me everywhere, in my pockets and inside my textbooks. The technique worked and soon my grades improved and I joined the ranks of those who were looked up to.
Studying without writing is no studying. It’s like writing without pen. It’s not possible. You will have to learn to write while you read especially if you want to keep the information for a much longer time. There is a huge relationship between the hands, the eyes and the part of the brain that supports academic brilliance.
There are some persons who claim they just read and it goes straight into their brains. If you check their results you will observe that they are around the average students in class. Those who do excellently well are those who know that the pen is a very powerful tool along with the jotter while studying.
I noticed that all the top students in class had a jotting culture that helped them remember everything they read. I also joined them too because I discovered on time.
Making notes may be time consuming and tasking. It helps, especially because there is a certain pace at which reading becomes studying. When we write while we read, we keep that pace and we can easily look through for the salient points rather than going over the text book for a fresh study.
Again, when we make notes while reading, we are able to use words that we can easily remember and that are part of our everyday vocabulary than the one offered by the lecturer or textbook. It also makes us connect what we are studying with things we could use to remember maybe mnemonics or even living or non-living things.
Studying is more than just picking the book and reading, note taking while studying helps to kindle a desire to also make researches and to know more beyond what is available. It also ensures that salient points that should be noted are discovered. Reading just orally doesn’t count for much because you may end up not remembering even the major points made in the passage. You will easily discover the major points and important points within a passage when you take notes.
Making notes also helps to provide you with an easily accessible picture arranged by yourself. It’s difficult knowing where a particular problem has answers in your textbook using your minds camera because the images of the texts in the textbooks are blurring. When you write, the picture easily comes to bear in the mind especially during the examination hall.
Writing helps you create mnemonics that will help you. Those who just read won’t know the usefulness of mnemonics. Mnemonics helps you summarize large information in a unique coded pattern which only the writer knows the meaning. Once the scholar sees the codes he is able to detect what he has studied and stored under it. Using mnemonics is a topic for another chapter.
Just know that when you actually want to study, your face must be on your reference text, pen must be on your hands and then on a book or paper.