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DO PERSONAL RESEARCH
I’ve observed that many students don’t do personal research. They don’t strive to get more information than what they have being told by their lecturers. I’ve also observed that many lecturers do not keep up to date with the latest information in their field.
Some of my lecturers at the university often bragged to us how they are able to keep the notes that they used in the in the seventies and eighties and they were using the same notes today in the twenty first century when the world has gone past them. It’s amusing how much less than the prevalent knowledge those lecturers know. Most of them are not ready to study or get new knowledge. They keep lecturing the same old notes year in year out.
An argument ensued between my classmates and a certain lecturer over the use of certain materials in a metallurgy class. I was personally ashamed that my lecturer whose duty it was to give us the latest information on current materials being applied in the automobile world had no knowledge that certain composites were already in use. We argued it over until everyone agreed that we needed to do a research and return with results to the next class.
Any student who wants to stay ahead in this twenty-first century must do all that must be done in the area of constantly getting new information. There is so much out there. So much new information finds its way into the internet every now and then and only the studious research minded student actually knows.
In our modern day, the use of the internet cannot be over emphasized. It’s way too important these days. There are so many social sites that help people connect. Studious students have to spend less time on social site and more time on much more informative websites.
Don’t accept all that you are told by the lecturer or your classmates hook line and sinker. There is always more information around than they often will share. No lecturer will offer you all that you should know. They actually don’t know all they should know. They also need to be informed. You can be that informant.
There is certain knowledge that I obtained during my university days that I could never have gotten if I never did personal researches. My lecturers never shared that knowledge. Some of them assumed they had to be secretive about the information they share just so that the students could always look up to them in awe. Sadly though, we never did. We never knew they even knew much more than they were telling us.
I’ve questioned many first-class and other high flying students and they share the same secret of trying to do more than their teachers would offer them. They do not accept all the teacher says as final. Rather they get extra information.
Sometimes new extra information could mean easier way of solving a problem. Increasingly what new researches do is to give us faster better ways of doing our work. We even find similar problems that we are tackling especially through the internet and this gives an extra advantage over the lecturer and the other students who don’t.
A colleague of mine boasted about the number of books he had. Well, so many students boast about the number of books they have in their personal libraries. What they don’t boast about is the number of books they have read. I too did that. Yes I had an e-library of at least 1000 books but I never read close to 100 books. But I showed off the books to my mates.
Doing personal research keeps you some knowledge distance off your peers. I often bragged about what I knew especially because I was amongst people who never read. The little extra knowledge I had paid off in the way I communicated and I often showed off some new knowledge I came across in my short studies. I was always looked at in awe and that even propelled me to study even more.
The little extra minutes of personal study pays.