Archive for January 20th, 2007
Beyond Intelligence # 2
Read it before you need it!
Targeted Audience: Students
I always put this discipline at the top of my all academic disciplines – read it before you need it. In my school days, I failed to fulfill it numbers of times. But whatever few numbers of times I accomplished it, it helped me tremendously. I highly recommend following this discipline in your daily school routine. I know sometimes it gets really hard to be consistent because of some other study or work load. But it is okay if you fail to achieve it always. It is more important that you try to follow it again whenever time permits.
Now classes must have started in full fledge and all professors must be bombarding tons of knowledge, bunch of assignments, and deadly projects on you with an insane rate. In this race of achieving the deadlines, most of the times, we forget to understand the basic concepts and hence the subject thoroughly. Reading it before you need it will help you tremendously to grasp the understanding of the subject at very early stages and very efficiently.
The discipline is simple. You just need to read some of the topics, which will be getting covered in the next class. You do not need to understand it completely. It is just to get familiar with the terminologies, the flow of the subject, and to know what to expect next in the class. I personally found that pre-class preparation always helps to grasp the subject immediately.
Also if you understand what you read before it is been taught in the class, then you have an added advantage to answer the questions being asked in the class. Based on your understanding, you can also discuss some of the advanced concepts in the class.
Now you may ask that how do you know what to read next. I believe most of the times the detailed schedule is already posted in the beginning of semester. In case of doubt, ask your professor at the end of class that what he or she is going to cover in the next class. In worst case if you don’t attend the class or if you forgot to ask, send an email him or her.
Your this behavior will also show your sincerity towards your preparation of the course work. There are very high chances that your professor might get impressed by this sincerity, which will help you during evaluation of your assistantship application.
Once again, before sleeping, just browse through the chapters that you know will be covered in the tomorrow’s class.
To read more articles from this series, please visit Beyond Intelligence.
