Welcome back, campers! Now that you've been back (or brand new) to campus a few days, odds are somebody's probably given you unsolicited advice. You've been enlightened about which dining hall has edible fare, how not to become road pizza at the Scramble Light and which literature professor is straight out of Dante's Inferno.
Of course, one area about which you may have sought advice is studying. Everyone wants a clue on how to best study for a class to make the grade you want (or need). After all, unless you're a football player, college is about studying, right?
Wrong. College is about preparing to enter the work force. College is where you go to learn a set of skills that make you tangibly employable to companies.
The kicker is, merely studying isn't going to get you a job. Good grades won't always get you a job. So, if that's the case, what does one do? Perhaps you should do the following:
Forget about your grades.
Now, don't rejoice because somebody just wrote something that's music to your eyes. Don't use this to rationalize your lack of effort for a professor. A deeper truth lies in that suggestion.
Focusing on studying to make certain grades is inherently limiting. If you spend your time worrying about your grades, you're focused on one thing: how to make high grades with minimal possible effort. This often results in cramming or rushed efforts to pack in what you're supposed to know for an exam. The next day, you can't recall half of what you studied.
Your real focus should be on learning. The more you learn the better your chances are for gaining meaningful employment. Learning takes the information you study and locks it into your brain through repetition and application. Learning makes it easier for you to recall and utilize the material.
Learning is similar to what top athletes do in order to excel. A top golfer like Tiger Woods works for hours and hours on a single shot with a single club so he can pull it off under pressure. Sports psychologist Bob Rotella refers to this as "training it and trusting it." Learning works the same way. When you learn the material for a class, you are able to call on it under fire, unlike someone who didn't and is slugging down Pepto-Bismol by the quart.
Studying for grades has only short-term gains. Learning has long-term implications. When you study to study, you defeat the purpose of college since you're chasing a letter grade. When you study to learn you work towards your future employment.
Employers seldom look at a transcript when you apply for a job. They're more concerned about what you can do and how well you fit the position you're interviewing for. They may look at your GPA to see if you were a good student, but they don't care what you got in that Badminton elective you took.
The amazing thing about learning is that it takes care of the grades. Good grades abound because the student truly learned the material and demonstrated it. So, forget about the grades and focus on learning and pursuing the real goal: employment.
Write to Jeff at mannedarena@hotmail.com
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