Institutt for psykologi Department of Psychology
Universitetet i Tromsų University of Tromsų

ADVICE ON HOW TO BE A STUDENT: Part 1

By Floyd Rudmin

First year university students are often in for a shock:

• 1) The work load is greater than in gymnasium.
• 2) The material is more difficult.
• 3) The exams are more difficult.
• 4) You are no longer more intelligent than your classmates.
• 5) Classes are larger & teachers do not know who you are.
• 6) Many of you are away from home for the first time, learning how to manage on your own, and not doing too well.

Two goals you should have as a new student in university are

• a) to have care for your own motivations, and
• b) to become an efficient learner.

• a) you have no particular reason to be in university, and
• b) you plan to study for the exams.

Learning will not go well without strong supporting motivations. In my opinion, the best emotion is love. You need to fall in love with psychology, or some topic of psychology, so that it is a pleasure to think about it, hear about it, and read about it. I have found that knowing the human side of psychology makes it easier to love it. By the human side, I mean, to know the biographies of the important persons in the history of psychology. I urge new students to pick one or two psychologists and to read their biographies, read their own writings, and if they are living, to even open a correspondence with them.

For example, I did this with Gustav Ichheiser (1897-1969) and with Leon Litwinski (1887-1969). Both of them are minor, and relatively unknown psychologists, but their merit far exceeds their reputations, in my opinion, since they were writing cognitive psychology decades before it became fashionable. Both were rather difficult personalities, but that makes them more interesting. I never met either of them, but I did meet Ichheiser's 1946 office mate, and I did meet Litwinski's grandson. As a student, outside of course requirements, I researched and wrote about these two psychologists:

Rudmin et al. (1987). Gustav Ichheiser in the history of social psychology. British Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 165-180.
Rudmin (1990). The economic psychology of Leon Litwinski. Journal of Economic Psychology, 11, 307-339.

There are other plausible motivations you might develop as the basis of your learning. For example, competitiveness, meaning that you strive to do better than the other students. Another plausible motivation is rebellion, meaning that you study and learn in order to challenge and knock down the teacher, or the textbook, or the whole field. Another plausible motivation is sympathy, meaning that you feel sorry for students having trouble in the course and help and tutor them, which in turn requires you to know the material well.

The worst motivation is probably fear, in this case, fear of the exam. It is probably most inefficient to attend classes and study because you are frightened of the exam. Fear is paralyzing, wastes your energy, ruins your health, and is simply not fun.

Another bad motivation is obedience. Many students think that they should obey the teacher and do what the curriculum requires.-So, you read a book because the teacher told you to, or because it is in the curriculum. But when you study out of obedience, your spirit all the time will be rebelling. You can sit reading the textbook, and your eye and mind will read every word, but after 5 pages of this you know nothing of what you just read. Learning becomes empty words running through an empty mind.

Efficient learning requires that you have a free spirit, that you are learning what you chose to learn because you are interested in, or better in love with, the topic. Then you can read material once, with interest, and you know it.

The Biblical parable of the extra mile is psychologically very sophisticated. Jesus said, "And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him two miles." To walk one mile because someone compels you to, that is miserable and oppressive. Similarly, to read one textbook because the teacher or the course compels you to, that is miserable, oppressive, and will not be a basis for efficient learning. But to walk an extra mile out of your own choice, that gives you freedom. In a university, it will sound strange and unbelievable to most students, but it is easier, and faster, and certainly more fun and efficient, to read two books than it is to read one book that you are forced to read it by the teacher.

As a general rule, you should consider the curriculum and the textbooks required by the course to be only 1/2 or 1/3 of your course. The rest you choose out of your own freedom. Read beyond the course requirements. Attend lectures in other departments or attend research seminars in psychology. Out of your own freewill.

Finally, there are some simple mechanics to being a student. Most students think that their task in a lecture is to sit and take notes, and that they will then try to study these notes some time before the exam. That is a BIG mistake.

Do NOT sit in a lecture taking notes. You should sit in a lecture THINKING. You want to have some "depth of processing" so that the information you are hearing can enter into your memory and your cognitive schema and structures. Of course you must take some notes to remind yourself of what was covered. but these notes are just clues to what is in your mind.

For example, my own strategy as a student was to all the time think of the counter evidence and counter arguments to what was being said. I would try to think how to disprove what the teacher was saying. Of course, usually I could not find that disproof. But the act of trying would bring that information firmly into memory and my own thinking. A friend told me that he used to sit in lectures all the time asking himself how the information being presented could have an application. Another told me that she would always try to find examples from her own life experience and the people she knows.

What is important is that you are actively THINKING during the lectures about the material being presented in the lectures. Then studying for the exam is not learning the material but simply reminding yourself of what you already know. It is efficient.