Make some sacrifices

So you don't have all the right class tools, including the proper mindset. We find times in our lives when things stack up against us and we find it difficult to set ourselves up for best performance and results. Some school equipment is expensive, some is not. How will you get the things you need to work effectively in school? Make sure you have the best chance of success at school. Do not lose focus on the goal. It may prove hard but just, step by step, tread the path that secures an improved future. Sometimes a little sacrifice goes a long way.

A small sacrifice can go a long way. For the cost of a burger? Well a burger may be good for your physical and mental, even social health if you eat with friends. Forgoing that burger gives you a few dollars that will buy a good notebook, couple of biros, some pencils, a cheap desk lamp could easily be bought if you are careful with the burger money over a couple of weeks. This little inconvenience (?) could well help form the backbone of your career. You will find other ways to buy the necessary materials and pay other costs to aid your learning. Is it worth it? You bet it is.

You can go to school with all the gear you need. It will feel neat to have what helps the whole learning process. Others around you may be ill-prepared and without focus but you are making small sacrifices (but travelling the right path) to change that and give you motivation to guide your steps towards a grand future. Just do it.

Empty your brain for exams??

In the last post the advice was to empty your brain in preparation for exams. It is the working part of your brain you want to empty to leave it free to do what it does best; solve puzzles, find solutions, suggest pathways. At first you may think it's a stupid idea to empty your brain just when you need it the most. So what are we talking about here?

What comes after 3? 4. After 121? 122. After p? q. What does c a t spell? At some stage in our education we came to know this automatically, often after a lot of perseverance on your part and encouragement from teachers and parents. Still, if you are reading this, you can recognise a lot of words and without having to think, know what they mean. Some years ago you would puzzle over the answer to 5+6=? You probably know this with little thinking required. You can write sentences. It is easy to put a label on trees, dogs, the urban landscape and thousands of things you are familiar with. All this was hard at some stage but now uses little brain power. Solutions come quickly. 'Without thinking' we often say. This is what we mean when we say empty your brain. It's all there, catalogued for future use, hardwired in and ready for retrieval.

In your brain you have gradually built a huge store of information. So read the information you need well before the exam. Learn the formulae off by heart, just like you did years ago with alphabets and counting and spelling. Practise each type of problem until the stucture is familiar at least. It is the familiarity which is important. What are the correct steps for a math problem, order for an essay, style for a history report? Let yourself know these and you will be able to empty your brain ready for exams. Let your mind do its best. Don't clutter it by cramming information in at the last minute. If you do this, there are few connections that have been built between the bits of information needed, and you have to work extra hard on each problem solution to get the right pieces together.

What this means is reviewing, asking questions and consolidating your knowlege in smaller chunks, basically as you come across them in class. As soon as you can re-read the material, see if you can complete work without the use of notes or friends. If you can't do this ask questions and fill in the gaps. Let your mind do its best work at exam time. Start 'emptying your brain' from your very next class.

We'll gradually go through notetaking and study skills later. That will help with exam preparation too.

Good luck with your studies. Have a great day. If you want a hand, feel free to email.

For best exam results, empty your brain

How often do you go into an exam after a cramming session? Up till early morning. Night after night up late for the whole exam period. Poor diet. Little exercise. Feeling bleahh. Head full of a gooey mixture of math, history, art, english, language, social needs, work annoyances. Arggggh.

If you go into an exam with your brain in this condition, you will add to the stress of the situation as well as impede the information flow around your brain. All the answers, clues, suggestions your brain has to offer will be smudged and blocked by too many irrelevant signals and queries. Best to get rid of them. Just as we suggest you de-clutter your study area, you should also de-clutter the working part of your brain. Mmmmm. Yes a big Mmm because it sounds a bit hard. Well, not really. Just like the rest of this site, we are looking for doable ways to ensure Better School Marks.

So your brain is presented with a problem in a test. This is placed into an area that begins to work on the solution under the frame of key words it recognises and signals it adds to that frame to begin a solution process. If this area is full of bits and  pieces you are trying to hold there in temporary (until end of exam) storage as a result of recent cramming, then it is really hard to sort out useful ideas from all the rest. There is too much to do to make sense of the question and pull out relevant information from that mixed in with everything else. Brain goes into overload, stress builds, brain now has to cope with this too. Poor brain. Poor me. Recognise the situation?

Sounds like a disaster. Sounds like you? I think we've all been there. The fix? Empty your brain. That sounds a bit wierd. Empty your brain just as you are getting ready for testing. How does that work? Well, if you have nothing, or much less than usual in the working area, the area where questions go to be dealt with, your brain can easily view the information and draw more relevant pieces from storage. The pieces of information are then fit together easily to make up solutions. The less clutter in this working area, the easier it is for your brain to see exactly what is asked, figure out what you know about it, and retrieve what it needs to solve the puzzle and bring you a solution. Utopia. The exam becomes a more comfortable environmnent with greater chance of success.

So, how can we make this happen? You need to make it happen. Become familiar with each topic. So familiar that recall of information when you need to outside of the exam situation is relatively quick and easy. This means that the content you need is being hardwired into your brain where it is catalogued for easy future reference and retrieval. The only way to do this is through practise, review and careful reading of your notes. If you can achieve this, your mind can relax when you sit exams. In this relaxed state it can operate at its most efficient and effective best. Treat each subject as a sport you are trying to get better at. More practise gives more skills gives more success and more pleasureable feelings about oneself. Oh yeah, I like me because I can do things I found hard at first.

Just like all your workspaces, the brain too needs de-cluttering. Make its solution solving processes smoother and you will get Better School Marks.

Good luck with your studies. We wish you every success. Follow us to see if we can help. Email if you want to.

Participate in school for better school marks

Participating in school will be one of the big obstacles to overcome in your search for better school marks. It may take significant planning and risk, depending on the school and the area it is in. If you do not get negative feedback from classmates try participating in class with questions, answers, suggestions. It will keep you awake and focussed and, more importantly, it will encourage others to join in in a positive manner. What can happen? Well, you could learn more, the teachers would be more helpful when you needed guidance or assistance, you may get leadership approval from your peers. Many positives are there for your taking, not to mention that key of higher grades.

Sometimes you may need to seek approval from some people first if that will help. See if some of your friends may be encouraged to support you with the occasional answer or question, or even some homework done on time. Anything that may improve the learning environment will benefit.

Is it possible to start a study circle. This gives you the opportunity to be a leader, meet new and valuable school contacts, and have more sources of help and interaction. These can be small groups of peers who you can rely on. Meet on or off campus. The relationships formed in these groups are often long lasting, threading way into the future. You can use each others notes and ideas to advantage. Be reliable. Be useful. Be that leader. Make sure everyone's input is valued. Make sure everone has a turn. Make sure there are no put downs, even in fun because you never know how the other person may take it. The individuals in study circles tend to grow rapidly in maturity.

If the classroom is out of the question as a place to stand out, even a little, try putting something back into your community by offering to do a small extra job around campus. It might be that only a few notice at first. It seems that if you put a positive spin into something, the universe in some way rewards your actions. So once you feel a bit more confident about your power, take it into the classroom and work on your academic capability. Do not go for nerd of the week. Go for the likeable all rounder. This is a better target. You are looking for a more comfortable and more enjoyable learning place, that's all.

Make exams easy. Better brain links for Better School Marks

During tests your brain needs to work quickly and efficiently. Experts tell us that our brain works best when it is uncluttered, relaxed and when the channels we need to use to solve the particular problems in front of us are well ingrained in our brain.

Let's deal with the last of these. It seems to be the most difficult. In practice, you can ensure that you are always at this vital stage. The channels you use to solve particular problems are just like channels used to carry water. With a regular flow of water and maintenance of the edges, these channels are efficient and do their job well. Treat learning any new skill or theory at school just like an athlete trains a skill. How many times do pros swing a bat, kick a ball, pass, punt, run, jump, swim lengths? They may be among the best in the world but they still must work on the most basic of skills, as well as those that most of us will never master. That's why they are the best.

As kids they probably spent hours on a new trick, throw or stroke that most of us would have given up on. They would definitely have made many mistakes. Nobody gets better by staying safe and making no mistakes. Learn from them and steadily improve. Do a couple extra practise sessions. You won't need as much effort or repetition as our world class athletes but you will be well rewarded.

So back to those channels. Imagine when you first come across something you have to learn that you have to dig a channel to join up the right parts in your brain so you can absorb it into your mental capability. On the first go, the message goes over unfamiliar ground looking for the right links. On the second it may recognise that it has seen this before and remember most of where to go, starting to dig out a channel for future information of this sort to go through. The next time the channel is dug out further and information begins to flow quickly and freely. The more you repeat the better the information flows, the more quickly and readily problems are solved.

Just like the water carrying channels that will fall into disrepair if they are not used and well maintained so too these mental channels will become less efficient with lack of use. The good news is that if you set up good channels at the beginning with a lot of early practise, your small bits of revision and review is all that is needed for maintenance to keep them in first class condition.

During exams you will have a network of open channels that link together in many ways and are ready to pump information that will be retrieved, assembled and laid out as a solution. And good job to you for making that happen.

Study zone: comfortable, not too comfortable

At your place? Let's look at where you are going to study this year. Go to where you study most. Is there a television there? Is it usually on? Is there loud music? Are there usually other people in the room? Is it hard to look outside? Is the fresh air flow minimal? Is the light dim? Do you lie on your bed and get too comfortable for your thoughts to be electric and clear? Do you jam ipod buds in your ears and blast music into your head? Do you cram all night before exams? Are your study sessions one long, boring sitting? Do you study without giving yourself some kind of reward? OK there are a lot of things to consider for an ideal study spot. And you can see what we're getting at.

To give yourself the best use of valuable time when you can get to study.

That's what you want. Maximum benefit for the limited time allocated to study. How will you turn all the answers to the above questions into "No."? Seriously, put a plan into action. If there is no such place in your house, then substitute a room at school during breaks or before or after school. See if you can find permission for this. Use the local library, on weekends if necessary. Oh, weekends are just for playing? Then you are just playing at being serious about giving yourself as much chance of success as possible. Do not kid yourself. Setting up a good area now will carry into the future. You will gradually and naturally set up your work area for best production automatically when others will struggle. It is not just for school.

Could you negotiate a quiet time in the house? Sometimes others do not realise the importance of letting your thoughts fully focus on the work of school and how it may help them in the future as your career grows. This may be tough when you are starting out. But every small victory counts. It is not always a final battle that wins but the skirmishes that make up the whole that prove to be decisive. If your success has been limited until now, do not give up. You may have to prove your intent. Step by step. Find the support. Email me.

What is ideal?

Sit at a table, comfortable chair. If possible have only the material you are working on lying on the table. Well lit. A window through which you can easily look outside and open for fresh air. If you have to have music, make it music you can tune out to so it does not interfere with some intense concentration. Make it easy to turn off now and then. Take short breaks from whatever you are doing, glance out at the day, turn off music and enjoy the silence, let knowledge sink in and work its way into your mind and thinking. Set a timeframe, say one hour. Then give yourself a complete break. Stand up. Stretch. Roll your eyes, they need a change too. Have a drink or snack. Limit the break to 5-10 minutes max.

Get serious about your success. Better School Marks is where you can easily start. You have to be there. Take what you can from it to most advantage you. Enjoy doing it. It is the successes, no matter how small, that we look to for our pleasure that we want to get out of school. They are selfishly just for us.

Smart? The world needs you

School may not be what you want to be doing. Suffer! It is just part of the system. It is very often the key to future possibilities of career, study and success. If you are clever, the world needs you. If the academic part of school is easy, make it harder by setting challenges. The world need you. Many potential inventors of medicine, machinery, structures, science and creators of art in all its forms are lost because of brilliant minds losing their gloss in a school delivery mechanism choked with the mundane, the unnecessary and the bland.

It is the blandness of the system that creates non-creative activities, producing by conformance, a choking of the flow of creative juices in students. Schools will say they do creative writing and all manner of cultural pursuits, designed to promote creative thought but this is all formulaic. Creativity activities need to be set to boundaries that do not limit the mind in its exploration. At school we are all marked "A" or "C" or "very good" or "needs improvement". It's all a mish mash of a marking system. Would Leodardo da Vinci's teacher mark his science as "will not fly, man was not meant to fly - D"? Limiting creativity is one of education's biggest blunders.

"Creative writing", as a subject has myriad rules to define it and what it should consist of and end up looking like. Often teachers turn out creative clones of themselves. Creative? "Art is creative" I hear you say. Well, it should be. But again the rules offer too much definition for students to let their minds wander to the infinite edges. Too little time and too little co-ordinated effort across the curriculum makes sure we are not developing this most important compartment in our brain. Leonardo explored art, science, mathematics, philosophy, logic. Freely swapping one to another. He is recognised regularly in our texts as having had one of the greatest minds.

What can you do? Keep your mind polished. You may have to find ways to create scenarios that constantly challenge. Draw. Paint. Play an instrument. Dance. Create. Write. Stir the depths of your mind. Let it flow to the outer reaches of the universe and the inner secrets of your thoughts. Then look to the academics. If the content of mathematics classes is too slow, too easy then go to a library at the local College and ask to join. Sit there and read books that show you what is coming up next. Then determine to get there by yourself. Go to the College to get the feel and atmosphere. If not, ask your school library to get you some texts on loan.

Take a slow pace and look ahead of where you are. Not necessarily mathematics. For any subject you can see where the class is going and find something that takes you past it. Choose one of your favourite subjects and see where it fits into the world process. However small a step you make here, you will be advantaging the world. See if your desires lie in cultural, scientific, literature, or other but find something to be passionate about and get started. If you are only reasonably able, then your influence on the world can be great. Good luck!