All right, enough summertime slacking. Now that Labor Day has passed, it's Officially Fall, and a Back to School series is in order.
In another life, when I taught Freshman Comp and Business English at a state university, I was surprised that many students didn't know how to study; apparently no one had ever showed them. They had, at best, a shaky grasp on things like preparing for class, taking and organizing notes, creating binders, archiving information, planning projects, and developing a study schedule. Without sufficient study skills, it's easy to get overwhelmed.
Studying is synonymous with organizing--it's about organizing information for comprehension and retention, and then communicating one's understanding of a subject (i.e. in a paper, a test, or a presentation) to someone else.
These skills, in turn, have a direct application in the workplace, where one needs to learn and retain new information, take notes in meetings, research options, communicate ideas, propose and plan projects, develop schedules, present findings, and archive information.
Happily, information is one of the few things that's actually kind of fun to organize--once you learn a few basic skills. So this weekend I pulled out some old notebooks, binders, archives, and study materials, took some pictures and wrote some notes myself, in order to share a few strategies to make this the best school year ever--even if you're not in school!