7 Strategies to Raise Your GPA this Semester | Pick the Brain

This caught my eye since I’ve applied for a few positions where I would be involved with helping students develop better study skills.  These are pretty generic, but make for a good start.  Here are a few thoughts on each:

1.  Go to class: you pay $X per credit.  Each credit is Y hours per semester  If you divide $X/Y hours, that is the cost per hour, just in your tuition alone.  Then figure how much you pay for rent, food, clothes, gas, etc… and you suddenly have a pretty large $ amount.  I used to use the knowledge that I was tossing that much money away as an incentive to get my butt to class.

On the flip side, I also had a belief that if I was so ill I would be using all of my energy to just stay awake and not fall out of my seat, then I stayed at home.

2.  Sit in the front row: I don’t agree with this one, but I would say sit in the front half of the room.  I sometimes found the front row made it difficult to see the teacher and what they were writing if I was too far stage left/right.  Think of it like the theater; as close to front center as you can get, but fail to the middle of the room before the wings.

3.  Take notes by hand: absolutely.  I always did a better job of recalling information if I wrote it down in class.  I would also follow this up by making 3×5 notecards with the term on one side and the definition on the other (more below on why this works).  Writing it all down twice really helped a lot.

4.  Do a weekly review: Always helps you build on top of your pre-existing knowledge.
5.  Go to office hours: We’re not perfect humans and that includes students.  I was amazed how often I had questions and would go to my faculty member to get clarification only to hear them say, “That’s a good question, I can’t believe nobody else has asked that.”  They clarify in class and I then find out lots of people were wondering the same thing and thought they should just know it.  Sometimes profs don’t get everything to us.  They, as humans, are not perfect.
6.  Find smart people to work with:  I would say don’t look for people who are too dramatic.  And who are stable.  But don’t limit yourself to the smartest echelon.  They can be a bit egotistical and generate unhealthy competition.  If someone is a stable person, fun to be with and trustworthy, don’t worry so much about “smart”.  Sometimes it is okay to give a little back.
7.  Avoid all-nighters: Absolutely.  Can’t improve on that.  Make a calendar and budget your time accordingly.  If you want a party night, plan it as well.  A late night isn’t always horrible if you can do it between responsibilities.

Rote learning to build onto a skeleton: I was a massive geek.  I always had a set of 3×5 cards with me.  Rote learning isn’t the best way to master information, but it builds a good structure on which to hang your theoretical knowledge.  I would go through the deck, terms in front, usually about a dozen cards at a time, until I had them mastered.  I would put the cards (term) I had down in a separate pile until I had each card memorized.  Then start again, but this time read the definition and identify the term.  Once I had these down, I would begin to shuffle them up and keep flipping them back and forth.

As soon as I had the term down, the ways the information were chunked together began to make better sense.

Finally ditched the last version of Symantec Internet Security.  I had the 2004 version, which I used on my old computer.  When it died, I scavenged parts to build my PVR/server and installed the software on it.  Don’t know exactly what their license is, maybe that was not allowed.  

I do know it is ridiculous when you own a valid software license and can’t uninstall it on one computer and reinstall on another.  At least on a personal level.  I can see it, to a degree, for corporations or large organizations, but that is because you often purchase or download one copy and install it on the network.  Here, in my home, I had a valid copy and will have to go purchase another over-packaged box.

Why is this the case?  Well, a few weeks ago my server’s power supply failed.  It knocked out the system drive and I had to rebuild the system from scratch.  I installed the OS on one of the older drives, with software, before I realized that drive was also acting up.  So, I installed it on a pristine drive.  I had registered Internet Security on each of the drives (the first thing I do after installing my OS is to install security).  But, on the final drive, it came back with an error. I had registered the software too many times.

I looked on the Symantec site and finally got routed to start a chat conversation with an operator.  I told them my problem and the response was, ‘Sorry, the server deactivated your serial number.’  That was it.  I asked again and got the same answer.  I finally gave up and uninstalled the software.  As I did so, I realized that I have refused to buy an upgraded version since the copies were were using at work on university computers were causing lots of problems by taking way too many resources.  And how the university was moving from it as well.

In the end, my server isn’t without security.  I don’t really do that much with it and it doesn’t have any important information on the drives.  I don’t order using my credit card on it.  If they hack in and want to see the shows I record, Tivo-style, they’re welcome to it.  So Windows Firewall and installed PC Tools Antivirus, free at Download.com and worth checking out in place of an expensive, resource hungry software with way too many strings attached.

With each passing week, we recognize more common places and things from the Toronto area (and Vancouver, since we’ve been there for a nice long vacation).  This evening, a commercial came on and showed two people acting next to a car.  In the background, a green GO train passed by.  it was pretty cool, suddenly recognizing a location where you live and not having it be on the local news.  Not a big thing, but it really does make one realize you’re in a major location.  A place where people go to film for TV and movies.

I understand that a lot of filming goes on here as a replacement for NY.  Parts of the Spiderman movies were supposedly filmed in Toronto.  And some of the X-Men scenes at Xavier’s school was filmed at Casa Loma.  I’m looking forward to re-watching Spiderman 1 and 2 when the 3rd hits DVD so I can watch for local scenery.  How much fun would it be to see our apartment building (which we will no longer be living in by then) as Spiderman swings across the screen?

Ah, if you read the last two entries, you know I’ve been under the weather and hatching a plan so devious if you put a tail on it you could call it a weasel (thanks, Blackadder). What since? Why no blogging? Well, mostly because the jobs suddenly started fast and furious. It has been my plan, since we started putting together the plan to move to T.O., for me to take some time off up until we had settled into our house. Trying to start a job three weeks after we close on a house would be the best method for doing this, but very little control for the exact timing is available to me.

Once we had a closing date for our new home, I started digging through the local universities, looking for a position which would allow me to continue to grow and to bring my strengths to benefit others. At first, nothing appeared. Absolutely nothing. The one position I did see wouldn’t have been a good fit for me though I could have handled the job.

Then, the week I was sick, several jobs showed up. So the week following was full of me putting together cover letters and applications for each. Three so far and a fourth I will apply for next week as it isn’t due until the 11th of September (and I just made the connection with that date’s history as I write this).

I’m acting a bit in a vacuum, but I do wonder if the suddenness of these positions (and there has been a massive growth in the number of positions on the site, even though only a few are of interest to myself) is due to Canada’s reflection of European customs. I know in Europe, people take their summer vacations very seriously. It is a part of the pattern of life which allows you to relax and prepare for the coming year. Something which has seemed to fail in the US due to our overboard consumption patterns and inability to relax properly.

So for these positions to appear, so close to the start of school, makes me wonder if it is due to employees taking their summer vacation before returning to turn in their notice. It may be I do not have all the information to truly understand why. But I hope to find out once I have a position. It will be very interesting to understand some of these type of differences between Canadian and US culture. Which is really part of why we moved, right? To experience a different way of thinking from our neighbors to the north.

Wish me luck.

Oh, and I should note that this is an amazing summer weekend and the last weekend of summer. Summer here ends on Sept 3, and fall shall, I expect, follow very shortly thereafter. But, it is an amazing 75 degrees F outside the coffee shop with a nice wind through town. The air is clean today and traffic seems to be down. I think we shall head to the islands tomorrow to spend some time relaxing and maybe soak up some heat to get ready for a much longer winter than we are used to.

Well, Ana was certainly surprised this weekend. I made a big to-do about wanting Friday evening for something and then wanting a nice laid-back weekend to fully recover from the flu. Especially after being sick for the last two weekends and my parents had been in town for the weekend where it was beginning to settle upon me. She agreed and then all sorts of things went bonkers, but she never expected her friends Becca and Jeannette to show up. And certainly not her brother and sister-in-law.

But, I’ll let Ana tell it in her words. 

(A bit late in posting this, should have dropped it on August 20 instead of Sept 1, but it predates my next posts and makes thing a bit more complete.)

Oh, woe is me. The last week was horrific. The honest-to-god flu got me. I was down and out for the entire week. The only happy bit was the fact my parents came to visit the weekend when I was just getting going with my illness. So, I had a good visit with them and then settled into letting the virus run through my system for the rest of the week.

However, new week, new Daryl. Taking a moment to review life finds me at a good point. We have a house and all of the paperwork is complete. Now we only wait until Sept 18 to close. Then some painting and we can get our stuff, currently in storage, delivered. Still a lot of work to do, but a few weeks of job searching and getting some things done in between.

Toronto is cool at the moment. Two weeks ago we were experiencing some serious heat. That settled off a bit last week and gave way to a cooling trend with a low % chance of rain all week. The sign outside the coffee shop shows 22 Celsius/72 Fahrenheit and the skies are completely overcast, threatening rain. Not cool enough for a jacket, but it feels that way after the recent heat.

Now, all of the above isn’t major news, so why blog it? Well, today is the first day of back to work. Now that we aren’t rushing around every evening looking at houses, life is a bit more relaxed. I’m building a schedule, something I always benefit from, starting with a bit of writing in the coffee shop each morning. One cup of tea and a chance to be around people instead of stuck in the apartment doing research/making phone calls and only getting out to run errands.

Then home to have lunch and do “home” things and watch my soaps. Don’t snicker, I’m talking a solid few hours of CSI:NY, Law and Order and ending with Without a Trace on the back end before running more errands or getting out a bit more. And I don’t actually do it every day. Most importantly, it gives me a bit of a structured schedule which I always benefit from instead of access to a near-infinite variety of day planning.

Vacation it may be, but I have a pretty big list of things to get done and a finite amount of time to dedicate. Time to get started…