To my charming nieces and college freshmen everywhere.

Two of my nieces are going to start college in the next week or so; both are above average in looks and intelligence, and both will probably make some of the usual freshman mistakes in adjusting to college before becoming a successful student. Can Uncle Phactor offer some advice? Oh, he can, but shall he? Will it make any difference? Probably not, but please grant me this, on the subject of how to really succeed in education, freshmen are clueless because high schools do little to promote the right types of behavior, and having been a successful student, a professional student if you will so allow, for over 40 years, and having observed nearly countless students flounder (A word that can be used as both a verb and a noun.), some things are known to me to be true. Like many things, success in college is not rocket science, unless you are actually studying rocket science, and these days many other things are more intellectually challenging, but since neither of you have shown any proclivity for engineering, or sadly botany, the queen of sciences, we can move on. Understand this: most students don’t fail at college because they aren’t smart enough; you’re plenty smart enough, but learning to be disciplined, learning to use your smarts effectively, learning to use your time efficiently, that’s what it’s all about, and of course, these are life skills, so these are skills that will be useful to have. Naturally you ignore parents and high school teachers, stupid fools that they are, but you do understand the necessity of coaches don’t you? As athletes move from high school, to college, to professional levels two things are certain: only a tiny fraction who are successful at each level will be a success at the next level, and they still have coaches. Uncle Phactor coaches professional students, and those who may aspire to be so.
1. Get a good night’s sleep – You need your rest, probably at least 8 hrs of sleep, and if you don’t get it, you trudge into my class like a hung over zombie. Not only does this make quite an impression, but people like the Phactor are pretty fast company for you intellectually, not because of more smarts, but because of having professional level skills, even when you’re rested and alert. Why make it easy on me and handicap yourself? It was an unfair contest from the beginning. All-nighters just don’t work; you lose the next day, so timewise it’s break even at best. Now on this matter and the next, Uncle Phactor thinks perhaps the redhead will do better because she is more disciplined, more amenable to coaching, and the brunette still thinks she can burn the candle at both ends and get away with it, granted it’s your family’s way to attempt to do way too much in too little time so this will take some serious coaching to unlearn these bad habits.
2. Eat breakfast – In addition to rest, you need some energy to function well, and some time to wake up and get functioning in the morning. Don’t eat sugary cereal or creamy crisp donuts; the sugar will metabolize too quickly and you’ll be even hungrier later. Telling yourself you don’t need or want breakfast is just another bad habit that needs to be broken. Use the time to think about what you need to do today, and review you plan for the day.
3. Get a little exercise – OK this one is really just a fantasy because it really isn’t going to happen since basically number 1 and 2 were a stretch, but again, you need to have your metabolism going. Even if you just walk briskly from place to place it helps (and please do not do the student shuffle!).
4. Start things immediately – Projects get done not because of some super human effort all at once; they get done bit by bit, piece by piece, day by day. Start with an idea or just a paragraph, and then add to it every day. Oh and that’s how you study to learn something too.
5. Study day by day – Do you need the long-term versus short-term learning lecture? If you sleep on it, most of your short term memory is erased so to speak for a new day, and maybe only 20% was saved in long-term memory. A single repetition on the same day will double the long-term memory learning. This is using your time efficiently because that one review will save you so much time down the road.
6. Be ready for class – Where did you leave off? Scan your textbook material for the class and try to identify what you think is one key or important point. Why? Because professors like me call on people to see if they have anything going on. The deer-in-headlights look and nothing to say is just so impressive.
7. Read and study in quiet solitude – When you read or study do so in absolute solitude, so this means turning off your laptop computer, email, cell phone, ipod (gasp, incredulous looks), TV, and then gag and subdue your roommate (probably just a communications major anyways) for at least 25 mins (You may not have heard of the Pomodoro Technique but stressed students who have used it say the technique works.) . After 25 min of uninterrupted study you can take a 5 min break to check that your cell phone and email are actually still working, that the world did not cease to exist. Then do another pomodoro (25 mins.). Of course this techinique would appeal to a botanist; who can resist a tomato timer? This is the hardest rule of all because today’s students have convinced themselves that they can multitask, and they can’t. Interruptions are concentration and time killers; follow this rule and in the long run you’ll spend less time studying and have more time for screwing around.
Seven rules is enough for now, six really because we discounted # 3, and if you get these going life will be so easy you may have time for a social life, like going to a movie or something once a month. Take it from me, majoring in frisbee and chasing women can be fun, and you do learn a few things, but it doesn't help your grades. Perhaps some of my faithful readers will have a tip or two to share with you.

Please, sir, can I have a study guide?

Over three decades of teaching evaluations have told me a lot about what students like and dislike, about me, about my subjects, about my attire, about my sense of humor, about my course organization, and about exams and grading. I have learned very little that would improve my teaching, and much that would improve my popularity.

Presently my classes are mostly populated with 3d and 4th year undergraduates, people that used to be called juniors and seniors, or upper classmen. These are students who have weathered the dreadful common curriculum and the deadly core courses. With some good reason you might expect them to have gained a bit of educational sophistication, to be effective learners, to provide some give and take to keep their aged professor on his toes.

So why do such students continue to complain that I do not provide study guides?

Please understand, a significant part of each exam consists of open-book questions distributed a week ahead, and for which my expectations for reasonably good exposition are reasonably justified. These would seem pretty self-evident areas to study. And to avoid condusion on my part, I ask, "What do you want a study guide to assist you with?"

"We want to know what to study for the exam."

Now that seems fair enough doesn't it? But here is the problem. This also means students want to know what NOT to study, some subset of the information presented that can just be conveniently forgotten now, as opposed to later, a strategy very similar, although not quite so truncated as Father Sarducci's "5-minute university" where you only learn what you would remember 5 years after graduation anyways.

What such students fail to understand, and if they do not get it by now, there is a good chance they will not be getting it ever, is that in my due diligence I have prospected mountains of material to mine only the richest veins of knowledge, presenting them with just the choicest nuggets of biological understanding. And then they ask, what of this can we simply avoid learning? Which nuggets can we discard now just to save us some time.

Now this is very different from asking, "DrA, what is the best explanation for phenomenon A, or why do we hypothesize B instead of C?" Nothing could please me more than answering such study guide questions. But the need-a-study-guide students are not far enough along to ask such questions, and the ones who are that far along do not need or want a study guide. To fairly and honestly tell them what to study for the exam would require that I write out the entire narrative of the lectures and discussions. Wait, I've done that! They have my book!

So I am resigned to such criticism. My evaluations will probably not improve markedly no matter what. So I tell them, "I expect you to know and understand it all. Nothing less, and I know such outstanding students as yourselves will not disappoint me", until time comes for evaluations that is.