Introduction
Why do people study (i.e. what is their goal)? Students spend at least a quarter of their life going to school—from their preschool years to their higher education (and if in luck, graduate and doctoral school) years. There are two possible answers to this question: the simple and the complicated one. The complicated answer suggests that each person has a different reason or set of reasons why they study. Some study because they need to while some do so because they want to. The simple answer, on the other hand, suggests that people study just because they want to learn. For the purposes of this paper, I only focused on the simple reason. My career or educational goal then is to learn as many things as possible—after all, it is a lifelong process.
Discussions
Being a student is one of the most complex things a student-age person can do. It makes one busy, busy enough to forget all the other things in life such as time with family, social life, and even leisure and recreation, assuming that the person actually tries to meet his goal of graduating and landing on his first job on time—because otherwise, these things would not matter. My typical schedule as a student consisted of waking up, going to school, going home, doing home works and projects plus reviewing for the examinations and quizzes the next day, and then finally sleeping, only to wake up the next day and do the same set of activities over again. If not for the friends and classmates at the university and my family, there would be no reason not to go insane.
There is more to studying than just studying. This is what can be learned from Gregory Wells’ (2013) thesis entitled Time Management and Academic Achievement. He proposed that a student’s academic achievement and quality of life while studying for a course heavily depends on how he manages his time . He also stipulated that being busy can be totally different from being productive, saying that being busy does not necessarily mean being productive because there are busy people who actually end up not finishing anything. While learning how to manage one’s time, I have also learned how to prioritize. It turns out that an effective time-management skill is rather a collection of all other skills that allow one to save up time and actually finish something.
Another important learning during the GEN 201 course was the importance of and how to actually use critical thinking. A person is required to use his head all the time to think and solve problems—this will go on forever, even long after one has graduated from studying. At work, one is expected to solve a lot of real-life problems and in order to do that, one has to use his critical thinking. To know how to think outside the box and to solve a problem using non-conventional strategies whenever necessary can prove to be golden, even a life or job saver in the future.
According to Whitten & Brahmasrene (2011), memory (pertaining to one’s ability to memorize) would simply be not enough to survive higher education, especially programs that are related to business, advanced sciences, and mathematics.
So was it a good thing that I managed to learn how to use critical thinking during the GEN 201 course; absolutely yes. There are many scenarios where one can use critical thinking. It can be used to analyze a complex problem, often one that cannot be solved by using common sense. The real question here is whether it does the job and leads to results and outcomes? To which the answer is a yes. This is something that one can use not just in GEN 201 but also in other courses and even long after graduation. The best thing about this learning is that educators and employers consider someone who appears to have developed the skill of critical thinking as a precious asset—a rare gem if one will.
This may be due to the fact that people tend to be laid back and conservative when it comes to organizational problem solving nowadays. Regardless, it is definitely a positive thing that I managed to learn how to see things differently, thanks to critical thinking.
And lastly, here comes the importance of academic success. Some people appear to be contented doing mediocre work in order to receive an average grade in their exams and projects. While being able to pass one’s subjects is already a great academic success in itself, this simply would not be enough for academic achievers or those who seem to become reckless at the thought of not receiving a high grade.
For these people, an average grade for a mediocre work done is a nightmare. So, in order to prevent being in that situation, they work and study hard. For them, the true meaning of academic success is being recognized in the class as someone who is at least above average. In my GEN 201 class, I was one of those people. I did not aspire to be on the top, but I did not aspire to be just an average student either.
My philosophy about academic success changed during the GEN 201 course. I also learned that every student has a unique learning style and that knowing more about that style would enable him to experiment on what works and what does not work when studying; what makes him remember and understand the lesson much easier and what makes them harder. Gokalp’s (2013) work supported this notion on the relationship between a student’s learning style and the likelihood of being academically successful. This implies that a student who managed to fail several subjects in a program is an academically unsuccessful one; one reason why that is the case may be the incompatibility between the learning style that is being used by the teacher and the preferred learning style of the student.
Addressing this incompatibility appears to be one of the keys towards academic success according to Gokalp (2013). Surprisingly, Gokalp (2013) is not the only researcher who recognizes the validity and sensibility of this theory. Other authors in various fields such as education, psychology, and sociology, among others, have also written papers and conducted studies to confirm the acceptability and applicability of this in real life .
In a study published in the Research in Learning Technology, for example, the author stated that even in an online or virtual learning environment, a student’s style of learning can still have a huge impact on whether the program is going to be a success or not . In most academic programs, the success of the program is pegged on whether the students are going to actually learn something.
If majority of the students received a failing score at the end of the course; that can be interpreted negatively. One possible interpretation is that the teaching strategies employed in the course were not that effective. And one of the common theories used to justify that is the incompatibility between the students’ learning style and the actual learning strategies that were used.
So what would be the solution if those incompatibilities and their effects indeed exist? The answer would be to know how one responds to certain teaching strategies. Unfortunately, this is something that the student would have to do for himself. I learned how to experiment on my own during the GEN 201 course. My goal was to determine what works and what does not. It was not easy but I was able to do it and now, I am finding it much easier to study and prepare during exams.
Conclusion
In conclusion, my entire GEN 201 experience can be summarized into three things (each of which is an important learning): critical thinking, time management, and knowing how to adjust for one’s unique learning style. Without having learned these three things in that course, I do not think the entire experience would have been as good. These newly acquired skills should also help me conquer the next academic challenges that I am going to face; and in the future, even the professional ones.
References
Gokalp, M. (2013). The Effect of Student's Learning Style to their Academic Success. Education Research and Reviews.
Kauffman, H. (2015). A review of predictive factors of student success in and satisfaction with online learning. Research in Learning Technology.
Pask, G. (n.d.). Learning strategies, teaching strategies, and conceptual or learning style. Springer, 83-100.
Wells, G. (2013). Time Management and Academic Achievement. University of Windsor.
Whitten, D., & Brahmasrene, T. (2011). Predictors of Critical Thinking Skills of Incomeing Business Students. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 01-13.
