“When one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.”
“The expert has failed more times than the beginner has even tried”
The underlying knowledge of experts appears to be tightly structured in hierarchical fashion. They redescribe the problems presented to them, often use qualitative arguments to plan solutions before elaborating them in greater mathematical detail. They make many decisions by first exploring their consequences.
Lessons Learnt
Avoid test-driven learning which is powered by mentality of deficiency (“What if they ask X? Do I know Y?”). Instead, learn as if you are playing (“One thinks…but this is not how it is! One would ask
Do not doubt, discouraging or downplay your own intuition in favour of rigour and clarity; intuition IS evertyhing. Formal exposition, rigour and clarity comes later. Harness your intutition and you’d be fine.
Purpose-First Context and problem focussed with a focus on finding a solutions - e.g. Oxford exams questions were seemingly so simple and jargon free. Purpose-first allows you to see abstractions you might miss out on, draw connections at seemingly disparate activities united by common intentions, motivations and feelings, and understand the reason why certain abstractions were chosen in the first place!
How looking at the way things are connected - deeper stuff, helps in understanding the manifestations. For example, reading JD Lee and Solomon Fryhle made all the concepts of NCERT much, much more clearer. University Physics and HC Verma.
Facts First
Frameworks-first
Abstractions-First (meaning of abstractions) Abstractions are how you carve out the messy, chaotic unify world into something graspable by the human mind, it is surgery done by the human mind into the raw nature of reality. How good your abstractions are will decide how penetrating your insight or question is: often finding an answer closer to the truth is about finging the right abstractions. Words are abstractions, so two sentences which might seem to say the same thing are saying something completely different because they are choosing different abstractions.
Experience-First (a.ka. Learning by doing)
Facts First: The sum of angles of a triangle is 180. Memorize. Then prove. Sometimes fundamental, abstract concepts are easier to learn than their concrete, bottom level implementations.
But sometimes abstraction is not obvious - it is important to understand why, it only make sense once you have grasped the concrete realisations, once you see the common patterns only then retain them. Sometimes fluency builds understanding, rather than understanding building fluency. Examples? Group theory/Topology/Linear Algebra. Kundu courses came so easy to me than Rao courses. Frameworks first: Polygons have internal angles. Then ask. Abstractions First: Define a angle, triangle. Then ask. Experience first: Play with actual triangles, scale them, deform them etc. Then Ask. Purpose first: We have these shapes. One might ask themselves…this problem….this path leads one to think that the answer would depend on this? It might be useful to call this thing something lets call it zopolabeedeedoo …
Spotting commonalities
Mars is the God of War. Mars is also a planet which appears red. Blood is the colour red.
Frameworks are powerful to retain stuff.
e.g. Several ways to remember where someone works
Who’s problem they are solving? Who is willing to pay for the problem they are solving? (Capitalist Framework) How are they contributing to welfare of the community? (Communitarian Framework) What values led they to do the job they are doing?
AC and Referigrator as appliances that deploy electrical energy to modify temperature. At some level, convert electrical energy to reverse-heat, which seems to take a lot more energy than to convert electrical to heat (e.g. geyser or electric heater for cooking).
Difference between people who are fast learners and those who need practice
Whether they feel any the anxiety of uncertainty/not knowing a thing. Practice is less a matter of memorising, and more of drowing out anxiety so that you have extra mind space to concentrate on the bloody thing.
What can help?
Not only did I make things harder, but I learnt less. I could have performed better with much less effort and had more fun doing it. Watching RBN, NG and Helena teach made me realize this.
The Environment
Take care of yourself.
Exercise. Sleep. Eat Well. Get a good night’s sleep. There is no brain-body separation. Your brain is part of your body. It’s a machine that requires tremendous amounts of energy. Feed it. Care for it. Love it. Without energy, you can’t learn. If you don’t sleep enough, you’ll be too tired and you won’t learn. If you’re in a bad relationship, your brain will be distracted and you won’t learn. If you don’t exercise your creativity, you won’t be able to combine ideas and learn from “idea sex”. If you are too anxious, you will spend too much mental energy worrying about the future instead of learning in the present.
When I went broke for the fourth or fifth time I finally had to take a look back and say, “What was I doing right every time I made money?” and “What was I doing wrong”. It all boiled down to:
- Physical health: Eat / Move / Sleep
- Emotional health: Eliminate ALL of the toxic people in your life.
- Creative health: Write down ten ideas a day. The ideas can be about anything.
- Spiritual health: Learn how to deal with anxiety and regret. Release control over the things you have no control over. Just these four things gave me so much energy, it probably took another 1000–2000 hours out of the 10,000 hours.
Eliminate distractions.
Every ounce of energy you’re not spending on the problem is… not spent on the problem. So are you wearing comfortable clothes? Is the lighting okay? Are there distracting noises? Do you have pens and paper and whatever else you need near you? It’s a bitch if you have to stop working on a problem because you can’t find a pen that works. I don’t like to waste money, but I overbuy bens and paper and reference books. I want to be able to reach out and have whatever I need leap into my hand.
Master research tools.
Research could be include:
Learn from mentors.
A mentor can be real (someone who is willing to help you analyze your mistakes), or virtual (read books). Both real and virtual are good. For anything you are interested in, you should read 100 books a year. You should watch 100s of videos. We have mirror neurons that learn by watching or reading our virtual mentors. It’s as if we download their lives into our brain and the mirror neurons think that their experience are ours.
For instance, when I wanted to learn how to be a better public speaker, I would watch videos of great public speakers right before I had to speak. When I played in chess tournaments I would play through the games of world champions so I could learn more how they thought about the game. And every time I lost a game I went over the game, move by move, with a grandmaster who I paid to coach me. He would set up similar positions to my losing position and we’d play game after game until I mastered the nuances. When I wanted to learn about investing I read every investment book I could find and spoke with 100s of other great investors. When you read, to maximize what you learn: immediately after reading a book write down “ten things I learned”. Else, you won’t remember more than 1 or 2 things at best from the book. I’m trying to learn Standup Comedy now. I capitalize it because it’s that important to me. It’s the hardest skill I’ve ever had to learn. I’m in year two. I probably watch 20 videos a day. I videotape myself on stage 4–6 times a week. And I read books about and by comedians. And, fortunately, I have a podcast. So I ask great comedians to come on and I can ask them any question I want.
I’m a senior now at Caltech. Having some experience with the problem sets given out here, my view is that my perception of a problem’s difficulty is significantly affected by my attitude. As an incoming freshman, I had come to Caltech with little exposure to the concepts taught in freshman calculus and physics. As such, I approached problems with minimal confidence and patience. If I couldn’t see a path to the solution right away, I’d quickly lose hope and go ask for help; my view was either that “I must be thinking about the problem terribly wrong” or “I’m missing some important concept.” With this mentality, I viewed many problems as insurmountable. But after taking some more classes, I learned how to temper the emotional side of things. I came to accept the inherent chaos that ensues when solving “hard problems,” and didn’t give up as easily. Importantly, I started to view my progress on a problem not in terms of “how close I am to the solution,” but rather “how well I understand the problem.” As an example, suppose I was at the library last night working on a specific math proof for some time, but still hadn’t found the solution. As a freshman, I would’ve viewed my net progress for that night as 0. Now, I’d probably find comfort in other indicators of progress such as my improved understanding of the problem itself, and the elimination of some wrong ways to solve the problem. Adopting the latter attitude, I’ve been able to approach problems with increased composure. I’ve been able to solve more problems on my own, and feel a little bit more “in control.” To answer your question, if people say Caltech is “impossible” or “very difficult,” I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration, but I think their view may partly be due to behavioral factors.
Strategies to learn
Take a break.
Your brain continues to chew after you’ve stopped forcing food into it. Let it chew on its own for a while. If you’re feeling brain dead, stop! Sleep on it. Or, better yet, do something totally different from the problem you’re working on and then sleep.
Spaced Repetition
Learn more than you have to.
If you’re trying to learn how to bake bread, also learn how to bake cakes and muffins. Confidence comes from feeling some slack around the edges of your knowledge. If you feel like one question could slam you into a wall of ignorance, you’re not there yet. Your knowledge needs breathing room.
Push yourself to failure.
You learn from failure, as long as you push through it. Once you’ve mastered solving a particular kind of problem, you don’t grow by continually doing those same sorts of problems. So add more challenges. You’ll know you’ve added enough when you fail. And you only fail at failing when you don’t keep pushing through it.
Anything worth learning, you’re going to suck. You’re going to suck badly.
The first day you play chess: you might love it, you might be talented, you might be confident, but you are a disaster compared to anyone with experience who has studied the game.The same goes for business. For investing. For writing. For acting. For art. For creativity. For everything worth learning. And failure is painful. (It took Edison 10,000 attempts before he found the right filament to invent a lightbulb) Nobody wants to lose money in poker. Or in investing. Nobody wants to spend months or years writing a book nobody reads. But if you love something, and you want to get to your peak potential, your heart is going to break when you inevitably fail. And you will fail big and horrible and it will be like your brain and heart are torn in half. But that’s the good news: 1. Because then you’re uncertified to study the failure. You can go to a PLUS, and your EQUALS, and look at where you went wrong. 2. You can’t learn as much from succeeding because it’s harder to pinpoint where mistakes are (and it means you are not taking enough chances). Ray Dalio, the largest hedge fund manager ever, told me on my podcast, “Pain + Reflection = Progress”. Pain is a must. With standup comedy, I always say “Yes” to a challenge. Do comedy on a subway car? Yes. Do comedy on a Monday night in a blizzard with the entire audience from Norway? Yes. Go on stage with a 102 fever and my voice completely shot? Yes. Then videotape. Then go over quarter second by quarter second. I was speaking to one of the best comedians in the world a few weeks ago. He told me he still videotapes and studies every single time he’s gone on stage. Every year, every month, he’s better than the month before. With business, it’s difficult because a business can take years. But try to have mini-failures. Challenge yourself on deadlines, challenge yourself on customer acquisition, on customer service, on micro-execution of product, and on and on. Figure out the ways that you can fail, do them, study them, repeat.
Like batters practicing different sort of curveballs, vary your subjects (e.g. JEE training). Out in the wild, you need to be fully present, flexible, and attentive to the specific details of the problem “in the wild, you have to first perceive what sort of issue you’re confronting before you can begin to discover an answer”
Figure out the primitive skills and master those.
Every skill worth learning has dozens of micro-skills:
For instance, when I started my first successful business I had some natural skills at sales and technology (it was a technology business) but I had to learn so many micro-skills in order to succeed that it felt like I was going to die and fail almost every single day.
Examples:
All of the skills are exclusive of each other. Negotiating is not the same as Sales. Product development is not the same as management. But each skill needs to be developed to be successful. For whatever you are interested in: list the micro-skills. Figure out what you are good at, what you are bad at, and how you can learn to be better at each.
Try to improve 1% a day at whatever it is you are trying to learn. This seems like a small number. Just one percent! But 1% a day, compounded, is 3800% per year. That’s 37 times better than where you started in just one year.
I had a friend who I always played chess with. He played chess all day every day. But he never read a book on chess or studied with anyone. He just played the same moves and made the same mistakes game after game. I asked him why he didn’t take the basic steps to improve? All you have to do is take basic steps each day to improve as small as 1%. He said, “Ahhh, I just like to play.” Which is fine. But he never got better. Chess is much more enjoyable (everything is much more enjoyable) when you get better and when you learn and can appreciate the subtleties and the nuances. Everything is an art form. The greatest artists have a vocabulary of 100,000s of patterns in their chosen field. “Speaking” that vocabulary is pleasurable because you can enjoy the art form more, you can succeed more easily, you get acclamation for your success, you make friends with others who are also successful because you speak their language - but it requires every day learning new “words” in your art form. Studying how Warren Buffet invests. Or how Bobby Fischer plays the King’s Indian. Or how Richard Pryor brought his authentic voice into his comedy. Or how Richard Branson can build and manage 400 businesses. Or challenging yourself to fail a little bit each day to expand your comfort zone. One percent a day = 3800 percent a year.
Review and record what went well and what didn’t.
Review and record what went well and what didn’t. . Evaluate what worked and what didn’t. Only 15 minutes of composed reflection toward the day’s end expanded execution by 23% for one gathering of workers.
Step in and step back
step in and step back… For instance, if the topic is abortion, think about its ramifications on a specific 16-year-old girl, maybe an actual girl that you know. Then think about its ramifications for society.
Each time you add a new detail to your mental construction, step in and step back again.
This is a really useful process for artistic creation: (step in) what is the color of the grain of sand that the hero is rubbing between his fingers? (step back) What is the story I’m trying to tell?
Think sensually.
Humans are sensual creatures: we live through taste, touch, smell, seeing and hearing – also through fucking, fleeing and fighting. How can you tie your idea in with your lizard brain? Or how can you free it from your lizard brain?
The more abstract your topic is, the more it will benefit from sensuality. Is there a way to explore that equation or philosophical idea via sound or color? Do it!
Note: geeky folks in their teens and twenties have a very hard time with this. (I sure did!) They tend to want to live in a world in which everyone is a sort of Mr. Spock and the only thing that exists is pure reason. That’s not the real world.
Learn stories, concepts, and ideas that make the facts intelligible.
Don’t memorize lots of meaningless facts and strings of symbols. It’s too hard to hold them in your head for exams. It’s also a complete waste of time from an educational point of view as you will forget all this immediately after exams anyway. X People don’t have trouble remembering names and statistics of players on their favorite sports teams because these facts are meaningful. If you can find a way to make your studies meaningful to you, you will learn with less effort and more retention.
Think socially.
Even before you fully understand an idea, try to communicate it to someone else. Take note of the parts that were hard to explain and the parts the listener didn’t understand. Work on those parts. Brainstorm to come up with sharp examples and metaphors. Keep rethinking and rethinking how you communicate, even if you feel you have come up with the perfect explanation.
Quora is a great playground for this sort of thing.
Note: PowerPoint is evil. When I was teaching, I forced myself to redraw the same charts over and over for each class, and I found that this process helped me refine them. Find people who love what you love and spend as much time talking about this shared area as you can.
If you are all equally striving and finding your own path through learning this new skill you all want to share, then you will build community and learn together. (the “Beats”. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S Burroughs, all rose up as writers together by comparing notes, editing each other’s works, encouraging each other, for over 20 years as they rose up in the industry together).
When I was learning poker, my friends and I would compare notes on every difficult hand we played during an evening. When I was learning investing, I’d talk to friends in every area of investing (day trading, arbitrage, value investing, special situations, quantitative, etc etc) and we’d share notes and quickly learn through the experiences of each other. Why not do this with mentors? Because the mentors have so far passed this level they are not always able to get into the weeds in the same way as the Equals.
Explain what you are learning while you are learning it. Two reasons: 1) If you can’t explain in a simple way, then you need to learn more. Beginner’s mind. 2) People who are behind where you are at in learning the skill will ask basic questions that you often need to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. Again: beginner’s mind.
Also, collaborate! Get a core group of people to brainstorm with you, and, every once in a while, add a new person into the mix.
You will learn a lot if you share ideas with fellow students, and if you try out ideas in tutorial discussion. Remember that tutorials are not designed as a substitute for lectures, or for accumulating information, but to develop coherent verbal arguments and the capacity to think on one’s feet, and to tackle specific difficulties and misunderstandings. . This means that note-taking, if it occurs in a tutorialat all, should be very much incidental to the overriding dialogue. You should, however, leave time after the tutorial to make a record on paper of the discussion.
Do.
If it’s possible to do it, do it – don’t just think it. If you’re sure you know what the result will be, do it anyway. The human brain plugs more easily into the concrete than the abstract.
When I work with actors, and they do a scene as if they’re character is depressed, I often say, “Try it as if your character is happy.” They often say something like, “That won’t work, because…” I say, “You’re probably right, but please try it, anyway.”
They sometimes worry that I’m asking them to try it because that’s secretly the way I want them to do it. They feel it’s wrong, and they balk at trying it, because they think if they do, I’m going to force them to do it that way forever.
I work to calm their fears. I have no desire to force them into anything. I just have a profound belief that we don’t know unless we try. And the more sure we are that we know, the more we need to try.
The only time it’s not appropriate to try is when doing so is impossible or prohibitively costly in terms of time or resources.
You can’t get better at chess just by reading about it. You have to play. Then you have to play in high stress situations (like a tournament). You can’t get to be the best at business just by reading about Richard Branson. You have to start a business (or work for a startup or even work for a big business and notice their small successes and failures). You can’t get to be great at comedy by watching videos. You have to go on stage. Every day.
Dig deep till the foundations.
Like a small, annoying child, keep asking “but why?… but why?… but why?…” Keep digging until you get to the foundation, the axiom, the article of faith, the unknowable. Note: the “unknowable” is not the same as “I don’t know.” What you don’t know, you can research. If you can research it, you haven’t reached the foundation yet. The foundation is what all your ideas lie on top of, so it’s worth knowing what it is and what it implies.
Play. Improvise, brainstorm, rap, rhyme
Once you loosen the constraints on your brain, your subconscious mind will lead you to all sorts of interesting places. If you think “this topic is too serious for that,” you’re stuck in a rut and will be unable to come up with all sorts of ideas that would occur to you if you played in the mud for a while.
Falsify your cherished notions.
You’re a Democrat? What if the Republicans are right? You’re an atheist? What if there’s a God? If you’re closed off to any avenue of thought, there are things you won’t think of.
Thinking is safe. Don’t worry: you won’t suddenly start throwing litter out the window just because you muse on the possibility that Global Warming might be a lie.
If it feels safer to you, imagine you’re writing a science-fiction novel in which Global Warming is a lie. It’s not a lie on our planet, but it is a lie on planet Alpha Prime Zeta. Okay, what are the ramifications on that planet?
Do whatever it takes to push through closed mental doors.
Those things that you’re super-confident about: slavery is evil; gay marriage should be legalized; one plus one equals two… Those thing aren’t wrong. It’s good that you’re confident about them. But the bad thing about confidence is that it closes mental doors. That’s kind of the point: “I don’t have to think about that any more. I’m confident that I’m right about it.” Allow yourself to say, “I know slavery is evil, but what if…?”
Your thoughts will never cause slavery to happen. Your thoughts are morally neutral. Stephen King is, by all accounts I’ve heard, a great guy, but he lets himself imagine people getting dismembered. And no one ever actually gets dismembered because of his thoughts. As long as you feel certain thoughts are wrong, you’ll stop yourself from exploring many (possibly) fruitful avenues of thinking. You can’t know if they’re fruitful or not until you stroll down them.
Carry your ideas to their logical conclusions.
“I think the sexes should be treated completely equally!” Okay, does that mean we need to abolish separate bathrooms for men and women in the workplace, just as we’ve abolished separate bathrooms for black people and white people? The goal, when taking your notions to extremes, isn’t necessarily to poke holes; it’s to test boundaries. In what cases does your idea apply? in what cases does it not apply?
Get rid of ego-centric motivations. Forget about yourself.
Ego is the enemy. Most people don’t let themselves “go there” – “there” being to certain mental places – because they think “I’m not smart enough.”
Which means they’re scared of getting their ego bruised by feeling stupid. Fuck that shit! That closes tons and tons of mental doors. You don’t need to be smart to think about anything! You don’t need to be right to think about anything! To think, you just need to think. It’s okay to fail when you think. It’s good to fail.
To fully embrace this – and to vanquish ego – you have to give up thinking in order to prove you’re right, to impress your friends and to “be original.” Those are all core human urges, and you’re never going to rid yourself of them, but try to compartmentalize when your goal is to show off or argue vs when your real goal is to grow mentally or to solve a problem.
If you have convinced yourself that you never think to be right or come off as smart or win points, you’re in trouble. We all do that. Admit it. Embrace the fact that you’re sometimes going to do it. Know when you’re doing it, and stop doing it when it’s not appropriate.
You’re doing this to serve.
This is what most helps me thwart my ego. I’m a theatre director and an author. When I direct plays – as soon as I start hoping the audience will think kindly of me or be impressed with me – I remind myself that it’s not about me.
It’s about the play. My goal is to serve, to serve the play, to serve the story. The story isn’t my servant; I’m its servant. If I’m writing a book, my goal is to serve the reader and the subject.
As soon as I redirect my energies that way, my mind expands.
Sites like Quora can be great for this, as long as you use them to serve knowledge and not to win arguments, be right or look smart.
Don’t ever try to be original. Kill all your darlings.
Don’t ever try to be original. That’s a mental dead end. When I’m working on a play, I sometimes get the urge to come up with something “cool” or “different.” As soon as I feel that pull, I resist.
My goal is to tell the story, not to get points for originality. Don’t ever try to be cool or original unless that’s your acknowledged goal. If your goal is personal growth or problem solving, trying to be original will block you. And the irony is that, by not trying to be original at all, by just honestly working to tackle the problem, you’ll wind up being original, because your work will be filtered through you, and you are unique in all the world.
Note: it’s hard to apply a negative, like “don’t be original.” When I feel the urge to be original, I sometimes force myself to be derivative. If you’re ever stuck because though you know how to solve a problem, you don’t want to solve it the way everyone else does – because that would be “copying” – copy!
Study History: look at how it was done before and use it
It’s all happened before; it will all happen again. Use it! By “History,” I mean World History, local History or the history of some specific craft - whatever is appropriate to your endeavor.
Identify rigidity and fluidity.
What parts of the structure must remain fixed or it ceases to be whatever it is? What parts must be elastic or its not living up to its potential?
Think of yourself as a jazz musician, improvising on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” What notes must be played or the song gets so perverted that it’s no longer the song? What parts can be improvised? Are you forcing yourself to hit nails on their heads? Are you forcing yourself to run willy, nilly between those nails?
Switch mediums.
If you’re thinking with prose, draw pictures. If you’re lecturing, try miming. Try imposing arbitrary constraints: write about your topic, but force yourself to forgo using all forms of the verb “to be.” See E-Prime
Write the fundamental, logical questions.
Try to figure it out for yourself, get help only when stuck. Compose your own reply first, before comparing with others, inviting expert opinion, or getting criticism and feedback
Think in visualizable, concrete metaphors. Make Analogies
Mind Maps. Connections with other things you know
Ask yourself Questions. Ask Why after Each sentence. Write Questions (Doubts, Definitions, Applications) in the Margin, and Answers on the Right. If you get stuck, take a peek at your textbook to get the main idea.
Explain to a 5 year old (Teach, Paraphrase). Rubber Duck. Feynman Technique
Case Study: Excelling at writing philosophy essays
Get into a routine, and start early.
Finals are a massive grind, and you will burn out if you rely on the caffeine + all nighters school of studying (unless you’re superhuman / start really late). I personally found that working 9am - 1pm, 3pm - 5pm, and 8pm - 11pm every day, with an early afternoon nap, was the best routine for me, and that I worked best in particular libraries. Work all of this stuff out early then just stick to it so that you don’t need to worry.
Know your position on a particular issue inside out.
Do not answer any Finals questions if you aren’t crystal clear on what you think. In the answers, you have to come to a conclusion. Examiners don’t want a critical survey of the literature - they want you to argue a position. This is why it’s so important to know what you think
I went into Political Theory being a card-carrying Rawlsian. I knew what I thought on all the common questions, knew how the positions inter-linked and so on.
Argue with your coursemates. This of course is only possible if they’re also passionate about the subject, so hard-cheese if they’re not. Alternatively you can argue online with people. The problem with this is that you’ve normally no way of knowing whether the person online is a total idiot or not. I used to post on a fairly esoteric philosphy forum, but that was only useful because it was heavily moderated and fools weren’t tolerated
Find out what makes an essay good.
Get hold of great essays from those who got a First. Talk to lots of professors about what makes a good exam script. Find experienced / well-looked-upon professors, since they’re more likely to be the ones actually marking exams.
My sense was that a good paper (a) demonstrated a grasp of the literature & the core issues of the subject, but concisely, then (b) advanced a compelling and somewhat original answer to the question, in (c) a comprehensive way, i.e. with cognizance of the most sophisticated objections.
The examiners are looking for your own ideas and convictions and you mustn’t be shy of presenting them. When you have selected a question, work out what it means and decide what you think is the answer to it.Then, putting pen to paper, state the answer and defend it; or, if you think there is no answer, explain why not. Abstain from presenting background material. Do not write too much: most of those who run out of time have themselves to blame for being distracted into irrelevance.
“work displaying analytical and argumentational power, with good command of the facts and/or arguments relevant to the questions and evidence of ability to organise them with clarity, insight and efficiency. When these qualities are evident in all questions attempted, the mark should be 80 or above. Where these qualities are evident throughout and the script displays original thought of near publishable standard, the mark should be 90 or above. Answer displaying rigorous and independent thinking, a keen critical understanding of relevant material, transparent organisation and presentation, clear and precise expression, effective use of examples.”
Anticipate what kinds of questions teachers will ask in exams.
This seems obvious, but many people don’t spend enough time gaming this aspect of school. It’s not about constantly asking “will this be on the test?”, which will make your teachers hate you. Instead: Notice which topics, problems, and techniques really excite the teacher.
Practise, practise, practise.
Repeatedly answer past paper questions so that you get good at putting down your thoughts quickly. Once you open the real paper in Exam Schools and have read the questions, it should not take you long to select which questions you wish to answer to know basically precisely what you’re going to argue. There’ll be some thinking on your feet if the question comes at the topic from an odd angle but there’s only so many questions that can be asked on political obligation, for example.
Get feedback from professors on your practice essays
Write lots and lots of practice essays, in timed conditions, from past papers, then give them to credible professors and get them to write detailed feedback and points of improvement. If the feedback isn’t detailed enough, meet them & get them to explain specifically what would bring the script to the 70+ and 80+ level. Then re-write the essays and do those things.
FAQ
How to take notes?
I can only do one text with note-taking: which makes sense for the final exam as the goal. Reading 2-3 would require abandoning note taking. And in my notes, should I paraphrase or copy? paraphrasing gains in understanding, it loses in precision.
Work on a tutorial essay involves library searches, reading, thinking, and writing. It should occupy a minimum of three days. Read attentively and thoughtfully. As your reading progresses, think up a structure for your essay (but do not write an elaborate plan which you will not have time to execute). Expect to have to sort out your thoughts, both during and after reading. Use essays to develop an argument, not as places to store information.
Read to understand. Don’t take notes. Read 2-3 Notes - when to take them, which notes to take, and their form, would emerge from necesssity of making sense of the reading and retaining it.
Yes. Just read first. Without background knowledge, you’re not even qualified to ask the right questions.
First decide your answer by reading your stuctured notes and thining about it. Then Structure. Then fill with notes.
Resources:
References