Effective study habits

You can prepare yourself to succeed in your studies.
Try to develop and appreciate the following habits:

• Take responsibility for yourself
  Recognize that in order to succeed you need to make decisions about your priorities,
  your time, and your resources

• Center yourself around your values and principles
  Don't let friends and acquaintances dictate what you consider important

• Put first things first
  Follow up on the priorities you have set for yourself, and don't let others, or other interests, distract you from your goals

• Discover your key productivity periods and places
  Morning, afternoon, or evening?
  Find spaces where you can be the most focused and productive.
  Prioritize these for your most difficult study challenges

• Consider yourself in a win-win situation
  When you contribute your best to a class, you, your fellow students,
  and even your teacher will benefit.
  Your grade can then be one additional check on your performance

• First understand others, then attempt to be understood
  When you have an issue with an instructor (a questionable grade, an assignment deadline, etc.) put yourself in the instructor's place.
  Now ask yourself how you can best make your argument given his/her situation

• Look for better solutions to problems
  For example, if you don't understand the course material, don't just re-read it.
  Try something else! Consult with the professor, a tutor, an academic advisor, a classmate, a study group, or your school's study skills center

• Look to continually challenge yourself

Constructive use of feedback

Modeling non-defensive behavior in the classroom
can be critical to demonstrating effective use of feedback.

Being non-defensive, open to listening, and delaying response are critical.

A classroom exercise:

Before the teacher leaves the classroom, students are instructed to form a line with one end being "This is the worst class I've ever taken; I should have stayed in bed" and the other "This is the best class I've ever taken; I hope it never ends" with degrees between the two extremes.

Once they have distributed themselves in that line, and the teacher has given them the following instructions and exited, they form small groups (of four) with those who are closest to them in the line. They then make one composite list of the reasons they put themselves where they did in the line.

When they have completed their lists,
they share their lists with then other groups,
then jointly prepare three lists:

stop doing, start doing, continue doing

put these three lists on the board.

They are given 45 minutes to an hour to complete the task.

When done,
the teacher is invited back to the classroom and presented the three lists.

The teacher takes the lists home, reflects upon them, and responds in the next class:

• What will change and
  how the changes should impact classroom "organization" and learning

• what won't change
  with those reasons why