by Cal Newport
Example #2
Here’s a slightly more challenging example that comes from the syllabus of a political science course titled Comparative Health Policy.
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Lecture #4—The Quest for National Health Insurance: Clinton Health Care Plan
Reading:
Enthoven, Alain. “Managed Competition: An Agenda for Action,” Health Affairs 7, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 25–47.
Eckholm, Erik. (1993) “Introduction,” in The President’s Health Security Plan. New York: Times Books, vii–xvi. ISBN: 0812923863.
Skocpol, Theda. “The Rise and Demise of the Clinton Health Plan,” in Health Affairs 14, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 66–85.
Heclo, Hugh. “The Clinton Health Plan: Historical Perspective,” in Health Affairs 14, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 86–98.
Peterson, Mark A. (1998) “The Politics of Health Care Policy: Overreaching in an Age of Polarization,” in Margaret Weir, ed., The Social Divide. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 181–229.
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What makes this example hard is that the course has no obvious favored sources. That is, there is no textbook or reader that shows up for every class. The key, in this situation, is to use the lecture title as a clue. The rule can be simply stated as follows: In a course with no favored sources, readings that directly address the specific topic of the lecture act as the favored sources for the day. Treat the rest as supplemental.
In this example, the lecture is titled The Quest for National Health Insurance: Clinton Health Care Plan. Therefore, the Erik Eckholm, Hugh Heclo, and Theda Skocpol assignments should become your favored sources, since all three deal directly with the Clinton health care agenda. You should read these carefully.
The two other articles are supplemental. Because they look like they contain arguments relevant to the topic of health care under Clinton, they fall at the top of our supplemental reading importance hierarchy, and, therefore, they demand enough attention to reveal their argument. A smart approach would be to read the introductions to both of these articles, and then take careful notes on their theses.
Confirming Your Decisions
You should always use the lecture itself to confirm your choice about what to read and what to skip. If the professor emphasizes the importance of a work that you dismissed (which will happen occasionally—this system isn’t perfect), then make a note that you will need to go back and cover this reading in more detail before the next exam. A smart technique is to simply write these skipped readings right onto your syllabus as an assignment for a later class. Choose a day with a light reading load, and treat the assignment as if it was given to you by your professor. If you don’t explicitly schedule a time to cover this material, you will invariably procrastinate and then find yourself with a huge reading list to cover right before the exam.
On the other hand, if you find your professor is discussing certain assignments in a lot of detail, then use this input to scale back how closely you are reading at home. As Lydia from Dartmouth explains: “If you pay close attention in class and take good notes, much of the reading is often unnecessary.”
Take Smart Notes on Your Favored Reading Assignments
We’ve discussed which readings to ignore or skim. But the logical next question is what to do with the favored sources that you decide to read carefully. In this situation, how you take notes on the reading makes a big difference. If you write down very little, the assignment can be completed fast, but the time will be wasted because you won’t have bothered to extract the big ideas in a way that makes them accessible when it comes time to study. If, on the other hand, you take detailed notes on every paragraph, your assignments will take way too long to complete. The best compromise is to use a strategy similar to the one outlined earlier for taking lecture notes.
To refresh your memory, the core of this strategy is that all big ideas can be reduced to a question, evidence, and conclusion. This approach can work wonderfully for reading assignments as well. Apply it as follows:
First, as with lectures, try to take notes on your computer. They will be more organized and easier to follow later on, when you use them for review. In addition, typing makes it easier to record more and finish faster. Next, carefully read the beginning of the assignment. Look for the question being answered by the author. Note that this is different than a thesis statement. For example, “Why did the Clinton health care plan fail?” is a question. “The Clinton health care plan failed because of resistance from commercial health care providers” is a thesis. In a reading assignment, the question can usually be found in the title or perhaps explained in the first few sentences. Record this in your notes, and label it clearly.
Next, look for the author’s conclusion (the thesis statement). This is perhaps the most difficult part, since academics are known to propose complicated answers to their questions, especially when writing. So it may take some serious consideration to figure out what’s being suggested. Search the first few paragraphs; this is typically where the conclusion is hidden. Also check the final few paragraphs. Often a thesis is proposed at the beginning of an article but then refined slightly at the end once all of the supporting evidence has been presented. When you feel confident in your understanding of the conclusion, record it carefully in your notes. Don’t worry if it takes several sentences to capture the point—err on the side of being thorough.
Now comes the easy part: Skim the entire reading. Don’t take notes yet. Instead, use a pencil to make checkmarks next to important paragraphs that jump out at you. Because you are reading fast, you may miss some points—don’t worry. “Just get the gist of the author’s message and how he is supporting that message with evidence, then move on,” explains Jason, a straight-A student from the University of Pennsylvania. You don’t need to capture everything. Your goal is simply to mark a few solid examples that justify the conclusion as the answer to the question.
Once you have skimmed through the entire reading, go back and find your check marks. For each mark, record in your notes a concise summary of the corresponding point. Label each point in your notes with the page number where you found it. This shouldn’t take long. Don’t worry about being formal or grammatically correct. Just dump these pieces of evidence into your notes. When you’re done, your notes should contain a clearly labeled question followed by a half-dozen or so bullet-pointed pieces of evidence, then a clearly labeled conclusion.
And that’s it! A typical article or book chapter should fill, at most, a page of single-spaced notes and take no longer than twenty to thirty minutes to complete. If it takes you longer, then you’re likely reading too slowly when you make your check marks. Don’t be afraid to move quickly—if you understand the question and the conclusion, all you need is a sampling of the evidence that connects the two. As Matthew from Brown puts it, your goal should be to “read for arguments, not facts.”
Don’t Work Alone on Problem Sets
Perhaps the most important rule for taming the problem sets assigned in technical courses is to follow our earlier rule and work on them constantly. As Ryan, a straight-A student from Dartmouth, explains: “You can work on problem sets in small pieces while you’re between classes or activities.” Concentrating on only one or two problems a day will help you avoid mental fatigue. Once your brain gets tired, it’s easy to stall—but if you spread out your work, you will end up spending fewer hours on the assignment than if you tried to do it all at once.
Even with a smart schedule, however, you will probably still get stuck occasionally. When this happens, use all the available resources to help you get unstuck. If you’re allowed to collaborate with your classmates, which is often the case in technical courses, definitely take advantage of this opportunity. As Greta from Dartmouth explains, working in groups “can drastically cut the time required to finish a really hard problem set.” Identify one or two students who share a similar skill level as you and then construct
a regular schedule for working together on the class assignments. Set your meeting dates for two or three days before the deadlines; this gives you time to first try the problems on your own and identify the ones that give you the most trouble. Then, when you meet with your problem set group, your energy will be focused where it’s needed most. However, don’t meet the day before your deadline. It’s important to have at least one day before handing in the assignment so you can review all of your answers and fix any small mistakes.
You should also take advantage of office hours. Most technical courses hold office hours once a week, usually run by a teaching assistant (TA). These meetings are meant to clarify complicated concepts from class and to be a source of help on hard problems. Always go to office hours, if you have time, and arrive knowing which homework problems pose the biggest challenge to you. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. You will learn a lot during these weekly sessions, since the TAs will be able to walk you through the more difficult concepts—which will ultimately save you a lot of time and frustration.
Solve Problems on the Go
Hard problems don’t care about your schedule. If you set aside a specific hour to work on a problem set, there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to find the answers during this time. This is especially true if the problems you are trying to solve require creative insight, which can’t be forced. Sitting and staring at a blank sheet of paper won’t always produce results.
Working with a group can help you bypass these mental blocks. But often, group work is most useful when you’ve already thought of potential solutions for most of the problems. It would be too time consuming to try to solve all of the problems from scratch with a group. With this in mind, you need a solid strategy for solving problems on your own without busting your schedule. A smart technique, used by many talented technical students, is to solve problems on the go. Here’s how it works:
First, set aside a little block of time to familiarize yourself with a couple of problems, and make sure you understand exactly what is being asked. You may need to review your notes to refamiliarize yourself with the relevant concepts.
Next, try to solve the problem in the most obvious way possible. This, of course, probably won’t work, because most difficult problems are tricky by nature. By failing in this initial approach, however, you will have at least identified what makes this problem hard. Now you are ready to try to come up with a real solution.
The next step is counterintuitive. After you’ve primed the problem, put away your notes and move on to something else. Instead of trying to force a solution, think about the problem in between other activities. As you walk across campus, wait in line at the dining hall, or take a shower, bring up the problem in your head and start thinking through solutions. You might even want to go on a quiet hike or long car ride dedicated entirely to mulling over the question at hand.
More often than not, after enough mobile consideration, you will finally stumble across a solution. Only then should you schedule more time to go back to the problem set, write it down formally, and work out the kinks. It’s unclear exactly why solving problems is easier when you’re on the go, but, whatever the explanation, it has worked for many students. Even better, it saves a lot of time, since most of your thinking has been done in little interludes between other activities, not during big blocks of valuable free time.
Write Solutions Right the First Time
Another important time-saving tip for problem set work is to record solutions formally the first time you write them down. Many students first jot down their answers informally and then return later to reformat them into something neat enough for submission. There is no reason to include both steps. You are, for no good reason, adding a lot of extra time to the process. Instead, go slowly and deliberately the first time. Write your answer carefully, and clean it up immediately until it is of submission quality. Then you can cross the assignment off your list and it will be one less thing to worry about.
Step 3
Marshal Your Resources
Here’s a surprising fact: Most straight-A students don’t think “studying” is a big deal. They realize that the bulk of the work required to ace an exam has already been accomplished through identifying big ideas in lectures, extracting arguments from reading assignments, and solving problem sets. By the time the test date rolls around, all that’s left is a targeted review of the ideas that they have already mastered and internalized. Students who pull sleepless study marathons, on the other hand, are spending most of their time trying to learn from scratch the ideas that they could have been internalizing, bit by bit, as the term progressed. So forget the conventional wisdom that more studying equals better grades. Smart students understand that if you’re studying hard, then you’ve done something wrong. Preparing for a test should not be painful. And it should not require a lot of time.
If you have been putting Steps #1 and #2 into practice, taking smart notes and handling assignments effectively, studying should not be a big deal for you either. In fact, when faced with a looming quiz or exam, you have to do only two things. First, organize your material intelligently. Second, perform a targeted review of this material. This section will teach you how to accomplish the former. Don’t worry—organizing your material properly is not a difficult task, but it is important that you do it right. Many students neglect this step, eager to dive right into the review, but by doing so they condemn themselves to hours of unnecessary work. You don’t want to be like these students. Pay attention to the advice that follows and you will experience a significant reduction to the difficulty of your study experience.
Define the Challenge
Before you can conduct any meaningful studying, you must first define the scope of the exam. As Simon from Brown puts it: “You need to know what kind of information the professor wants you to know.” To accomplish this goal, answer the following questions:
• Which lectures and reading assignments (or problem sets) are fair game?
• What type of questions will there be, and how many of each? As Christine from Harvard explains: “It’s helpful to know in advance what kind of knowledge will be asked for on the exam—IDs, dates, broad syntheses of the texts’ major arguments?”
• Is the exam open note or open book?
• For a technical class, will formulas be provided or do they need to be memorized?
• How much time will be available? Does the professor expect the exam to be easy to complete during the test period or a challenge?
Some professors offer answers to these questions without being prompted. Many, however, do not. If it’s two weeks before the exam, and the professor hasn’t mentioned any details yet, you should ask. If you’re shy, ask after class. But get the information as early as possible—it’s crucial to your success.
Build a Study Guide (Organizing Nontechnical Course Material)
“I have always been a big fan of making a study guide,” admits Ryan from Dartmouth. This is a technique that popped up again and again in my straight-A interviews. Each student, of course, had his or her own variation on study guide creation, but they all followed, more or less, this same general approach:
For a nontechnical course, once you find out which lectures and reading assignments are fair game for the exam, print out the corresponding notes that you’ve typed up or gather the pages you’ve written on (don’t be afraid to deconstruct your notebook). Cluster these pages into piles, separated by general topic. Clearly label each of these piles with its topic and fasten them together with a paper clip so you can easily transport them without mixing up the pages. This final step is important, since you will be moving to and from your various isolated study spaces once you begin your review. For simplicity, we will refer to these topic-themed piles as “chapters.” Your final study guide, therefore, should contain a chapter, consisting of reading and lecture notes, for each general topic that might be covered on the exam.
> Construct a Mega-Problem Set (Organizing Technical Course Material)
For a technical course, many students follow a variant of the study guide approach that focuses on sample problems. It works as follows:
Your problem set assignments are the key to your review process. Start a pile for each problem set that covers material that might appear on the exam. Next, you’ll need to supplement each problem set with sample problems from your lecture notes. For each lecture relevant to the upcoming exam, do the following:
1. Match the lecture to the problem set that covers the same material.
2. Copy sample problems from these lecture notes onto a blank sheet of paper. You don’t have to copy the steps or the answers, just the questions.
3. Label the blank sheet of paper with the date of the lecture. This will help you later figure out where these problems came from (and more important, where their answers can be found).