Studying to beat the system

"Come on in, folks -- no need to be shy!"

Pete Kimchuk's booming voice permeated the room and spilled into the halls of Houston Hall Tuesday night as students stumbled out of the cold and approached "Mastering the Ivy League." The hour-long session, sponsored by Penn's Office of Learning Resources, was geared at helping students deal with the finals looming over Penn's small corner of Philadelphia.

Kimchuk, the session's instructor and Office of Learning Resources' employee, got right down to business by having each student fill out a diagnostic inventory survey to evaluate their study skills. Immediately, people expressed concern over a statement which read, "I am capable of keeping a cool head right before going in to to take the exam."

Kimchuk recommended a three-step method of dealing with both pre-test jitters and during-test panic attacks.

"You should first pay attention to your breathing and take deep breaths to fill your lungs --it will calm you," he said. "Next, say to yourself, 'I don't remember this... yet.' As silly as it might sound, it will reassure you and give you the strength to move on. Don't get stuck on one question."

Next, students complained about an inability to concentrate when they set aside large blocks of study time. After a few minutes of banter, Paige Oliver, a student in the Graduate School of Education, got up from the audience and took charge of the discussion.

"I had the same problem for three years when I was an undergraduate here at Penn,"she said. "In fact, after my first semester, I had less than a 2.0 GPA."

A few gasps arose from the crowd as she went on to share what she had learned from these mistakes, which ultimately turned her academic career around and even landed her a job with the Office of Learning Resources.

In the presentation of Oliver's unofficial four-step method, she stressed the importance of leaving one's comfort zone of already-mastered information and attacking new material.

Another point of Kimchuk's that resonated with the crowd was a warning not to test yourself by saying things out loud or listing them off in your mind.

"Write it down!" he ordered. "The word in all of this is active."

He explained that when testing oneself abstractly, there is a tendency to skip over things and end up saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, and whatever goes along with that."

He said that students then assume that they understand and are able to articulate certain elements that they are not. Only when they write things out do they really recognize what still remains unclear.

The session ended with Kimchuk urging students to write out a schedule for reading days. When asked about the overall best study method when choosing between attacking the books alone or in a group setting, Kimchuk smiled and said, "I can give you a definite 'maybe'... it depends."

When it comes down to it, he said, there is no foolproof formula.

"Each person is different," he said, "and has to utilize their own style."

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