Learn as Much as You Can

You'll Have it to Use

By Dr. Susan Fisher with The Lukeion Project

There is a recurring trope circulating among the old and crusty about things they learned in school and never had to use in real life. Two of the popular topics are math like algebra and oddly enough learning to play the recorder. As is the way of social media, these tropes are met with a cadre of people who agree that they have never once in their adult lives used algebra or have played the recorder. Then there is the other side that will tirelessly list out the myriad ways in which they have used algebra and what their nascent recorder learning ultimately did for their music careers. The two sides then have a useless argument and ultimately everyone leaves until the next time the trope comes around. What always amazes me about these futile internet fights is that both sides seem to miss the bigger picture. And that is, whatever skill you learn, be it algebra, the recorder, or something else, you will use it because you’ll have it to use.

Huh?

Hear me out on this one. Say I decide to start learning Portuguese today, which honestly sounds like a fantastic idea because who wouldn’t want to learn Portuguese? Once I begin learning that language a whole host of things seen and unseen will open up for me. I’ll be rewiring my brain. I’ll become able to converse with people I would not necessarily have been able to converse with before. I will get a richer understanding of my own language and culture. I might start thinking about visiting Portugal or Brazil or Guinea-Bissau or Mozambique when I might not have considered it previously. Those are just a few of the obvious things. More subtle things will happen too. I will start noticing Portuguese-related things in the world that I missed before and that will open up a host of other interesting things. The list goes on and on. Most importantly, I will have a skill that I will be able to use. This is the important part because none of us knows where life will take us.

People who scoff at learning different things because they can’t see a practical application for them in their lives are working under the false assumption that they know exactly where their lives will take them. It’s a great idea to dream and plan for a specific life path but talk to anyone who has been around a few decades and they will tell you that things rarely go exactly how you plan them. In fact, often they go much better. You will live beyond your wildest dreams or imaginings and do things you never thought you would do.

Back when I was teaching Latin in private school, I had a student whom I adored but was self-admittedly the consummate goof-off. He did fine, but not great, despite having the ability to do so. The fact was that he just didn’t see Latin as having anything to do with his future plans. All my talk about rewiring your brain, beefing up your logic skills, how cool it is to learn about another culture and how that can give you real insight into your own, yada yada yada fell on completely deaf ears. Well, three years into college he emailed me and told me he was taking Greek because he had a calling and was heading into ministry. He said it was going okay but that he really wished he had taken Latin more seriously because it would have helped so much with learning Greek. I didn’t say, “I told you so,” even though I kind of wanted to, because he already knew it, plus that’s just mean. What I did say, though, was, “Isn’t it funny where life has taken you?” Not ha ha funny, but ironic. He knew what I meant, and he agreed. He had no idea just three years before that Latin of all things would be a skill he would need for furthering his life’s work. We just can’t see everything that is going to happen for us.

Returning then to the old and crusty people on the internet. How did they get so crusty? Surely people with more years of life experience should know that life rarely takes us where we think we’re going. Are they failing to see how the different things they learned over all their years allowed them to do the things they did? Are they missing the connections? Probably. After all, so many of the benefits of what we learn are unseen. What’s more disturbing, though, is the thought that their failure to learn things, because they saw them as inapplicable to their lives, actually kept their worlds small, their paths boring, and their opportunities few. In short, they didn’t use skills because they didn’t have them to use, and their lives have become an internet crust-fest about elementary school recorders.

Ultimately the choice is ours in what skills we learn and how well we learn them, and there certainly isn’t enough time to do everything. But it pays to keep in mind the fact that the skills we learn, whatever they may be, will be of use to us because we will have those skills to use. And no matter how dull, weird or inapplicable they may seem, they will bring us interesting and meaningful opportunities. To completely mangle a wonderful poem by Robert Frost, I personally am choosing the path less crusty: not scoffing at learning new things but embracing them and learning them well, even if I don’t see a direct application for them in my life. For I know it will make all the difference.

 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

Robert Frost

 

A Blank Page

Educational Choices Are Actually Yours

Amy Barr, The Lukeion Project

The start of a new academic year has arrived. Some hate getting back to academic work as they are forced to abandon the relative freedom of summer activities. Others are keen to get back into the swing of things as they look forward to new challenges. Most see their yearly academic schedule as inevitable, something that must be done, boxes that must be checked, and time that must pass one way or another. Which kind of student are you?

I have found through over 30 years as educator that students who have some educational autonomy will have a better attitude towards each new academic year. Conversely, students who feel they are locked into a parade or generic classes and subjects tend to have less enthusiasm about the work at hand.

A person who works a factory job completing a repetitive chore may accomplish much in a single day but seldom looks forward to his task. Even if he manufactures something he loves, his enthusiasm for it will not last long. Humans quickly get bored with repetition and with a lack of personal challenge. Most humans avoid undertakings that offer no room for improvement, no challenges, no changes.

When I was in high school, I worked for a nice pizza restaurant. I picked that job because I loved the pizza there and thought it might be fun. Wishing to earn enough money for college, I spent most of my evenings for a full year making or selling that pizza. I saved carefully and did indeed pay for my own education with that money. I am glad I had that job, but I went from being a pizza-loving teen to somebody that still dislikes pizza many decades later. You can have too much of a good thing.

Most of us gravitate towards projects that allow us to improve and eventually excel if we choose to put in the work. Good health (both mental and physical) depends on the ebb and flow of seasons, changes, and challenges. If everyone gets the same grade no matter how hard they work or if every day looks the same no matter what you do, boredom will lead to apathy. Apathy will lead to resignation. Looking back at my high school pizza job, I know that my boredom was not just eating too much pizza but the constant sameness.

As you start a new academic year or semester, you might feel you have been given few choices about your classes because certain topics must be covered in the short span of a few years. That transcript is not going to finish itself! You may begin to see what is in store and learn to view it through the lens of sameness and respond with a bored yawn.

You may also see what is ahead and realize that your education is a blank page that you get to illustrate and fill out how you like. Yes, you need an English credit each year of high school. NO, that English credit does not need to be the same one that everyone else completes. Foreign language? Math? History? Science? Writing? Yes! Everyone needs those. Learn to tick those boxes and finish those requirements in ways that challenge you.

Your academic plan is all your own. Prepare yourself for a future that interests and engages you. Even if you do not feel you have a ton of choices over the types of things you are expected to study this year, retain control on how you prepare, the amount of effort you expend, and the level of mastery you achieve. You have more control over your current circumstances and your future than you might imagine. Even small investments towards excellence now will fill out the blank page of your education in ways that only you can control. Everyone has the autonomy necessary to become truly excellent at many things. Start today.Your education is not something done to you or for you but by you.

Think-Os

Stupid Mistakes

Dr. Kim Johnson, Logic (Lively Logician) and Counting to Computers with The Lukeion Project

I cannot tell you how many times as a mathematics teacher I’ve seen a student react to a question they’ve gotten wrong on a test or quiz by saying, “Oh, that’s just a stupid mistake.”  It seems as though calling something a “stupid mistake” or “careless error” allows students (and sometimes me) to dismiss the mistake as a onetime occurrence and go on to think about more pleasant things.

Celebrating your wins on tests or essays is crucial. But don’t dismiss the stupid mistakes out of hand---sometimes there is more to them than just carelessness.

Correcting “Think-Os”

A stupid mistake can also be called a thoughtless error. Sometimes I call them “think-os”. Like a typo, a think-o is something that you knew or understood well but wrote or typed incorrectly. Most often they stem from a momentary lapse in concentration.

Given that they are so fleeting, why should we not dismiss them and move onto something that is more important? The truth is, sometimes thoughtless errors turn out to be very important.

In 1999, scientists launched the Mars Orbiter with hopes that it would expand knowledge of the climate on Mars. Their hopes were dashed when, instead of exploring Mars, the orbiter crashed into the surface. The European scientists on the project used the metric system, the Americans used the English system, and so their calculations didn’t’ match up. This was truly a thoughtless mistake because every scientist in that group understood the difference between metric and English measurements. This thoughtless error cost millions of dollars.

“Fine,” you might say “…but I am not in charge of million-dollar projects, I’m just taking my Latin exam, doing some math homework, writing an essay, or taking a history quiz. A stupid mistake in these situations does not have any dire consequences. So why should you care?”

You should care because sometimes a seemingly innocent mistake hides a deeper misunderstanding. For example, if the instructor asks for one form of a verb and you give another, or if you are expected to give a number and you give a function, perhaps you never fully understood the difference and need to clear something up. It’s just a simple mistake---but it indicates that there is something you need to understand more fully before moving on.

Another type of worrying mistake is one that you make over and over. In working with students, I’ve noticed that each student has their own personal set of repeated mistakes. My personal set of mistakes is to lose negative signs and copy down digits in the wrong order. One friend misspelled the word “their” nearly every time he wrote it. Some students have particular facts that they always get backwards.

The best part about these mistakes is that you are not doomed to make them forever.

How To Avoid Careless Errors

Obviously, if you have a gap in your understanding of some part of the topic, work to figure it out!   Honestly appraising your work is crucial in clearing up misunderstandings. Without evaluating the mistake, you might think there is nothing left to think about and move on. The great thing about fixing mistakes which come from misunderstandings is that by fixing them early, you eliminate a whole raft of mistakes later. It’s kind of like killing a mosquito in the spring will eliminate thousands of mosquitos later in the summer.

Fixing mistakes that you make again and again can be slightly more difficult. The problem with trying to fix repeated mistakes is that they indicate a type of momentary blindness and inability to notice errors.

The first and obvious thing to do is to check your work. This involves a few things. First you must write something down to check. Have you ever heard your teacher tell you to “show your work?” This is why! Although an abacus or a counting table is a powerful tool, written work wins, hands down, when you are trying to catch errors.

Second, coming back to your work after a day or at the end of the test is another good habit. Even a few minutes can give enough distance so that mistakes become visible instead of seeming to be correct. When checking my work, I think of it like a “hidden picture” puzzle, or a “spot the difference” puzzle---each difference should be deliberate, not an oversight.

You can develop a habit of going over your work looking for your most common mistakes. For example, my friend would search his papers for all instances of “their” spelled in his particular way, and I watch for lost negative signs. You can learn what errors you tend to make and look specifically for those mistakes. By focusing on and analyzing what you first dismissed as “stupid mistakes” you can find them and even get better at avoiding them.

Another strategy for catching foolish errors is to check with someone else. When mathematicians are working, they often work together. This is in part to generate more ideas, but it also allows them to catch each other’s momentary lapses in thinking. Even the most accomplished writers have editors. Software engineers review each others’ code to catch bugs. We can help each other reveal thoughtless errors.

Sometimes this is not allowed because of an honor policy, but even then getting another person involved can help. One of the best ways to catch errors is to explain the work to someone else. By going over your work out loud you introduce another sense---your ears can catch what your eyes do not. Pets are some of the most patient listeners. Even though your dog will never have to factor quadratic equations of conjugate Latin verbs, they will listen patiently and never judge when you find a mistake.

Get Over It

Finally, not all mistakes are signs of misunderstanding or part of a pattern. Sometimes a stupid mistake is just that. If that’s the case, your most potent tool is to just leave it behind and move on. Dwelling on mistakes takes mental energy that would be better put to use in learning new material and analyzing new ideas. Try pretending that you are looking at someone else’s work as a teacher or a scientist. Then you can judge more accurately whether the mistakes require further action or if they are not matters of concern.

Mistakes will definitely come, that is certain. Making mistakes is part of being human. Learning to deal with them appropriately---with honesty, attention, and grace---makes us better humans

Autodidacticism

You Have Everything YOU Need For a Good Education

Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

The English word “education” comes from the Latin word educare, a verb that can refer to the process of bringing up children to adulthood or providing a wholesome place for animals or crops to grow. Modern usage would have us think that education is a commodity that we might purchase in the form of a book, a program, a class, or whole degree program. When we are done with one or all of these, we proclaim ourselves “educated.” The Latin word does not refer to any of these things, per se. Instead, one’s education is a matter of having a favorable environment or fertile soil for somebody (or something) to grow productively. Education, for much of human history, has been a personal choice and under our own control.

In the Roman world, those that worked on a subject very diligently might eventually be considered doctus by others, meaning they were well-informed, experienced, and clever. Doctus is a passive participle of doceo, a verb which means “teach” (a doctor was a teacher not a medical expert). Somebody who is doctus has been “taught” but not necessarily by others and certainly not in some established program. Remove your modern sensibilities about being taught. The English words we use to define doctus or docta have more to do with how one treats oneself as one builds one’s own learning environment. A well-informed, experienced, and clever person takes the initiative to self-educate regardless of one’s station in life.

The most brilliant men and women in history have been autodidacts who, until very recently, had zero framed diplomas hanging in their offices. Degrees, as such, didn’t factor into anyone’s career qualifications until the far more recent past. The notion of placing a measure (and certificate of completion) on one’s education was not something that most people thought about until public education compelled us to think in terms of something that could be measured, quantified, qualified, and marketed to the human race.

Greek philosopher Plato once said, “The first and best victory is to conquer self.” Aristotle, Plato’s student, listened carefully to his master’s words for 20 years and then reversed his opinion on most of Plato’s teachings to form his own thoughts. He famously said, “Through self-discipline comes freedom.” As he too would become an educator of famous people like Alexander the Great, Aristotle would also say “What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do.”

Education today is not something our Classical fore-bearers would recognize or condone. Today we view education as a set of stairs. We climb up some of those steps and celebrate when we’ve arrived at a certain stage while we earn a slip of paper that some institution has issued to say as much. Leaving behind all that was accomplished before, we climb a new set of slightly more difficult stairs and look for new affirmations of completion until, armed with seemingly enough certificates, we are deemed qualified. Those that didn’t climb those particular stairs are not authorized to form opinions or advice in that area. Such people are merely amateurs, a word that comes from the word for love (amare) in Latin. 

Modern education is a lucrative system that is jealous of all forms of competition. We are told we aren’t qualified to do our own research and we aren’t qualified to educate ourselves. Those who are home-educated must simulate a public education by jumping through similar hoops in hopes of being issued a graduation certificate which, despite numerous studies that prove that home education is the far superior method of learning, is often considered sub-standard by many secondary institutions. Many top universities are slowly understanding how valuable our home educated autodidacts are! The top skill mastered in home education is how to educate oneself, a skill that becomes a game-changing advantage in college, graduate school, career, and life. Those that don't want any part of that type of conveyor belt system are benefited as they teach themselves how to live the kind of life that interests them most. 

Autodidacticism (self-education) is and has always been the most reliable method to become well-informed, experienced, and clever. Our own interests and passions are a powerful tool to compel us to excel. Autodidacts are never sated with mastering a single body of knowledge. Having learned one and then two, self-educators are driven to learn by their own interests. They choose to master more and still more. While such people often go on to collect a variety of degrees because they are still constrained by our modern system, they will always continue their own learning process provided they have life and breath.

As Plato points out, your first task is to master as an autodidact is self-discipline. Rising above your own lazy instincts to sleep more or play more means you’ll have the ability to push on, to persist in your efforts to master some topic or skill. If you have enough self-discipline to persist, there are no limits to your goals or ambitions. This is true freedom. The choice falls on you. You have control over your own timeline, effort, and skill. Degree programs might require a set number of years and certainly a prearranged fee, but a self-disciplined autodidact has control of his own time, her own effort, and the quality of all outcomes. Armed with far more educational materials and opportunities than history’s brightest minds, the best education today can be free, or nearly so.

 

 

Take Notes

Supercharge Your Learning & Save Time

Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Your class is an hour long. In that class your instructor is going to cover some important concepts. You should know they are important because time is very limited, and most educators are going to prioritize material you must know! Less important details can be gleaned from assigned readings but, rest assured, what’s covered in class is the top stuff to learn. The most important material is being served to you on a shiny platter with stars and exclamation points to let you know that these are the foundational things to understand. Many recognize class time (any class time) for this value while many more do not.  

You have choices about how to use the scheduled class or lecture time ahead of you. You could listen with half an ear while you fiddle with a distraction (social media, pet capybara, a game app, etc.); you could listen attentively but passively (notice that passive listening almost always leads to fiddling with a distraction); or you can actively listen by taking notes.

Only one of these approaches makes good use of your class session for which you have already made time in your schedule. The other two are a waste of time. Not only do you miss your first and best opportunity for learning the most essential concepts of any particular subject, you now have to find time in your schedule in which you must be your own tutor by trying to figure out what is important and why they need to know it. This “I’ll eventually figure it out” approach is common, but it is a massive waste of time.  

Many argue that they don’t need to focus carefully on in-class material if it is also covered in the textbook or in assigned readings. By this reasoning, why not save time and money by abandoning every formal academic scenario and becoming entirely self-educated? It is true that some subjects lend themselves to self-teaching. Others do not. If you want a good return on your time investment, your educator will prioritize the most important material and then explore a variety of ways to help you best understand that material in context.

Many argue that they plan to listen in class but don’t feel they want to take notes because they aren’t very fast at taking notes or maybe their handwriting isn’t very tidy. This is like saying you are going to wait to learn essential skills until after you’ve been added to the Olympic team in that skill. You don’t start on the first day with good reflexes and strong muscles in a sport. You won’t start note-taking on day one with neat, speedy, and organized words. You only get faster and more efficient at taking notes by taking notes. Sloppy handwriting is not a problem. If you are taking notes properly you can be certain that your writing is sloppy because you are keeping pace with the material and you know this isn’t the final set of notes on the material.

Taking notes in class is the fastest way to understand material and then internalize what you are hearing because you are forcing yourself to hear, process, consider, think, and organize the words necessary to summarize what you are seeing and hearing in class. Taking notes by hand forces full brain engagement in the material being presented. This also works when you are reading an assigned texts, especially if you are summarizing what you have read into your needs or formulating more abbreviated definitions of terms and concepts. You must formulate a full thought and express it in such a way that makes sense to you and then write it out. There’s a Latin phrase that holds true in this discussion: to teach is to learn. When you take notes, you are teaching yourself and learning well.  

Taking notes by hand is also the best way to stay attuned to the material presented. We are all prone to losing focus when any distraction pops up. Maybe your cat walks in and begs for treats reminding you to move your stuff out of the cat’s favorite spot but now he wants a treat and look at how his water bowl is empty and let’s get him to play with his new toy and then…wait, what did the teacher just say about this week’s quiz? Making a habit of notetaking means our hands are full, our eyes are on task, and our brains are meaningfully engaged even if we might still have the cat in the room who plans to take a nap in his favorite spot even if you don’t move your stuff.

What’s the best way to learn by taking notes?

1. Don’t prioritize material as note-worthy or not until after you’ve finished the class. Just take notes anyway. Evaluations can come later. For now, stay attuned to what is being said by jotting notes down non-stop. During a lecture, staying focused is half the battle.
   
2. Don’t try to copy anything verbatim unless your lecturer makes it very clear that verbatim is important. Instead, listen for keywords, terms/definitions, proper nouns, specific ways of explaining tricky topics. If you have a good educator, he or she will repeat important things a couple of different ways so get down a few anchor notes and then flesh things out a bit more as your understanding expands. Leaving extra line spaces and wide margins will help you add things back in later if you hear it explained in more than one way.
3. Notes need not be limited to words! Include arrows, asterisks, underlines, colors, doodles, or whatever system you like to use to indicate priority or process. Some take notes like a rough loose flowchart while others take notes more formally with traditional outline techniques. Both do the job.
4. Always recopy your notes after class meets or the lecture ends. Keep a loose-leaf binder with a stack of lined paper for taking notes during class and a separate notebook or binder for recopying them later. Why recopy? You will forget 50% of what you heard in class within 24 hours. If you recopy your notes but flesh them out by writing more complete sentences or with added material from your readings or charts from the textbook with formatting or colors for important terms, you will have more than half-finished your studying for any quiz or exam that comes your way. You will have engaged your brain to listen and write and then analyze and write once again while the thoughts are still fresh. If you recopy notes soon after the lecture, you’ll accomplish this step very quickly. If you wait, you’ll have to spend more time remembering. Your choice.
5. Even if you borrow somebody’s notes to prepare for an exam, it is essential that you recopy them for yourself. Writing things out allows our brains time to process and absorb new information easily.  
6. If you struggle to increase speed when taking notes, consider acquiring the skill of writing in cursive, a writing style that was designed to add speed to writing by hand. Printing is the slowest way to write anything. 
   

Taking notes is an intense study method that will accommodate full mastery of nearly anything you hear or read. It is something that almost anyone can do and at any age. It is a suitable complement to any preferred learning style. Focused note-taking requires no additional class time. Compared to somebody who chooses distracted unengaged learning, you’ll spend much less total time recopying notes in preparation for any quiz or exam. Fail to take/recopy notes and you’ll spend much more time trying to teach yourself the material from scratch without the benefit or prioritized information.

Join forces with your skilled educator by taking notes. Your grades and subject mastery will greatly improve even as you spend less time working on the material at hand.

Getting Yourself to Do Hard Things

Motivation From Within

Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project
 

Intrinsic motivation is the driving force of success. Intrinsic motivation helps us engage in a behavior because of the inherent satisfaction of the activity rather than the desire for a reward or specific outcome. It is the difference between working diligently to achieve a goal rather than working to achieve a paycheck, treat, bonus, or reward. Those last things are defined as extrinsic motivations.

Everything we do (or choose not to do) has effects on our life. Work earns money. Certain behaviors or beliefs might make our parents proud. Taking up weightlifting might make our appearances and abilities more to our liking. Finishing a long boring task will allow us to move on to the more interesting project.
Dr. Kou Murayama assigned a problem-solving task to two groups of participants. One group was told to master the material. The other group was tasked to outperform or “win higher scores” compared to their peers. Those told to win higher scores indeed did better on a pop quiz that day.  The group told to master the material performed better a week later. This second group’s goals were intrinsic, namely to fully “own” a body of knowledge for themselves. 

How do we convince ourselves to master a body of knowledge? How do we spark our own intrinsic motivation? 

Believe in your own ability to become intrinsically motivated.

This form of motivation is the strongest and most surefire way to keep going even when the going gets rough! Even on a neurological level, humans will stay on task longer if they believe they can complete the task for their own benefit. Intrinsic motivation works way better than treats, rewards, and paychecks.  It all starts with your personal belief that you can do a thing. This fact explains why small business owners are willing to work much harder (and longer) than employees. Intrinsic motivation pushes a person to dig deep.

Desire to be effective at what you plan to do.

It is so easy for some people to talk themselves out of everything good. Sometimes this behavior is modeled for us by others. Sometimes we’ve been through some life event that leads us to believe that it is better to hope for less and be surprised when there’s more. This can be a toxic habit, so it is worth trying to reprogram how you tackle life. Psychologist Tory Higgins, director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia Business school explains, “The essence of human motivation is that we want to be effective. It’s what makes us feel alive.”

Setting goals and feeling effective for accomplishing them is a huge win in life. Start by believing you can do a thing and then do it. The nice side effect is that we will quickly understand how we can influence our own life positively. We don’t need to wait until somebody else “gives us a chance,” assigns us a job, or pays us to do something. Visualize and desire successfully doing/learning/mastering then set the goal, form a plan, then do it. This is what gives us a charge and makes us know we are going places in life.  

Be around other motivated people, avoid unmotivated people.

It is impossible to stay motivated to learn a thing or do a thing if everyone around you is telling you it is “dumb” or unimportant or (worse) unattainable. If you can’t avoid unmotivated or unmotivating people, associate with those who have their own vision to achieve great things. Sometimes this means you should look for friendships or get involved in organizations or clubs with similar views. If that isn’t possible, encourage yourself by finding motivational success stories and seeking good advice for ways to stay on the path to success.  

Share your progress with somebody.

Persevering to accomplish a goal is something to be celebrated! Having an optimistic accountability partner can help you arrive at your goal and celebrate once you are there. This same accountability partner can help you in the bad weeks when you’ve had setbacks. This person will be there to remind you that setbacks are temporary, and that victory is close at hand. If you are in a class to learn a body of material, sometimes that accountability partner is your educator or your class peers. In many of our classes, we educators will celebrate wins, namely people who set lofty goals get a nice shout out when they arrive!

Set specific and challenging goals.

Accomplishing goals is motivating. When you set a lofty goal that will take time and effort, don’t just look at the finish line. Set specific measurable milestones to push you along on your journey. Each will be its own motivation. Each contributes towards your momentum. As a student mastering a subject, your milestones might be individual scores on assignments or maybe keeping grades within a high range for all exams, for example. Each task is a manageable step up the staircase. You won’t be ready for your final exam until the end. This week, excellence task-by-task is just the right size for success.

Train your brain by being your own accountability partner.

Our internal dialog is often a big detriment to success at what we want to accomplish. We might say things like, “I’m not good at this.” Maybe we’ll think, “None of this really matters.” Sometimes we look at a far-off goal and start to imagine all the things that might-possibly-could-potentially stop us from success. Every time you have these inward discussions with yourself, retrain your brain. Become your own encourager, or at least avoid being your own nay-sayer. You put nothing at risk by framing ideas of great success for yourself, especially if you have set goals.  There is nothing to be gained by being negative toward future you.

History Was not Boring

Your Teacher Was

Regan Barr with The Lukeion Project

Recently I was speaking to a friend who admitted she is still trying to overcome a lifelong hatred of history. She related a story that I have heard dozens of times: all her "formal" history education was nothing more than memorizing faceless lists of names and dates. She is still bitter. I had some awful history class experiences, as well.
For example, I remember taking state history in junior high...I do not remember any state history, I just remember TAKING state history. And I remember the room clearly. The powers-that-be called these things “portable classrooms,” but the students called them “trailers.” They were rectangular boxes made of corrugated metal that had been strategically placed at the farthest corner of a black-topped parking lot. The Oklahoma summer sun blazed down on that parking lot in late August heating it up to at least four hundred degrees. Crossing from the main building to the trailer for history was dangerous business. The furnace blast would hit you and you could feel your skin melting. Your only hope was to make it to the trailer before your blood began to boil. When we finally stumbled up the rickety wooden steps and into the air-conditioned coolness of that trailer, we collapsed into a dehydrated heap and gasped for air. As we paused to admire our own survival skills, it would hit us. “Oh, man!! They have done it to us again. They tricked us into coming to history.”
The state history teacher was young, just out of college, and he had flaming red hair. He was a wrestling coach who had been forced to teach state history. He must have done something awful in college because he was being punished in this assignment. History was as torturous for him as it was for us. He was easily flustered and when he became angry or frustrated, he turned bright red in the face. Some classmates decided that evoking this reaction from our uninspired and unmotivated instructor was a lot more interesting than any old boring state history. Those students smelled fear, and when their pack instincts kicked in, the poor man had no chance. He was like a wildebeest separated from the herd and the lions were intent on bringing him down. He would get louder, redder, and more animated the angrier they made him. To his credit, he never acted upon those thoughts of violence that surely filled his head. That class took years off his life.
Now some might be under the naïve impression that teachers should spend time learning the subject matter they will be teaching, but I think in teachers’ colleges today you get right to the crowd control training. It is a rare junior high that has an excited and knowledgeable state history teacher, so any poor fool who gets stuck in that classroom better have some crowd control training – some riot gear might help, too. No experienced teachers ever made that blistering journey across the blacktop to see how things were going out in the “state history trailer.” He was on his own!
That is the sum of my memories of history prior to college. I cannot even recall what gender my high school history teacher was, though I am certain I took some history in high school. Is it any surprise that I hated history? I remember my civics teacher because he had some funny mannerisms that were more interesting than civics. I remember my kindergarten teacher because she mispronounced my name for half the school year. I remember…or rather feared…my fourth-grade teacher because she was a large, gray-haired gal who thought her students’ idea of a fun time was skipping the lunchroom pizza crowd to eat vegetable soup (!) with her in the classroom. The image of her brandishing a yardstick as she attempted to chase down some miscreant on the playground is emblazoned in my memory.
I remember those teachers, but not the history I was supposed to learn. Why? Because of the interesting details. My teachers, classmates, and classrooms were swirling vortexes of interesting details, but history itself was not. Today I understand that it is the details that make history fascinating – the sort of details I remember about angry teachers or the walk through the inferno to the “state history trailer” – not the sorts of details you find on a timeline.
By the time it got to me, history had been scoured clean of all the interesting details and only drudgery was left. History does not occur in expansive decades, centuries, and millennia. It does not even happen in timeline tick marks. It happens the same way that life does: one moment at a time, one blistering step at a time. History is not the story of enormous hordes of faceless automatons. It is the story of unique people like you and me. They sometimes cooperate, sometimes get into fights, and sometimes act with dignity and reason, but quite often act in silly, dangerous, or unpredictable ways. It was not until I got to college that I had instructors who loved what they were teaching and filled their history lessons with little-known facts and engaging anecdotes. Guess what?? History is about real people! History cannot be boring unless life itself is boring. But sometimes we stand so far away that we cannot see any of the interesting bits.

Check out Lukeion Classical History for high school level and above

Popcorn Brain

Do You Have It? How Can You Recover?

By Amy Barr

Do you have popcorn brain? I bet you do. I certainly do. I didn’t invent this disease. It is an affliction that causes problems for most of modern humans. It is a pervasive affliction that causes daily troubles for all of us. Popcorn brain can drastically change one’s life trajectory and damage our relationships even though most don’t know they have the problem.

Popcorn brain is not caused by a pernicious virus. We can’t blame too many sweets, too few vitamins, too much food dye, nor even popcorn. The main symptom of popcorn brain is that you are easily distracted and will have difficulty focusing on one task at a time. You’ll find it is impossible to put aside technology, even for one or more waking hours. 

The average sufferer plays music while he is trying to perform an intellectual task like homework, studying, writing, or reading. If the list stopped there, that's not so bad. Now he adds a constant stream of notifications from social media accounts, playing apps, sharing funny videos, watching TV, and grabbing snacks during the few hours set aside to get work done. 

Popcorn brain feels productive because we are so busy. Popcorn brain fools us (and others) into thinking we are getting stuff done when we are not. Besides doing a poor job on mental tasks you also suffer from an intolerance for being bored even for a moment. Even the smallest lapse in activities means you will get distracted from even your distractions. 

Popcorn brain means you may never have a single creative moment in your life. All day long, your poor brain pops and pops and pops, looking for the next imposed impulse from a dozen sources simultaneously. You will constantly feel overwhelmed, over-scheduled, unproductive, and uncreative. 

What are the causes of popcorn brain?

There’s no way to soft sell this so you better sit down. Your sophisticated expensive time-saving technology is to blame. Those who don’t have computers (phones, tablets, whatever) don’t have popcorn brain. Their lives tend to be a full expression of focus, effort, creativity, and productivity. To remind myself that such a life is possible, I drive through one of the two Amish communities near my house. It is clear which houses are Amish and which are "English" not because the Amish have no power lines. Amish houses are dynamic, busy, well-tended, and full of life.They are able to easily accomplish daily chores with plenty of time for social time, community events, and opportunities for volunteer work. Their mental, physical, and spiritual health is robust.

Meanwhile popcorn brain spreads like wildfire in the modern world because the addiction is real. The mere thought of unplugging or living with minimal technological input likely made you feel uncomfortable or indignant. How horrible! Don’t they get bored? Unlikely but when they do, they also get creative unlike the rest of us.

How does popcorn brain change lives for the worse?
Drive through any modern neighborhood. You’ll find yards are empty and untended, playgrounds are sparsely used, and even joggers or dog walkers don’t just complete that one task. They listen to music, check texts at stop lights, and look to count steps, their heart-monitor app., and their social media.
Many studies and my own experience as an educator prove that that the average I.Q. is dropping, and our population is getting dumber by the day. Student assignments that should take 20 minutes now take 90 minutes between the constant distractions. Compare what an average high school graduate knows now and what was expected from an 18-year old 100 years ago! Visit parts of the world that enjoy limited technology and compare their productivity and personal skills with your own. Friends, it isn’t pretty. Popcorn brain is so serious that most of us will labor decades to master skills that non-tech humans can pick up at age 16 simply because our days, creativity, and minds are squandered for nothing.
How many artists, writers, and musicians will never develop their arts because they never once get bored enough to paint that mural, finish that novel, or form the muscle memory needed to become great at their instruments of choice? How many people that are wired to be carpenters, gardeners, inventors, linguists, dancers, or scholars will instead spend their lives doing none of that because they can’t find the time?   

How to Combat Popcorn Brain

If technology has caused this crisis, limiting, or eliminating it will cure it. Ouch.

Like many of you, I can’t get rid of the necessity for screen time because that’s how I make a living. Students are in the same boat until further notice, alas. I am working on some disciplines to limit myself.

Habits die hard so start with reduction. Diminish technological demands even while employing technology. Too many tabs, apps, videos open at the same time shrinks your ability to focus. If you give yourself an hour to finish an academic job, break it into 30 minutes and then close everything but your appropriate app and maybe some music to drown ambient sounds. Don’t play music with lyrics because your popcorn brain will tell you to sing along! At the 30-minute mark—if you have remained focused—enjoy a short non-technology reward or set the timer for 5 minutes to check texts, email, etc., before closing all those tabs again. Don’t go over that limit. Set the timer for 30 minutes again and repeat. Like learning to lift weights, you’ll need to build up to 60 minutes and then 90, 120, etc. 

Learn to MEGABATCH or work on getting a lot done in one time block. Now that you’ve tuned up your ability to go stretches of time with limited technology input, eliminate tech for longer stretches of time each week. Turn it all off and set a manual timer for 3 or more hours doing any one activity that needs no tech or maybe a single app. Do this at least once a week. At first pick something that you adore (reading, sports, garden work, painting) but do it for three hours with zero phone, tablet, laptop, or gadget anywhere near you. You are reconditioning your brain to go for longer and longer periods without the little addictive endorphin treats that you’ve trained yourself to seek. You’ll know when you have made progress when you can drag out a good book and read in silence for 3 hours. Soon you will need an alarm to force yourself to stop reading that good book. If you have popcorn brain, this is something you've not done for a long time.

After you’ve reconditioned your brain to focus on a single task you enjoy, now force yourself to spend three or more hours mono-tasking things you don’t like as much. Whatever you consider a chore, do it for three hours uninterrupted by anything but short necessary breaks. Make it a date with just you and that chore. You’ll soon find that something that used to take 3 hours will now take a fraction of that time. If you don’t need 3 hours, add several more chores to your list because you’ll likely get much more done.

To avoid relapses, if you mess up while megabatching by grabbing that device, reset your three hours and begin again. Your reward for making it through all three hours of mono-tasking is that sense of satisfaction over a big pile of finished projects.

More brain reconditioning behaviors:

• Don’t look at devices for the first 30 minutes that you are awake in the morning and the last 30 minutes at night.Work to extend this time as you recover from popcorn brain.
  
• When you do listen to podcasts, tutorials, classes, etc., force yourself to take notes with pen and paper instead of fiddling with 3 or 4 other things on your device.
• Take up any physical exercise that requires focus. I do yard work or gardening. Others might practice hitting a target, shooting a ball, blacksmithing, biking, roller skating, or building something.
• A little music helps improve focus, but set your device far away and pick a playlist that requires no changes. Once your device lands in your hands, popcorn brain will go pop, pop, pop. Go to great efforts to not touch tech during focus time. 
• Make room for social time. Quit (school or professional) work at a specific hour then find your family or friends to catch up on your day. Popcorn brain forces us to be unproductive until we give up or run out of time in our day. This means we miss out on much needed social interactions. Focus lets us schedule an end to work and enjoy personal time daily.
• Plan a tech-free weekend at least once a month. Avoid all screens from Friday night through Monday morning. Camp, paint, exercise, compete, create, write, read, build, garden. Focus will help you find yourself once more.
  

Ultimate Answers to the TOP 4 Questions Students Ask Educators

Save Time! Learn These Academic Secrets NOW!

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

During a lifetime career of lovingly and attentively educating students, we teachers hear some questions far more often than others. While we educators are known for saying, “there’s no such thing as a dumb question,” we also know that some questions have ulterior meanings and motives. I provide here in no particular order the answers to your biggest and most pressing academic questions, so you’ll never need to ask them in class.

#1 I got busy and forgot. Can you reopen my assignment for me? Will you give me feedback anyway?

"Sure. I had no real reason behind putting a deadline on that task. Do what you like! Not."

Most students ask this question because they’ve had time management issues to the point that things have gone off the rails. For some students this is truly a rare occurrence, and their heart is in the right place. They had one of those weeks. They hope to mitigate the damage.

For other students, time management is mismanaged more frequently. This issue will eventually spread to every class, every assignment, and cause long term trouble in one’s personal life once time is complicated by things like jobs and adult obligations. Some modern pedagogical approaches have given up entirely and now offer endless re-dos and zero deadlines. This approach has its merits for a few subjects but, especially for academic topics I have seen few benefits for anyone, student or teacher.

Decades of teaching (and parenting) experience confirm that simply having firm deadlines is enough to help most students develop the skill of time management now while things are less dire. Experienced educators know that 9 out of 10 students who ask for a please-just-this-one-time-only extension will ask for deadlines to be adjusted for the rest of the semester and forevermore.

Here’s the answer: No, you can’t have an extension because everyone is busy.

A good educator knows that once a student hits a certain age and maturity, she will never build better time management skills by constantly offering her more non-emergency extensions. The rest of the class prioritized an assignment enough to finish work on time so rewarding one person with a random extension is unkind to all, including the one asking for an extension. Your educator allocated a certain amount of time for grading and feedback on a particular task and, by asking for extensions, you are making unmerited demands on another person’s schedule. Many educators are generous to make that offer once or twice but most won’t continue to be charitable once a student turns it into a lifelong pattern.

Manage your time or it will manage you. 

#2 When are you going to grade my assignment?

"Let me check…hmm, yes. I’ll be done next Tuesday at 3:02 am."

Most students ask this question because they are at a loss for how to politely say, “Hurry up! I want to know my grade!”

We understand it can be frustrating waiting for scores. It is tempting to look at your educator’s job as somewhat limited to dealing with only your class and only your assignments. If you have that perspective, then it is easy to imagine your educator is leading a pretty cushy lifestyle. How long can it take to slap a grade on one essay, for goodness sake?!  

Here’s the answer: Nobody is as interested in finishing the task of grading assignments more than your educators!  

The best day of each semester is that one moment when we have everything done at last (the next moment we must start working on the new semester). Your educators spend all day teaching several classes but still tuck in grading sessions every spare minute possible. Toss in some lesson planning, research, writing, unscheduled academic crises, a few emergency college recommendation letters, a couple necessary faculty meetings, and an occasional desire to (gasp) take the weekend off…you get the picture. Your educators have plenty on their plates. Unless you think that something has gone seriously wrong with an assignment you turned in, tread softly. We are all working as quickly as we can. You’ll score more points by being understanding.

#3 Will this be on the test?

Most students ask this question because they want to know if they should bother to listen, participate, take notes or study the material at hand. Whenever students ask this question, your educators actually hear, “do I need to exert any of my own energy here with this stuff going on or can I go back to playing my game online?”

Here’s the answer: Yes, this will ALL be on the test.

Once you get to middle school and certainly high school and beyond, time is very limited in class. ALWAYS assume that what your educator is presenting to you or incorporating into a discussion is intentional. Will this exact material be on a “quiz”? Maybe! Since you are learning the material (not teaching the material) you’ll be delighted to hear that we educators usually have a plan in place to help you master a whole body of material! Presume that your job is to stay engaged during the whole class and to take notes to help you focus. It will never pay to try to calculate how little is necessary to pass a class. You’ll score more points and gain a better education by being attentive and engaged in class and discussions.

#4 Sorry I’m late, did I miss anything?

Most students ask this question because they are at a loss for how to politely excuse themselves for arriving late.

This question, if asked aloud, will cause your educator to grow incensed and, depending on how strong his or her filters are, it will get you any variety of responses ranging from a polite “come in please” to a snarky “we were sitting here silently waiting for your arrival to begin our work.”

The mother-of-all-responses to a student asking this question is a poem by Tom Wayman written in 1945 but so true today.

 

Did I Miss Anything?

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here

we sat with our hands folded on our desks

in silence, for the full two hours

 

Everything. I gave an exam worth

40 percent of the grade for this term

and assigned some reading due today

on which I'm about to hand out a quiz

worth 50 percent

 

Nothing. None of the content of this course

has value or meaning

Take as many days off as you like:

any activities we undertake as a class

I assure you will not matter either to you or me

and are without purpose

 

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time

a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel

or other heavenly being appeared

and revealed to us what each woman or man must do

to attain divine wisdom in this life and

the hereafter

This is the last time the class will meet

before we disperse to bring the good news to all people on earth.

 

Nothing. When you are not present

how could something significant occur?

 

Everything. Contained in this classroom

is a microcosm of human experience

assembled for you to query and examine and ponder

This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered

 

but it was one place

And you weren't here