New Academic Skills I'm Learning

In this unit one skill I have reincorporated into my life is taking notes in Cornell notes style (Chapter 29: Taking Notes in Class). Taking Cornell notes was a skill I learned in middle school and which I continued to use throughout high school, but I did not use it efficiently. What I mean by this is that when I would take Cornell notes it was just that; I barely never interacted with it afterwards such as highlighting and starring important ideas and questions I think would be on the test. It was also rare that I would use the system as a study tool such as folding it looking at just the questions to help with retention. Since starting college I tried taking a different route to taking notes, but I found it difficult to study them. Since revisiting different note taking styles I have began taking a lot of my notes using the Cornell notes method. This past week I applied it to my Nutrition notes and noticed how much more efficient and concise my notes have been. I've also began interacting with my notes a lot more which has been very effective when taking my tests. 

Another academic skill I have learned is to connect my learning to things to things that hold value to me in order to improve my memory intention (The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve—And How To Overcome It). I never realized it before, but after reading and learning about it, I have noticed that I unintentionally do this in my Nutrition and Psychology class. I believe these two classes are the easiest to make connections between your learning and life because you are learning about real life situations. However, I feel like this skill will be helpful in my Statistics class, because my retention rate in that class is not the best due to the fact that it's rare to use statistical skills on a daily basis. I believe that with repetition and finding ways to apply my learning to my life, it will definitely improve my retention rate in Stats. 

Lastly, in this unit I learned several strategies to improve my concentration such as "setting aside time to deal with worries," "focusing on one task at a time," and "switch[ing] between high- and low- attention tasks" (Improving Your Concentration). I think applying these skills are going to be the hardest for me to achieve because for one, I'm always worrying about something; my worries are mostly about due dates and whether I'm breaking assignments up in a timely matter. I also tend to get in my head a lot so my I'm not sure how to deal with my worries like due dates. Focusing on one task at a time is a really skill I can use to apply school work because with worrying about due dates I'm always trying to do 10 things at once, but if I could just take a step back and do one thing after the other it would help ease my anxiety. As for switching between high- and low- attention tasks, I plan on using this skill to help me effectively get work done without overworking myself which I tend to do a lot. For example, I can complete a whole module for Statistics which usually take me half an hours to 2 hours to complete and then afterwards I can complete a practice assignment for English which usually takes me about 10 to 15 minutes to complete.

Works Cited

Dillon, Dave, et al. Blueprint for Success in College and Career. Rebus Foundation, 2018, Rubus Community, press.rebus.community/blueprint2/. 

Mind Tools Content Team By the Mind Tools Content Team. “Improve Your Concentration: Achieving Focus Amid Distractions.” Time Management Skills from MindTools.com, www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_78.htm. 

Savara, Sid. “The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve - And How To Overcome It.” Sid Savara, 1 Dec. 2017, sidsavara.com/the-ebbinghaus-curve-of-forgetting/.