Smart Student Podcast

This episode is the second of three episodes that talk about how you should study if you want to become a smart student. I share my personal experience as well as that of other smart students I have gotten to know throughout my time in school.

The content is this episode is very practical and once you start to implement it, you should begin to see changes in the quality of your studies. These changes will soon also reflect in your overall academic performance.

The post SSP #9: How to Study to Become a Smart Student – Part 2 appeared first on Kobiza.

This episode is the first of three episodes that talk about how you should study if you want to become a smart student. I share my personal experience as well as that of other smart students I have gotten to know throughout my time in school.

The content is this episode is very practical and once you start to implement it, you should begin to see changes in the quality of your studies. These changes will soon also reflect in your overall academic performance.

The post SSP #8: How to Study to Become a Smart Student – Part 1 appeared first on Kobiza.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the smart student podcast with Dr. Ehoneah Obed your host. You are highly welcome. And if this is the first time you are listening to me, I am very grateful for listening. On this podcast, my aim is to train you to become a smart student and excel in your academics.

In today’s episode, I am talking about a particular question that has been on the mind of several students and I have had a number of students, especially my mentees, ask me. The question is how many hours in a day should I study if I want to become an excellent student? Or if I want to become a smart student?

Has that question ever crossed your mind? Have you ever asked yourself whether the number of hours you are studying could probably be the reason why you have not gotten to that level that you want to get to? Or could it be that you are spending very little or you are spending less of your time in your academics and you are eager to know what’s the actual number of hours.

Or do you even have a feeling that some people are spending way too much time learning and you are wondering why? Ok so in this episode we are going to address the issue of how many hours in a day should I study. This is a very good question anyway but there is not a straightforward answer to this question.

And I will explain why I say there isn’t a straightforward answer to this question.

When it comes to studying or the ability to study and understand. At the end of the day before your study, you have an end goal. And in a previous episode of the smart student podcast, we talked about goal setting in terms of your study. 

So you have already set a goal for yourself in terms of your study. If you are coming to set a  number of hours, that number of hours should help you achieve that set goal.

However every individual is different in their own unique ways and that is what you will need to understand in order to even answer this question for yourself.

That you are different, I am different. So if I happen to study for two hours a day it doesn’t necessarily mean that you also need to study two hours a day. There is something we call IQ and we all have different levels of IQ.

And based on your IQ (intelligent questions)you may require more time to study in a day or you may require less time to study in a day to achieve a particular result that we are looking at.

How then do I answer this question for you? How many hours do I have to study? To the best of my knowledge and experience, what I can tell you is that you need to reassess all that you have done so far.

You need to reassess all the hours you have been putting into your studies so far. So prior to this time or today’s very moment that you are  listening to this episode. How many hours have you been spending in a day studying?

Alright let’s assume you are studying in a day. You study for 5 hours. The next question I want you to ask yourself is how the results of this are. The five hours you are studying is yielding the kind of result you are looking for or not.

I just need you to appreciate this before we move on. That is not the core of what I am going to advise you to do but I need you to appreciate it. To come to an agreement that this is the number of hours that I’m studying and this is the result that I’m getting.

Is there room for improvement? Should I be looking forward to increasing the outcome or the results. Then the most important thing that I’m going to tell you about if I meet you one-on-one and you asked me this question.

The answer that I’m going to give you and that is what I want you to pay particular attention to right now. The meat of this particular episode if you don’t get anything from this episode is what I need you to keep with you so pay particular attention.

It is not about the number of hours that you spend studying, let me repeat that again for you. It is not about the number of hours you spend studying. However it is more of the quality of study hours you have. Let me take it again. it is not about the number of hours that you are spending to study but the quality of your study hours.

So if you are studying for two hours as compared to a friend who is studying for five hours. The fact that you are doing two and he is doing five does not necessarily affect anything at all. What affects anything is how quality is the two hours of study. 

So back in Senior High School, we had colleagues who would spend all day in the classroom but the majority of that time they spent either chatting or sleeping. So when you ask such people they will tell you that they spend all day studying. I can study for up to 16 good hours in a day.

And when you look at the quality of the study it is like out of these 16 hours they spend just close to an hour actually studying. Then that is not the only factor that goes into the quality of studies. So we have to look at the factors that go into the quality of studies. 

The first one will obviously be the actual time that you are commuting the book or whatever you are learning to memory. So if I say that I am studying right now I have moved from my room to the library to come and study.

How many hours out of the total time that I’m spending in the library do I actually spend reading the book or committing the things that I’m learning to memory. So that is the very first one. So if you spend eight hours in the library. 

Was all those 8 hours used in reading or in trying to understand the things that you are reading or you had to take rest along the line. So that number of hours is more of the time that you are using to really acquire the knowledge count even though it is not the ultimate. 

The next important thing is where your uniqueness comes into play. Every one of you needs to understand and appreciate your own abilities and inabilities. That Is why this podcast is even on in the first place. To share with you how to become a smart student.

But it’s a process, obviously you won’t just get up and become a smart student.  So we are in the process and I’m taking you through step-by-step. So today we are talking about the number of hours that you should be studying.

So your uniqueness, what I have to say about it is you have to come to an understanding of yourself. How do you learn best? So that is what you should do for you.  Because personally I can learn by writing and can learn by listening to an audio.  I have talked about the active and passive forms of learning in the previous episode. 

You can listen to those as well. But you need to appreciate that you need to understand yourself personally what works for you. Do you learn best when you are writing, do you learn best when you just read What is the best method for your studies?

So even till this point look backward in time and see which one did you do that helped you the most or which one gave you the most outcome. Was it when you learned by writing? So when you identify the very process or the very means of study that helped you the most. 

That is why you have to apply within the short period of time that you’re going to learn or no matter how long you are going to learn you have to apply the very effective method of study for you.

The next important thing which so many students ignore is assessing yourself.

An unexamined life is not worth living that is what they say and as a  student, if you never accessed yourself in any way then you are not doing the right thing. You can’t be a smart student without accessing your own performance. So your number of hours is supposed to inform you of the number of hours you should learn.

After you are done with the number of hours.  Let’s say you know that on a regular day you spend two hours learning. And out of those two hours you found out that you spend one hour thirty minutes actually learning and you spend the other thirty minutes doing other things.

Okay so you’ve come to understand that and you’ve realized that for you,  you learn best when you sit down to write or recopy the things that you learn. So that is you. You’ve identified all this. Now the next thing is how do you access yourself to know that you really understand the things that you are learning and you can answer questions like that.

Let me share my personal experience with you. I’m the kind of guy who accesses himself by answering questions.

Again, in a previous episode, we talk about learning by teaching. So that’s one of the ways I access myself by teaching others to find how well I understood the thing that I learned.

Then the other thing is, when I’m learning I set questions. I know the objectives of the things that I’m learning. Then I use the objectives to set questions. With time I take the things that I’ve learnt.

I just go to the questions and try answering them. If I’m able to answer them very well then it means that I understand the things I have learnt and anytime I am asked I can answer those questions.

I mean I can remember the things that I’ve studied and that is when I know that my studies have been effective. If I spend two hours learning by writing and at the end of the day I’m still able to remember the things that I studied then I can say two hours works very fine for me.

So in a day I will spend two hours learning. Another thing that should also inform the number of hours you study is depending on the complexity of a particular course you are studying. 

Because, if today I’m studying mathematics and because it is my favourite I spend less time. You may not be the same as maybe biology which is not my favourite and I have to spend a lot of time on it. 

I’m just using this as an example for you to appreciate it ok. So it is on an individual level. You need to appreciate what works best for you. You need to know as an individual how many hours you actually spend doing the studies itself. Then how do you access yourself? so after assessing yourself what next. 

Let me summarise it. It is a cycle that begins with you trying something out.

So on the regular let say for now you are spending two hours. It means we are going to start the process or the cycle with two hours of study everyday. Then out of these two hours, our interest is how many hours do we actually spend learning.

Thus the actual activity is the learning process itself. How many hours lets say one hour thirty minutes. So I have identified that. Then what is my true study method that works for me? So let’s use an example of studying by writing. I spend one hour thirty minutes a day studying my writing after I’ve established all this.

Then the next thing is how do I access my knowledge. How do I know that the things that I’ve studied are really  working for me? You do that by using any of the two. You can do learning by teaching or the example that I gave that I personally use it. Is that when you are learning you ask questions or you set your own questions and you answer them. 

Or you can decide to go and solve past questions, you can decide to engage people to ask you questions about the topic or even sometimes we learn and give handouts to people and ask them to ask us questions from the things that we’ve learned. So that is a way to access yourself.

After you access, then you can now reorder your things and I’ve also mentioned that the complexity of the course that you’re learning also affects the number of hours you need to spend. By the end, how many hours you decide to study should correspond to the kind of results you’re looking for. 

So after you access yourself you should work in line. Maybe if that number of hours did not give you the kind of results you were expecting, then you probably want to increase the number of hours or change the method of study then you effect all these possible changes. 

It is not an easy thing to just say for you, you  learn two hours a day. You have to start with what you are doing right now to access and modify. That is the only true way to find the best number of hours for you to study.

You are unique in yourself and therefore I’m giving you this framework to help you access yourself anytime any day and know the number of hours that will work best for you. I hope this really helps you in your studies, enjoy your studies and indeed become the smart students that you have to be. 

The post SSP #7: How Many Hours Should I Study In A Day To Become A Smart Student appeared first on Kobiza.

Hello welcome to another episode of the smart student podcast. Once again I’m your host Dr. Ehoneah Obed.

In today’s episode, I am going to talk to you about a particular learning philosophy that I have used for a very long time. 

This learning philosophy is what I have called learning by teaching. So this is a philosophy that I have seen a number of excellent or smart students use to succeed.

Personally, I have used it all the way through my education. I can look back to my days in primary school when I was even using this not knowing how powerful it is. 

Today I’m going to walk you through what it is and how you can use it in your own studies. 

As you know this is the smart student podcast and on this show I train you to become a smart student.

So learning by teaching is one philosophy that every smart student needs to apply. 

Back in senior high school or even at the university level, I realised that almost all the very good students were students who were found teaching others or they were students who other people always engaged to be taught by them.

If you can bear with me, almost every brilliant student in your class right now has some other people looking up to them to teach them.

So that is the philosophy of learning to teach. Before I talk more about it, let me share an experience where I realise the importance of this particular philosophy that I have been using. 

When I was in senior high school, when we vacated I used to go back home. The thing is that I stayed in a different place from where I schooled. 

I had to travel to where I schooled and that is more in ” a town” so I have to go back to the village where I’m coming from. 

The unfortunate thing is that, on vacation I didn’t get anyone to take me through this source of vacation training. 

You know in the cities in Ghana we have a lot of vacation training going on and people are ready to pay and go. 

A lot of my colleagues in that same school were attending some of these vacation classes. 

However, unfortunately for me I didn’t get to attend any of them. Even when you had the money and you needed someone to teach you no one was available to teach you. 

We will come back to school and all these other colleagues of mine have gone to learn new things from their vacation classes and they are coming to show off and the likes. 

So, in my mind I’m like how do I get to learn some of these things that they have gotten the opportunity to learn because they went for classes. 

That is how all began. But, eventually I realised that even some of these people had gone for classes they still did not understand or appreciate some of the things that they’ve been taught in school. 

So eventually they came back to me. God been so good I was one of the  smart students in the class.

They will come back to me to help them understand some of the things that they have done during their vacation classes.

With time I picked up and what I started doing was that, when we come back to school I will 

make sure to find out what they have learnt during their vacation classes then I start learning them. 

Then anytime anybody came to me that they wanted me to help them understand certain things or they wanted me to teach them certain things. 

What I will do is that  I will pretend to know them.

So the only thing I could say is well yeah when you’re ready I’m going to take you through it. 

But unfortunately now I’m engaged so let’s make it somewhere then I’ll give a particular date so that you can meet me for me to teach them.

The truth of the matter is that during the time that they were asking me I probably had no idea what that topic was about. 

But I took it as an opportunity to go and learn it in order to come and teach them. 

So anytime I get these people coming to me to request that I teach them, I take it upon myself to sit down and learn the topic then I come to teach them.

What I realised from the sort of experiences is that any time I come to teach them,  they end up giving me more insight than I actually learnt when I did the learning by myself.

Because they have gone and they’ve been taught by experts and have been taught by people who really understand the concept of the topic in question.

And they have come to me to help them revise in a way. 

So once I start talking about it based on my own understanding of the concept that I have learnt by myself then they start talking about the things that their teachers said.

And I start  picking up things you know I like to ask questions when I’m learning so that’s also another philosophy that maybe in a subsequent episode I’ll delve more into. 

Hence anytime I’m teaching people I already have questions in the back of my mind that I don’t have answers to, especially when I don’t fully understand the concept that I’m teaching them. 

But out of this philosophy, I tell  myself this thing. So pay attention to it and I need you to go with it everywhere you go in the course of your studies and this is why this philosophy of “learning by teaching” is important to me.

It goes this way “you know that you don’t really understand the thing. So when you can not teach someone who doesn’t know it to understand it.

 Let me take it again,all that I’m saying is that, I come to realise that I don’t understand a particular concept after learning that concept.

When I go to teach someone even if the person has not learnt it before and the person can not understand what I’m teaching them then it means that I don’t understand it myself. 

So it is that basic.  Anytime I go to teach someone and the person understands what I am teaching them, it means that I understand it and so I was able to put it in a way for them to understand it. 

So basically how do I test to know if I understand a concept? All I do is to teach someone who does not understand that concept. 

After teaching them, I’ll get to know whether I really understand what I’m doing or not or what I learnt or not. So that is basically how I have used this learning by teaching philosophy and how it has helped me over the years.

And because of that it has turned me into a good teacher and it is even one of the reasons why I am hosting this podcast to share with you some of the knowledge and some of my experiences.

Because at the end of the day when I sit here to share some of these things with you I also get more in-depth knowledge into the things that I talk about with you.

So, if you don’t get anything from this particular episode keep this with you “the more you teach the better to become at what you teach”.

Another important reason why learning by teaching is good for you in your journey or your quest to become a smart student is that it forces you to learn more.

So even though back in senior high as I shared with you I was already learning on my own. I was learning my own stuff. I was learning the things that I was being taught in class. 

But when these colleagues of mine came with different topics that are not learnt before I had to force myself to go and learn new things so this forces you to learn more things.

Even things beyond the scope that you have imagined going to cover. So that is why it is important for you to learn to teach others and also when you are teaching them ask questions and also allow them to ask you questions.

When they ask questions it drives into your understanding of the concepts.

I end up giving myself a number of assignments when I’m teaching people because when they ask me questions that I can’t answer it means I lack understanding with some of the things.

And therefore I have to go back to my drawing table and restructure again or what I mean in simple terms is go back and sit over it and learn it again. Learning by teaching others is also another tool that you can use to access your own understanding. 

So as I have said already, when you sit down to teach somebody and you are able to communicate at their level. They appreciate what you are teaching them then you know very well that you really understand the things that you are teaching.

However sometimes when you start teaching and you find yourself fumbling,you realise that you don’t really understand certain parts of the things that you learnt already.

So in those scenarios you come back to your drawing table to restructure or you come back to learn the very things that you didn’t know. It is a good tool for you to access your progress in anything that you are learning.

How then do you go about to implement this particular philosophy? 

So somebody is saying or you’re probably thinking that no one is coming to me to teach them. How do I make use of it and it’s only the excellent students who will get people coming to them.

If I’m not one of the excellent students in the class how will I get people to come to me?

Here too I will share a secret with you how I went about this particular philosophy back in the university. Even in our first year in university when nobody knew who I was, nobody knew whether I was a good student or not. We were all battling each other here and there. 

I still was able to use this particular philosophy or apply this particular philosophy and it helped me alot and it set me apart from a number of my colleagues.

With time it became easy because now people were running to me to help them study or to help them learn some of the things.

How then do you go about it? Let me be frank with you. You don’t need to be the best student to get people discussing with you or to get people coming to you for you  to teach them.

What I did personally was that, anytime I learnt anything new and I wanted to know whether I really understood what I have learnt I tried engaging people. So in class even in first year I kind of tried studying individuals in the class and knew their level of performance.

Let’s say I tried to assess each student and his or her performance. I know the very good students or I know people who look very good and kind of understand a lot of things. 

So you know the level to place each person. So if I needed to try with anyone who doesn’t understand at all,I will just look at the people that I know who are not so good. I will just go to them and ask them. For instance when I come to you, I ask you about a particular topic. 

Let’s say a topic we were taught in class last two days. So I ask you this thing that this lecturer taught, did you even understand it? Have you gotten time to go over it? I put a question like that if the answer is yes.

I will say oh wow, then “chaley” can you really help me appreciate that thing the lecturer taught. 

So in that state I have given the  person the opportunity to teach me. But at the back of my mind I am using that as an opportunity to lure the person in so that I can teach them what I know.

On the other hand if the person says no I have not gone through it then I say okay I have personally gone through it. So let me share a few of the things that I have learnt from it so that at least even before you get to go through it you will remember a lot of the things.

So either way whether the person has learnt it before or the person has not learnt it before. Is still an opportunity for me to teach them what I have learnt.

I start talking about it if the person’s answer was no they have not learnt it. Then I start talking about it and I encourage them to ask questions. 

And that is what shows me whether I really understand what I am teaching or not. And if they have already learnt it I give them the opportunity to also teach me what they have learnt. 

Because along the line I may end up learning a different perspective that’s their own perspective about what we are talking about. 

It is a very important true that we all can use and appreciate. It is going to help you a lot and as I keep saying,you don’t need to be the most excellent student.

You can engage anybody at all. I have been doing this even to this level such that anytime that I study anything I want to test that I know what I have studied .I talk to people about it.

Even right now out of school the other extra-curricular things I do I like to ask people about it then I share my thoughts with them. 

So let me make a prescription for you. Of course I’m a pharmacist so I’m allowed to say a prescription. 

Let me give you a prescription from this particular philosophy.

Today keep in mind that you’re going to learn and teach what you learn.

So that is the starting point. From this day I’m going to learn and anything I learn I’m going to teach others who may be interested. That is your declaration.

The next thing is for you to look for the kind of people you are going to teach. It doesn’t always have to be people who are below your level in terms of the intelligence or level of performance in class.

They don’t always have to be below your level it could be people above your level because she want to learn from both sides.

Look for the people that you are going to engage. When I was in university, I knew colleagues who were at par with me or who were better than me, who I could go to. So at any point in time when I was having challenges with some of the things I was learning I will go to them and engage them.

This is the understanding I got from this topic that I learnt. What do you think or in your own perspective how do you appreciate or how do you understand the things that the lecturer taught.

So that I learn something new from them too and I end up teaching them the ones that they did not understand using the same philosophy. Okay so you have to also know the pain points of the people that you can go and teach. Then the next thing is “how will you go about it or how will you get them to teach them”.

In the first few years in the university, I happened not to use most of the break times. So when colleagues were gone for break, I would be looking for someone who was sitting alone. Probably then go and engage them on this particular thing. I will just walk to you and say hi and ask how you are doing. I used to check up on a lot of people.

So at a break time I will just go and look for anybody at all who is available and check up on them, how they are doing and everything. I engage them on the “learning by teaching” philosophy even though I don’t make it obvious that that is what I’m doing. 

When I walk to them I just ask how you’re doing and I try to ask you if you have learned a particular thing that I want to teach you. I won’t tell you I want to teach you.  But I ask you whether you understand this and if you do just explain it to me let me get your own perspective about it and I’ll also add my own. 

But if you don’t then it’s an opportunity for me to teach you what I have learnt. So once you pick up who to target. Now you have to also look out when you can get access to this kind of people.

And the other thing that I did was also doing group studies. I have talked about the importance of being in a group or a study group in a previous episode of the smart student podcast.

So you can check that episode out but anytime before these group studies I knew that these are a number of people that I have the opportunity to teach. I will learn a lot and when I go I try my best even when I’m not the one moderating it, I still try my best to teach along the line all the things that I have learnt. 

So “learning by teaching” is a very great philosophy when it comes to becoming a smart student and I recommend it to you. No matter your level of success in terms of academics there’s an opportunity for you.

Everything that you learn, try and go and teach what you learnt. Because the more you teach the better you become. It forces you to learn more and eventually it is also a tool for you to access your own understanding.

Thank you for listening to this particular episode. I hope you are enjoying the series of episodes so far for the smart student podcast and I hope to bring you more of these things to you to make you a smart student. 

Thank you for listening till next week or till the next episode. It’s bye for now

The post SSP #6: “Learning by teaching” philosophy in becoming a smart student appeared first on Kobiza.

Hi! and welcome to another episode of the smart student podcast.  In this episode, I am going to talk to you about the topic ‘why you need to join a study group’. 

In fact, do you really have to join a study group? If you should ask me this question, my straightforward answer to you is yes you have to join a study group.

Before I even talk to you about the reasons why you need to join a study group. Let me, first of all, discuss with you some of the reasons other people have given for not being interested in joining a study group that is to say the disadvantages of being part of a study group.

 I have realized that it usually boils down to about three disadvantages or three concerns that people have when it comes to not joining a study group. The very first one that they have accepted is some sort of time-wasting. 

That is to say, when you spend time with a study group you know usually you join a group that has a number of people even though we recommend not more than seven people in a study group and maximum of seven averagely it should be around five  So five people in a study group. 

So if you have about five people in a group and you are going to discuss something usually almost every one of them has an opinion about what is being discussed. So comparing that to when you are learning alone. 

When you are learning alone, you are the only one so once you understand the concept you move on so you spend less time debating anything because who are you going to debate with. It is just with yourself. Once you understand you move on.

Unlike that of the study group because in the study group you have to discuss with others and at times you can debate over one thing for a very long time so some people who are not interested in debating with people feel that it is a waste of time.  

However, there is an advantage to this particular point which we will look at later so I don’t think that it is a valid point for you to say because of that I’m not going to join a study group. 

The second concern that people have raised is the group members may potentially have a negative impact on you depending on the kind of group that you find yourself in. You see how I ended that part depending on the kind of group that you find yourself in.  

So that should not be a reason why you will not be in a study group but it should be a reason why you have to be in the right study group. 

Alright, you don’t have a choice, you need to be in a study group if you want to be a smart student. Well, there are others who can argue that have never been in a study group before and I’m still a good student. 

Yes, it doesn’t mean that if you don’t join a study group you are not going to be a good student you are going to be a good student you can be an excellent student but I believe so well that joining a study group can add an extra level to your success. 

Who doesn’t want that extra level if you want to go further than where you have reached right now. 

Even if you are the best student in the class, there is definitely another level that you can go to, and joining a good study group or the right study group for that matter can help you achieve that next level that you have been looking for. 

As a smart student one thing that you don’t want to ever do is to be complacent with where you have gotten to there is always room for improvement and if you have not joined a study group joining the right study group  is the approach to reaching that potential that you are 

dreaming of. 

The last reason that some people have given or the last concern that some people have stated for being their reason not to join study groups is that they are some form of distraction in study groups. 

This I can personally attest to that sometimes we go for study group discussions and instead of focusing solely on what we are studying some people may be discussing other things which may distract us and end up not letting us learn what we came to learn.

It is possible however there are ways to go about it and when you look at all these that we are stating as disadvantages. In fact, the benefits that we can talk about when you talk about being part of a study group far outweighs these disadvantages that we’ve mentioned and therefore it is a more reason why you need to join a study group. 

Now let’s take a look at the main reasons why you have to join a study group. Why at all am I recommending that you join one? 

The very first reason that I talk about here is that a study group helps you feel in learning gaps.  This is when you went to class and during the class what the lecturer taught you might have forgotten some aspects of what the lecturer taught. 

It is this study group that is going to help you fill-up the things that you’ve forgotten or even at times a lecturer said something in class that you didn’t fully grab ok when you go for your study group meetings you are at liberty to ask your colleagues especially when we are comparing notes you realize that there are spaces in your notes that you have not even filled because you didn’t hear the exact thing the lecturer said over there so you jump over it. 

You have about five other colleagues with you who would have similar notes and some might probably be able to capture it so you talk to them and you feel in these gaps and where you did not understand too they can help you understand it. 

The next important reason why I recommend that you join a study group is, it helps you build new skills. Being a part of a study group helps you build new skills like personal relationships, interpersonal relationships, and even communications skills. 

It makes you a better person because now you have to learn to relate with people so even if you are the shy type or you are an introvert you still are offered an opportunity to build these skills.

Eventually, in the world of work, these are important skills because you are not going to work alone definitely wherever you work whether you start your own business or you’re employed in a company you are going to work with people and you need to be able to relate with these people at a certain professional level. 

The basis of this kind of relationship is that you can start learning or mastering it right from school when you join study groups.

Another thing or another importance of study groups that we can talk about is, it helps you learn things faster. 

So here let me share my personal experience I happen to be in a study group with about six other colleagues in my class and one thing that I realized was that for a particular course or topic there were so many books and it was going to be very challenging for one person alone to read all the books and get the knowledge about a particular thing in all of the books. 

However, because there were a number of us each one and the kind of books they liked so every one of us was learning something from a different source and when we came together we could easily discuss the things that we have learned. 

That means that I also didn’t need to go read an extra book to get certain information because my colleague was learning it and he or she will share what he has learned or she has learned with me. 

So it makes the learning process faster and I keep saying that as a student one challenge that you have is that you have less time to study. 

A lot of things so being part of the study group will help you catch up with a lot of things. Sometimes they are things that you are yet to learn but when you go somebody has already learned it and they share what they have learned with you.

Another advantage that we can talk about is that a study group gives you an opportunity to teach what you learn. 

So in the subsequent episode of the smart student podcast, I am going to teach you how to actually study and remember the things that you study but this is one thing that you need to know.  One method that you can use is learning to teach others. 

This is an advantage that study groups give you because mostly the study group will choose an individual to head a meeting and the individual is responsible for moderating.   Once you are moderating you are considered to be the leader at that point in time or to be the teacher or lecturer at that point in time.

On the other hand, since your group members are there and you are all going to discuss there is an avenue for you to share with the group what you have learned or your understanding of the various concepts that you are learning.  

So this is an opportunity for you to explain what you learn and I have a philosophy that if you can not explain what you have learned to someone who does not know what you are you have learned for the person to understand it then it means that you yourself do not understand it. 

So let me break it down.  Let’s say I have learned something today and you have never learned it before my philosophy is that if I can not explain to you this particular thing that I have learned that you are yet to learn if I’m not able to explain it such that you understand it then it means that I myself do not understand it. 

Hence I have to go back and sit over it to learn it again.  So this is an advantage that you get for being part of a study group when you go you get the opportunity to teach your colleagues what you have learned and that is where you will be able to know whether you really understand what you learned or not. 

Another important advantage of being a member of a study group is that it serves as a source of motivation. And here I want to say another personal experience with you back in the university in my first year. 

I think it was the 2nd semester when we were going to write our anatomy exams mid-semester exams. I studied a lot. 

However, I was so tired but my head looked almost empty because when I picked the past questions it was as if I couldn’t remember anything that I had learned.  

In fact, around the time we were studying something about the central nervous system and it was very difficult to grab so I felt so frustrated.  I had to stop learning and go and sleep because nothing was entering when I was learning and I wasn’t motivated to learn at all. 

When I  went back to the room to go and sleep, that was when I got a prompt from my study group members that in fact since my group members were meeting I had no option than to join so they were serving as a source of motivation to me and that particular meeting was very fruitful. 

Because when I went to sit behind the paper almost all the questions that I was answering, I was just trying to record the things that we discussed during that meeting. And it helped me a lot. 

I got a very good grade in that particular exam and from that period I have never joked with the group studies, the study meetings, or any time that I have an opportunity to meet with other people to study together. 

Study groups can serve as a source of motivation. This is because sometimes you are down, you don’t feel like going to learn but once there is a meeting and your other colleagues are going you are going to be pulled along for you to join. 

The final advantage that I will talk about is that it helps prevent procrastination. Do you know that as a member of the study group they are going to fix times for you whether you like it or yes you have to be present during the study group meeting? 

This means that you don’t have a choice to procrastinate. If you were alone by yourself you would’ve said okay maybe I feel tired right now so let me try it in the next three hours. Let me take a nap and I will start learning in the next three hours.  

Here your group members have fixed the time and they are on their way to learn so you can not say go and study. I will join you in the next three hours because the meeting may be over by then. 

So it helps you prevent procrastination. Procrastination is one habit that kills a lot of students in terms of their performance. 

If you procrastinate a lot you’re definitely not going to get enough time to study because I keep saying that the greatest challenge you have as a student is that you have less time to learn a lot of things. So the group studies at least will help you in this regard. These are the advantages that have talked about, let me quickly summarise them. 

I said it helps you to feel up the learning gaps if there were any. It helps you build new skills like communication skills and interpersonal relationships. It helps you learn things faster okay then it gives you an opportunity to teach what you have learned and it also serves as a source of motivation and finally helps to prevent procrastination. 

So these are the basic reasons why you need to join a study group and I highly recommend that if you are not yet in one, think about it and if you can’t find want to join you how to start your own study group but make sure you get the right companion for a study group,  get the right people,  people who are serious about their studies okay. 

Your study group should be made up of people who are motivated to study because we said that it should serve as a source of motivation to you therefore you need people who are self-motivated to study who encourage you when you are down. 

They should be people who are time conscious because you have less time to do anything right so you need the right set of people in your group studies. The group studies or your study group will help you achieve more as a smart student knowing it might end up becoming an excellent student. 

Thank you for listening and I’ll meet you in the next episode. Bye

The post SSP #5: Why You Need To Join A Study Group appeared first on Kobiza.

Hi! Welcome to another episode of the smart student podcast.  I am your host Dr. Ehoneah Obed and in today’s episode, I’m going to talk to you about one particular question that I keep being asked almost all the time.

A number of students have asked me this question.  Which study method would be best for me? That is to say, they asked me to recommend a way of study for them that would make them excellent students.

 In this particular episode, I’m going to walk you through how to settle on a study method or a way of study that is going to turn you into a smart student. 

With the study methods,  there are a lot of ways that individuals can use to study to achieve excellence in their academics. 

However, I have put these study methods into two main categories and we are going to discuss those two main categories. These two categories that I have put them in I referred to as the active methods and the positive methods. 

That is to say that when it comes to studying, there are active methods that you apply to study.  Active methods mean that you apply yourself. 

You need to be equally engaged when you are studying okay you have to focus on what you are studying and you have to plug a certain period of time to invest into studying that will become an active method of studying. 

The passive method will refer to as, when you have time or you are doing something else but you can equally be learning at the same time. 

Passive methods unlike active methods do not necessarily need too much of your focus.  I am therefore going to break down these two categories of study methods that I have mentioned so that you appreciate them and know how to use them. 

When it comes to studying methods the problem that a lot of you have and I think I should make clear here before we even talk about the various study methods is that, one in school mostly you have less time to study. So that is your problem or that is the first problem that almost every student has, less time to study. 

Then secondly, it is about your ability to even remember the things that you study. So there are a lot of things that you need to study and you have to be able to recall all these plenty things that you are studying. 

Hence anytime that you are studying you want to make sure that you have made good use of the time that you have.

 So the little time that you have you should be able to learn as much as possible and the lot that you learn within that short period of time that you have you should be able to remember as much as possible. 

How then do you achieve these two things?  How do you spend the little time that you have learning a lot of things and being able to remember all these things especially for the sake of your exams? so that when you write your exams you’ll be able to come out with flying colours. 

Now let’s take active learning.  Most of you or I would say that most students are actually aware of the active study methods. 

When we talk about the active study methods that most students use is just sitting down and reading your books.

So  a lot of you are used to it.  When you go to class you are taught something and you come back home. The only thing you have to do is to sit on your book and read it.

As  you know this is time involving, which means that it is an active method of studying because you need to plug a certain time for yourself and sit over it.   

During that period of time, the only thing that you’re going to be doing is to be studying.  That makes reading as part of your study or reading as a study method of an active method. 

You can’t be reading whilst you are doing something else. You have to put all your focus into the reading in order to absorb much of the things that you are learning.

So a lot of you are used to this but is that the only way to learn? The problem that I have even though I’m yet to talk about the passive learning. 

The problem I have with most students is that you only focus solely on the active methods of study. 

So all you know about is that if I’m going to study then I have to sit down and read a book that is when I can see that I am studying. 

So those of you who are using handout you feel that if you have not sat down to read the handout then you have not studied and that is a very wrong notion and today I want you to correct it. 

For you to be a smart student you need to be able to couple the passive methods of learning with the active method of learning. 

You don’t just have to do one of them and that is what a lot of students are not aware of.  So  in this particular episode of the smart student podcast, I’m bringing you to the awareness stage that’s how you need to engage or you need to learn using both the active and passive method.

For the active methods, I’ve talked about reading. Another active method that not so many people exploit but I know a few students or a few smart students if I should say who will use it, is watching of videos. 

I ever heard someone say that watching of videos is not my thing like for me to be able to study and understand I don’t really use videos.  

And I’m like you don’t use videos is it because you don’t want to use videos or is it because you don’t have access to the videos because those things are two different things.

Every student can make good use of videos. In fact so far as you are able to sit in class and listen to a teacher explain things to you and you are able to understand, then it means you can equally use the videos. 

However, the videos are also some form of active learning. Meaning when you are watching a video about what you are studying you need to focus.

You need to plug a certain period of time for yourself just to focus on that content that you are learning.  

So  if you have not started watching videos yet you need to start watching videos. I mean if you have learned something in class and you want to revise, it is not only about going to read about it you can equally go and download videos on the topic. 

For instance, you can go to YouTube, go to most of the educational channels on YouTube. Khan Academy is a very classic example where you can get a lot of content about the things that you study. 

So you get lectures or video lectures online about the things that you’ve been taught and you get lecturer teaching you just as you would have experience in class.  

Imagine your lecturer is by your side in your room sitting in the comfort of your own room instead of you going to class to sit down.

So it is an opportunity or it is an avenue for you to also learn.  

So we’ve talked about two main active methods. That is learning by reading and learning by watching videos. These two I recommend for you. 

Now let’s look at the passive methods of study so that we can put them together and make headway into becoming a successful student. With the passive methods, I can talk about two different things so let’s take them one by one.

The very first one that I will talk about is listening to audio.  Let me explain why this is a passive method. I can equally be doing anything that I want and at the same time listening to an audio.

So for instance,  let’s assume that I have the audio version of a lecture that I attended.  Instead of plugging a period of time for me to sit down to revise the things that I was taught in class, I can be on the walkway back to my hostel or Hall of Residence whilst listening to what I was taught in class. 

This is a passive form of studies because now the time that I have is time that I’m walking from the lecture hall to my hall of residence and is not a time that I have allocated for studies.

So let me break it down. When we talk about passive learning it is a time that you have not put on your personal timetable for studies. 

You have not plugged any period like that on your study timetable that during this.

 I’m going to be doing that so in fact, you are using time for something else to augment your time for studies.  

Don’t forget that we established that one challenge that more students face is that, you have less time to learn a lot of things. 

Adding on, a passive method of study is very essential. You need to learn and master how to do this.  One way you can do this is to download audio forms of various lectures. 

So if you are taught something today you can equally go to YouTube and download instead of downloading the audio depending on the type of lecture. 

So they are some lectures that you need illustrations in the videos to understand what they are saying. 

However, there are some lectures that you just need audio content so you can download just the audio or you can even download the video and convert the video into audio or extract the audio from the video. So that at any point in time you have the audio to listen to. You could be in your room cooking while still listening to the audio. 

The other thing you do or you can do which is usually not acceptable in every institution is for you to record your lecturer.  

Sometimes without permission, this is illegal so if you need permission then you have to talk to your lecturer in charge. 

However, if you don’t need permission just set a recorder on when the lecture begins because when you do that right after the lectures or any period after the lecture you can sit or you can listen to the recording that you have several times. I used this method of study and it really really helped me a lot.  

Because at any point in time you can playback the audio that you recorded and it helps you remember the things that you were thought. 

Instead of going to find enough time.  I see that a lot of students complain that all the time you are in class and after class I have to come and do homework there is no time for me to even study what I was taught in class so this is the trick. 

You don’t need to actively sit down to study or revise the things you were taught in class before you know that you have learned it you can equally use the passive method by listening to a recorded version of that lecture. 

So you need to listen to the recorded version at your own free time. At a time that you have plug for something else it could be cooking as I keep saying it could be walking by the roadside, it could be even lying on your bed taking a nap or resting and listening to it at the same time.  

So that is the first passive method that I talk about the second passive method that I’m going to talk about is talking to your colleagues or asking your colleagues questions. 

Some of you, you have a lot of assignments to get done unfortunately you don’t have all the time and hence you end up not doing everything because you want to do all of those assignments all by yourself no-no-no. 

Once again the challenge you have as a student is that you have less time to study a lot of things and you have to be smart about it. 

This is why we have the smart student podcast to train you to become a smart student. Take it from me that you need to be smart about the ways you study and this is one way that you can do that.

Instead of spending all the time all by yourself to study or find answers to the assignment that you have been asked to or all the things that you have been asked to study. 

Find out some let your colleagues find out the others then you discuss. For instance, they’ve given us let say about 10 find out instead of myself going to sit down and do the research for all the ten  I can decide with two other colleagues or just one other person. 

That is I’m going to do five of the find out and my other colleague will also do five of the find out that is the other five of the find out and afterward, we’ll meet and discuss.

So I just do my five.  It could even be on a phone call afterwards I call my colleague then we discuss the other five that he or she did and also tell him or her about the five that I did.

The advantage here is that, once you have saved yourself the time of going to search for the other five. 

Then two because you have taken time to explain what you have found to another person it sticks far better than what would have happened if you have just learned it without explaining it to another person. 

 The third advantage is that someone else to also taught you the other five and it’s usually easier to remember what another person taught you. So this will help you remember. 

So in this episode, we talked about the two main categories of study methods that I have put as the active and passive methods of study. 

And with both of them, we realize that you have to combine both if you want to be a smart student and you want to succeed as one.

You have to combine active learning which involves your reading activity or watching videos about the things that you have been taught. 

Then secondly you have to add on a passive method that could be you listening to recorded versions of your lectures or audios of something that you’ve been taught before or you talking to your colleagues or discussing things with your colleagues at your spare time. 

So these two things or these two methods are supposed to be put together. You have to do them together in order to succeed as a student. 

I hope you enjoy this episode and you have learned something new.  I expect you to put this into practice and indeed you will become a smart student eventually.  

I am looking forward to you succeeding in school and this is my way of helping you. 

Thank you for listening to this episode and I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye

The post SSP #4: Which study method should you use? appeared first on Kobiza.

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to another episode of the smart student podcast. Once again, I’m your host, Dr. Ehoneah Obed. And in today’s episode, I am talking about the reason why you need a mentor.

So whether you like it or not every smart student needs a mentor. Yes, take it from me that every smart student needs a mentor. So if you have gone through school without a mentor, then this is the time to rethink it.  And in this episode, I am going to share with you the reason why you need a mentor. 

When I refer to a mentor,  I am referring to anybody at all that you can talk to that can share some insight with you about your academics, how to succeed academically. or can share with you some secrets in the particular level that you find yourself.

So in choosing an academic mentor for that matter you need to choose someone who has been where you are before. What I am trying to say is that you are not going to choose somebody who is in the same class with you as your mentor neither are you necessarily going to choose someone outside the program that you are studying. 

If you want to choose the right kind of mentor that is still referring to an academic mentor then you have to choose someone who is probably a senior colleague of yours who read or read the same program that you are currently reading. 

Here are the reasons why you need a mentor. When I went to the university actually, It was very unfortunate that I did not know anybody in my faculty and  I didn’t know anybody who was reading the Doctor of Pharmacy Program at the time and hence I was on my own for a long time.

It was right before the mid-semester examination I came across someone that I knew was actually in the faculty.  And that is how a mentorship relationship began.

What they do for you is that, since they have been where you are now before,  they know the secrets. Some of them did things that helped them succeed and some also did things that did not go well for them or that affected them negatively. 

So as you get any of these people, having a mentor in this case when I refer to a mentor, it could be a former mentorship program. Some faculty or some schools have established a former mentorship program where they pair you with a senior colleague. 

But whether it is a former or an informal one. You talking to the person and not necessarily establishing it on paper that you are my mentor and I am your mentee. It could be your own friend who is actually ahead of you.  But in your mind, you have to see it as some sort of mentorship.  And these are people that you can walk up to at any point in time to listen to the secrets that they have to share with you. 

The reason why you need a mentor  is that:

The mentor should have secrets to share with you.  And the secret should be centered on two things. That is if the person is a very good student or the person is one who is doing very well academically. Then you want to know what their secrets to their academic excellence are.

So what is making them succeed academically?  Let them share that secret with you and if however, your mentor is one person who is not doing so well in terms of the academic then you want to find out why they are not doing well. 

Some people will give you the advice that you should always choose a mentor who is academically stable, a mentor who is doing so well. Alright but I have a counter view on this. What I advise is that whoever you are choosing should have some secret to share with you and the secret could be secrets towards success or secret towards failures. 

So those who are not doing well, if you have any of them in your mentors or your list of mentors. Then you are going to listen to them and find out what they did that is not making them succeed so that you do not repeat that same mistake.  However for those of them who did things and they are succeeding, you find out what made them successful so that you can also replicate it to become successful. 

Another reason why you need a Mentor is; a mentor is someone that you can ask questions.  So anytime you have any questions bothering you.  You should have somebody that you can walk up to ask those questions. 

And another more important reason why I found it necessary especially when I was in the university was that most of the questions that we used to solve or most of the exams that we used to write were questions that were repeated. The lectures hardly had time to set new questions all over again. 

 Meaning those in their senior years or those in the years ahead of us probably had a similar question during their time. And you know some people are very smart, some have a retentive memory. So they’re able to recall the questions that they were asked. 

So if you have a mentor of that sort you can go and find out.  So for this particular course what do you remember or how should I even prepare for the exams.  You know the lectures or the teachers have their own way of setting questions or a specific side that they pick their questions from.  

For instance, they could be a particular lecturer who has this website where he picks his questions from and you may not know.  

But when you talk to your mentors or any other person who is ahead of you, they may be able to tell you that from the experience they realize that this teacher takes his questions from this particular website. Therefore go to that website.

This is actually from my personal experience and for the number of students that I have mentored over the years. 

What I used to do as a mentor was that, in every year that I went to I make sure I captured and stored most of the questions and study materials are given to us so that I can pass them on to my mentees. I know a lot of people do similar things. 

So you need a mentor in order to have access to insight into how to succeed in the particular semester or year that you find yourself. One more important thing that I have already mentioned is that mentors would be able to give you study materials. 

So if it past questions that you want they should be able to give you. They should be able to point you in the right direction or they should be able to show you where you can get those materials.  

For instance, even if your mentor him or herself does not have the material, should be able to direct you or should be able to talk to some of his colleagues who can have it or get it for you. 

These are more important reasons why you need a mentor. I want to stress on it again it shouldn’t necessarily be a former mentorship relationship. 

If you are a shy person or you are one who does not know anybody in the faculty or in the academic environment that you find yourself here is an opportunity to find anybody at all who is ahead of you but before you choose a particular person as your mentor do some kind of an underground research about the person to know their status whether you want to learn more of their failures or more of their success.

 Whatever it is find out about somebody or get in touch with somebody, talk to them, use them and make them your mentor so that you can ask for information. You need the right information at the right time to succeed. 

You know I told you about my first year before mid-semester, I was studying everything. I just did not know exactly what to do. 

The same way I used to study in the senior high school that was how I was studying but unfortunately my results interns of the quizzes that we were writing were not very good. Until 

I met the mentor that I referred to in this particular episode. Where she was able to tell me how the questions are set, where they set the question, how I am supposed to study, then the whole game change for me. 

I believe that for you to come out as a successful smart student, this is one thing that you have to pay heed to. Get yourself a mentor, talk to them when you need to,  find out all the secrets, talk to as many people as possible. 

It does not just have to be one mentor you can talk to as many people as possible but be wise about it and I know that you succeed in this regard. 

Thank you for listening to this episode and I’ll see you in the next episode.

The post SSP #3: The Reason Why You Need A Mentor appeared first on Kobiza.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Smart Student Podcast. Once again I’m your host, Dr. Ehoneah Obed and in today’s episode, I’m going to talk about “goal setting” for students.

In fact, every student has a goal to succeed in school. I know that you would agree with me that even before you started school, that is one expectation that whoever took you to school as your parents or your guidance had of you. They expect you to succeed in school and come out to work,  make money and live a happy life. 

But something that students get wrong is how they go about setting their goals. So even though you have a goal to succeed, that is a very generic goal. And at the end of the day, you as an individual have to also sit down at any point in your academic life to set goals for yourself.

So specifically I am talking about academic goals. And in this particular episode, I am just going to hammer on some of the issues that l found that students make when they are setting their own goals. And I would lead you in the right direction as to how you are supposed to go about your goal setting.

The first issue that I have found out about students and how they set their goals is that you usually set vague goals. The goals you set usually are too vague to stand that you can not really make meaning out of them.  

Let me explain further, for instance, you want to succeed as we all know that you want to succeed. But if you set a goal like this academic year I want to succeed.  That is a vague goal. What is success to you? Because obviously what is success to you may not be a success to another person.  You know,  so you have to be more specific. 

Have you heard about the word ‘smart goals’? Alright so at any point in time when you are setting goals you aim at setting smart goals.  And SMART is just an acronym so the ‘S’ is for Specific, your goals should be specific.  

The  ‘M’ is for measurable, your goal should be measurable. So at the end of the day, you should be able to measure it. Then the ‘A’ is achievable. Your goal should be achievable. Don’t just set any vague goals at all, make sure your goals are achievable. ‘R’ is realistic so your goal has to be realistic. 

So we have specific, measurable, achievable, realistic then finally we have time-bound. Your goal should be time-bound. So this is how to set a great goal or how to set a goal the right way. 

Let me summarise all these that the acronym smart is telling you to do. When it comes to goal setting, you have to set results-oriented goals. So your goals should be results-oriented. 

For instance, if we are still talking about the goal of succeeding which I said is vague, you can come in and say that okay for looking at my performance last semester I got this grade in this course so this semester, I want to increase it by let’s say 25%. 

Okay so by 25% you are going to be able to calculate what that 25% is. So for instance, if I had a 59% in a particular course and I intend to increase it, I could set a goal that in this particular semester, I want to get a grade of 80 let’s just assume that is my goal.

So in this way, I have made it results-driven. My goal is now specific. I need to achieve 80. In the planning stage, that is also one mistake that people do. You set goals but you do not plan towards achieving the goals.  So at any point in time when you set a goal you have to also draw out a plan to achieve that goal. 

Now my goal is that I want to achieve 80% in this particular course. What is the plan, how do I go about it, that is when you do some sort of analysis of your previous performance. Don’t forget that this is the smart student podcast and here I teach you, students. So follow and appreciate how to become a smart student.

We are still talking about goal setting, you have set a goal to achieve 80% in a particular course but now I am telling you that you need a plan to back up your goal. So the plan could be well, last semester I studied two hours every week for this course and I ended up getting 59%.  So this semester if I want to get the 80% what extra things should I do or how long should I be studying.  

So you look at the things that you did last semester that did not contribute to your success or that actually brought you down. Then you plan towards how you are going to change it for this particular semester. 

Let me repeat that again for you. In the previous semester whatever accounted for the results that you had, it could be what you did or what you did not do. You are going to consider those two arms when you are planning.  What didn’t I do that made me get that result then secondly what did I do that made me get that result. 

Now, I want to change that narrative. I want to get a better result. So what should I do so that I will get the new results I am looking for or what shouldn’t I do so that I will get the new result I am looking for.

Another thing that I encourage people to do is that since you know the people in your class, you know the results you had, you know the results other people had, maybe what you are aiming to get this time around somebody actually got it the previous semester or for some years the person has been getting that results. 

For instance, if you had the 59 that we are using in this example but you know somebody who used to get 80 or who had 80. Then the next thing you want to do in your planning stage is you want to kind of investigate not in the bad way but you want to find out what is making that person achieve that kind of result. Because if you know the past way that someone has used to achieve a result you could possibly try replicating it in your own way in order to also achieve that kind of result.

So that is one way to go about it. You set a goal that should be very specific then you make sure you draw a plan to follow up.  A plan that will help you achieve that goal.

Another thing that you need to note is that your goal should be time-bound. So for instance if it is these results that I want to get at the end of the semester. How long is it going to take me?

So you set the time. Is it before the mid-semester or before mid-semester what should I be doing? 

So put timelines to all the plans that you are putting in place. For instance, if you are saying that this time around you are going to study 8 hours it means now you are given a time. For every bit on your plan to achieve that goal, make sure that you have a time limit. And this could also apply to any sort of goals outside your academics as well. 

Another thing that you need to do as a smart student is to break down your goals into smaller chunks. So you have a very big goal to succeed by getting an 80 in this particular course. 

But now break it down. If you want to get an 80 in this course.  What do the end-of-semester results that you’re going to get entail? So they could be assignments, reports, group work, presentations, etc.

So break them down and try to decipher. For you to get the 80%, how much effort should you put into doing the assignment, how much or what results do you get in the assignment in order for you to get that 80% that you are looking for? 

You have to break down every aspect of the plan or the goal. Break the goal down into smaller chunks because when you do that it becomes way easier to achieve.

For instance, if I decide that in order to achieve my 80%, then it means I have to get a minimum of 8/10 in all my assignments.  So at the end of the day for every particular assignment, I put that in mind and I work towards achieving 8/10. 

That is way simpler than just focusing on the bigger picture that at the end of the day, I have to get 80, I have to get 80 and you don’t work towards it.

Another more important thing is that you have to celebrate the smaller wins.  So now that you are breaking down your goals or the plans into smaller chunks, you are going to definitely be winning with time. Let say you had a goal to succeed this semester as we are using the 80%. 

And obviously, you set a plan to be studying it 2 hours every day. And every day you are able to spend 2 hours studying that particular course. Then you need to celebrate that. Celebration or excitement causes some form of release of some chemicals in us that makes us happy and keeps us doing a lot of things.

We can even talk about the theory that is called the dopamine theory. And that is the same theory that box the fact that you like to be clicking your phone at any notification because when you hear that notification sound there is some kind of release of that dopamine which is excitatory. 

It excites you so you tend to go take your phone and look at it again. So what it means here is that anything that excites you pushes you to do it again. 

Now that you have achieved your smaller goals, you should be excited. You should celebrate it. You should be in the mood. I am happy because I was able to study this course for 2 hours today. If you do that, the body will feel excited about it next time it is still convinced to go and study and that is how to study well. And that is how to achieve the goals that you set 

Thank you for listening to this episode and from now on I expect you to set smart goals.  Set achievable goals and I know that once you’re able to do that you are going to succeed as a smart student.

The post SSP #2: Goal Setting Secrets For Students appeared first on Kobiza.

Show Note

Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of the smart student podcast. I am your host, Dr. Ehoneah Obed, and today in this particular episode I’m talking about the topic: IT BEGINS WITH YOUR MINDSET 

When it comes to succeeding as a student,  one thing that you need to know is that everything begins with your own mindset.

I’ll quote a saying by Henry Ford. Henry Ford said that “whether you think you can or you think you cannot you are right ” what he meant to say was that for those of you or if you currently think that you can’t  succeed in school, then indeed you can’t succeed in school. However, if you think you can succeed in school then definitely you can succeed in school. 

 Once you are in school, there is one reason for which you are in school. To be able to complete school and pass out with flying colours. But if you have made up your mind based on your previous experiences, for instance, if you happen to be in the university right now and because when you were in senior High School you weren’t doing well you think you are not going to do well in the university too.

So you have made up your mind that you’re not going to do well or you never think about the possibility of performing well in the university as well. This does not only apply to people in the university. However, it applies to anyone at all at any level in terms of the academic ladder. 

Whichever side you find yourself, whichever level you find yourself, it’ all begins with your mindset. If you want to become a smart student you have to start thinking like one.  

And the first thing that every smart student ought to do is to have the Can-Do mindset or the mindset of possibility. Now the question I’m throwing out to you is, are you sure you can succeed in school? do you think you can do very well in school? 

If your answer was no previously to such a question you have to begin to change it now because if it  remains no then there is no way you’re going to succeed at the level that we expect you to be succeeding. 

If your answer remains no then you can’t go beyond what you have already experienced or what you are and receding for yourself again so, for now, I want you all to answer yes to this question that it is indeed possible for you to succeed.

 After you have made up your mind that it is possible, that is when you can start working towards achieving it so with  this mindset will look forward to the next episode where I will help you out in the process of becoming a smart student.

But once again it’s all begins with your mindset and therefore have the Can-Do mindset and know that your success in the university or whichever level of your academics is very possible. Thanks for listening to this episode and I’ll meet you in the next episode.

The post SSP #1: IT BEGINS WITH YOUR MINDSET appeared first on Kobiza.