Lecture #2- How to Get Better Grades in Less Time

On September 16 a lecture was given on how to get better grades in less time. I went not only to fulfill this lecture attendance requirement, but also out of curiosity to see if it really would help. He began by showing a short cute film of college students' studying habits and stereotypes about college students. Then he proceeded with having a girl come up and jump as high as she could to mark a paper on the wall. When bribed with money, however, she pushed herself to go that much higher. This was apparently supposed to show how students can exceed with a little incentive. We then tested our current reading speed with a provided text. Mine happened to be around 90 words per minute. He then took us through a process of pushing ourselves to read faster, and by the end of the exercise I was reading over 130 words per minute. The question I had to keep asking myself though was whether I was retaining as much information as I was reading 90 words per minute. Then he made a shocking statement that he could guarantee that we could all get a 3.75-4.00 G.P.A. if we did the following: 1. Practice speed reading for 20 minutes every day 2. Get 8 hours of sleep every night, and finally 3. Review your notes 5 hours after you wrote them. I don't doubt that my G.P.A. would be that high! The reason he can guarantee that is because it's almost impossible for college students to do those three things consistently. I thought he gave great advice, but it just wasn't quite practical, for me anyway. Other parts of the lecture included good foods to eat, advice on exercising, and other tips that would help a student achieve better grades. I thought he did a great job keeping his audience's attention, and he had a great sense of humor. I could also tell that this man enjoyed teaching us about these tips. He presented himself in a very confident, yet humble way which seems to work best for me. The lecture contained a lot of great information, but I'm not so sure, however, if I got much out of the lecture, simply because I knew most of what he talked about, and because not all of the advice is practical for my life.