updated 1998-02-03

(for tips on improving your grades click here)

Hey, I'm no expert! This is all just my personal speculation.

Smartness - or wisdom - has more to do with understanding than with so-called intelligence. (Intelligence is thought to be related to grades in quizzes, midterms, exams., and IQ.) Understanding is being mature. (When we understand something, we are able to evaluate it in terms of our previous experiences - this can only come with constant re-evaluation of our experiences over the passage of time.)

The problem with the process of maturity is that we continually get tangled up in emotions that interfere with the process. It's our emotions that keep us from being mature. For instance, students often come to me saying that they are confused, lost, helpless, out of touch as though keeping in touch is really someone else's responsibility. This may be especially true in demanding engineering courses, and in heavy semesters.

Here are some simple how-to-unconfuse (get-smart) tips to improve your knowledge in my courses:

1. If things are not going the way you want them to, realise that you can personally take control. The telltale problems include: confusion, lack of focus, pressure, helplessness, disappointment, impatience, insecurity, and also panic, self-pity, anger, jealousy and addictions. You do not need to feel like this. Try following these steps to ensure that you are in control of your emotions rather than the other way around.

2. Maintain a list of the more enjoyable study tasks to do. Check my weekly news on the web, and other faculty's pages. Make a list of the tasks and keep this list, no matter how trivial, with you, e.g. in a pocket notebook. You need to refer to it when things get rushed. It could include reading an article in the library if you enjoy that. Or browsing the technical side of the web, whatever. Maybe writing a home page like I am doing now.

3. When things are getting at you, take a breath. Check items on your list, pick one and do it. If you start to panic, breath in to a count of five or more, breath out fully. Do it again until you feel steadier. Check the more enjoyable tasks on your list, or think about other long-term-important stuff related to your career. The strategy is to interrupt your un-constructive state, relax and counteract it.

4. If you succeed, make a mental note of how you did it for next time.
   Some folks who seem to know about this suggest that there are four steps in understanding something:
   • try to follow through a problem using normal means (read it over and over and over and over until you recognise it all)
   • if it still doesn't work for you, you get frustrated and try something else
   • the answer comes in a flash into your consciousness, perhaps much later, maybe at night
   • you assess your insight and decide if it is good
   Usually what happens is that you juxtapose ideas that you had never before related; divergent thinkers may see things in a different way more readily.

5. You could spend time reading. See e.g. Emotional excellence: a course in self-mastery. by Maya Phillips (Element Books).