Yesterday, we talked about transferable skills. One skill you should be trying to build is the ability to simplify. The ability to take complicated subjects and break them down into easy-to-understand components. Being able to do that is one reason why students should always be teaching. You should be teaching people just behind you.It forces you to think about simplifying.
I was listening to Scott Adams (author, cartoonist, and guy who sees the world a little different than most of us), and he was talking about the ability to simplify. He was talking about what a valuable skill it is, but even more than that, he was talking about what the ability to simplify really is. If you can simplify, what you are doing is “seeing” what’s important. You have the ability to let all the tumbleweeds go by and grasp only the key ideas.
That’s a skill you should always be working on. Lucky for you, it’s one of the things I’m secretly teaching in the December issue of Physician Assistant Exam Scholar’s Newsletter. I say secretly because not everyone will see it. Not everyone will see the most important thing going on in this issue. The main topic, the one in the headline, will be pulmonology. The December issue is going to use pulmonology as a backdrop to teach some extremely important test taking skills, and that’s what will be obvious.
The information on pulmonology and the overt test taking skills I teach will be well worth the price of admission. But when people email me and tell me how I “contributed to their success,”when they email me and tell me the newsletter is “pure gold,” it’s that second level that they’re talking about. It’s the skills and philosophies that are the foundation and are transferable. Learning another pulmonology term and how to remember it is valuable. Learning to the underlying philosophy in the December issue will improve your scores, but it will also change your future.
Physician Assistant Exam Scholars
Brian Wallace