There are two camps when it comes to studying.
I’m doing fine, and I’m lost.
No in between. No nuance. No discussion about how you do what you do. No learning about how you learn. You either have a system that “works” for you or you don’t.
A lot of people find that what got them here can’t get them any further. That’s fine. That’s a good thing. You want to get better. You want to grow. That’s the point.
The problem isn’t that what your doing isn’t working as well it’s that you don’t have another solution. You just keep doing what you’ve been doing even though the feedback is telling you it isn’t working as well.
“I’m still getting good grades,” you say. Maybe you are, but are you up half the night getting those grades? Is your solution to the problem to work harder? Have you stopped to look at WHAT you’re doing?
There may be a good solution right under your nose that you can’t see.
Take this example. A limiting factor for space travel and exploration is speed. There are vast distances to travel between planets and solar systems, and we are limited by the speed we can travel.
The first option, the obvious one, is to build bigger engines out of better stuff that will go faster.
Another option is to think about the problem differently. Space is curved right? Straight lines aren’t as straight as we think. This takes a little work. It’s less obvious of a solution, but it may be a much much better one.
If space is curved the distance between two points may be much shorter than it seems. What if the path you want to travel was shaped like a cone. It dipped way down in the middle. In that case, it would be faster to travel around the perimeter of the base of the cone. Instead of heading straight for your target you’d turn hard left and get there in half the time traveling what seemed like out and around, but got you there much faster.
I know a diagram would help here, but we’re text only at this point.
The point isn’t that you understand the idea, it’s that you understand that there are different ways to look at problems that you’ve never even considered. And the same things but more of them is only one possible solution.
I’d like the opportunity to present you with a few new ideas. Ideas to help you replace working harder and longer with something better (and easier). Ideas you can start using the day you read them.
Get your copy of the November Physician Assistant Exam Newsletter and start moving faster than the speed of light. But do it before Halloween because after that you won’t be able to get this issue.
