5 ms·

Where did Steve Pavlina go to school? Not sure if some of those triaging strategies would have worked at U Chicago...

mettamage 8y ago
It definitely worked wonders for me (VU University Amsterdam), definitely during my psychology bachelor. I experienced the following conditions. > In every student’s schedule, some classes are critical while others are almost trivial. True, the most funny ones were social psychology and e-business, common sense almost helped you to pass the course. > For some classes attendance was necessary, but for others it didn’t make much difference. True for me as well, reading the book within 30 minutes would save 75 minutes of time since the class would take 105 minutes. > I could simply get the notes from another student if needed, or I could learn the material from the textbook. We had a notes Facebook group and there was a Dutch startup dedicated to summaries. > If it wasn’t necessary for me to attend a particular class (based on my goals for that class) Having a good goal is tantamount if your goal is to learn everything possible, then triaging becomes almost impossible. If your goal is to just get by with the lowest grade possible, then triaging is a must. > If I felt an assignment was lame, pointless, or unnecessarily tedious, and if it wouldn’t have too negative an impact on my grade, I would actually decline to do it. I did this with my thesis, for example (again psychology). I could check for normality and do all the right statistical things, but it would only get me 5% extra points. So I assumed normality and everything else needed for multiple linear regression, tested nothing and reported the results. > Maybe I’d estimate it would take me 20 hours to do an A job but only 10 hours to do a B job. Heh, I did this so many times. I had side jobs, a girlfriend, friends and other activities that I could spend my time on. > I often thought in this Machiavellian fashion back then, and often to my surprise I found that my B-quality papers would come back with As anyway. Oh yes, one time I even published a paper that I rushed through as a homework exercise, because my synthesis of using psychology, neuroscience and game studies for a game studies paper was apparently unparalleled for a master student (the field simply doesn't have many people, so you easily shine). Think about that, I rush a paper writing it in 20 hours and it gets published and nominated for best paper award. Before those 20 hours, I knew nothing of the topic. Triaging was a lot harder for my computer science programs though, it simply has less bullshit, contained more moving parts and has therefore been intellectually tougher. In that sense, if you triage a lot, it is some indication that your university program isn't of high quality, unfortunately (there are quite a bit of exceptions).

It definitely worked wonders for me (VU University Amsterdam), definitely during my psychology bachelor. I experienced the following conditions. > In every student’s schedule, some classes are critical while others are almost trivial. True, the most funny ones were social psychology and e-business, common sense almost helped you to pass the course. > For some classes attendance was necessary, but for others it didn’t make much difference. True for me as well, reading the book within 30 minutes would save 75 minutes of time since the class would take 105 minutes. > I could simply get the notes from another student if needed, or I could learn the material from the textbook. We had a notes Facebook group and there was a Dutch startup dedicated to summaries. > If it wasn’t necessary for me to attend a particular class (based on my goals for that class) Having a good goal is tantamount if your goal is to learn everything possible, then triaging becomes almost impossible. If your goal is to just get by with the lowest grade possible, then triaging is a must. > If I felt an assignment was lame, pointless, or unnecessarily tedious, and if it wouldn’t have too negative an impact on my grade, I would actually decline to do it. I did this with my thesis, for example (again psychology). I could check for normality and do all the right statistical things, but it would only get me 5% extra points. So I assumed normality and everything else needed for multiple linear regression, tested nothing and reported the results. > Maybe I’d estimate it would take me 20 hours to do an A job but only 10 hours to do a B job. Heh, I did this so many times. I had side jobs, a girlfriend, friends and other activities that I could spend my time on. > I often thought in this Machiavellian fashion back then, and often to my surprise I found that my B-quality papers would come back with As anyway. Oh yes, one time I even published a paper that I rushed through as a homework exercise, because my synthesis of using psychology, neuroscience and game studies for a game studies paper was apparently unparalleled for a master student (the field simply doesn't have many people, so you easily shine). Think about that, I rush a paper writing it in 20 hours and it gets published and nominated for best paper award. Before those 20 hours, I knew nothing of the topic. Triaging was a lot harder for my computer science programs though, it simply has less bullshit, contained more moving parts and has therefore been intellectually tougher. In that sense, if you triage a lot, it is some indication that your university program isn't of high quality, unfortunately (there are quite a bit of exceptions).