What are study skills anyway...
Nov. 30th, 2009 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farnamA very funny conversation with Conor the other day. First, I had to fight him off the computer so I could have some unwind time. Then he was chatting to me, and says 'the thing I love most about my college: I don't have to study any more!'
This from a kid who seems to be doing 3 to 6 hours solid work a day. But it’s all work in front of a computer screen - art, programming and story writing, and therefore he doesn't think of it as 'study', which he clearly associates with being stuck with a pile of text books he doesn't want to read.
As I've already talked about, I'm rewriting the course at the moment in work, and currently focusing on 1st year. One of the biggest questions for me is how to get the new students studying. I want our programme to teach them HOW to study, but much more than that, I somehow want to give them the JOY of study, the pleasure of study, the adventure of study. I want to give them that 1st year feeling I had of 'wow, this is better than drugs, it's about opening your mind to a whole new universe, and yet strangely it’s legal!'
And I'm really enjoying that part of my job, being able to think through the design of a good course that will teach students how to engage. But I still think I'm falling short of the mark. What I'm pulling together will teach them the dry skills of reading the damn books, but I don't think it will give them the magic, that moment Conor expressed after 6 hours hard work of 'I don't have to study, just have fun'.
So, I've been thinking how did I learn this myself, and I know it was a long slow lesson. The funny thing is, as a kid I somehow held the belief that 'ability to study' was a sort of strange attribute that some people just had, and others didn't. Like some people just had blue eyes, and others didn't. There wasn't anything you could do about it. And I very much didn't have it, so I failed my way through school rather spectacularly.
I first developed this idea in primary - we would be told exams were coming up, and to go home and 'study'. I quite honestly didn't know what on earth the teachers meant. So I asked. And I was told 'revise'. Great, that made it very clear. Not! So I asked the other girls in the class, and they said, read back over the things we've done. OK, a little clearer. I took out my maths book, and sat there in total confusion, reading over sums I'd already done, thought 'this is stupid, I'm not learning anything, I've already done this stuff' and gave up. I decided that I just wasn't able to study, it wasn't my fault, I just was that way.
The funny thing is, even then, I did study regularly. I just hadn't any concept that is what I was doing. I studied not because I was a good student, but because I was a bad one. I'd mitch off school at least once or twice a week, because I hated it so much. And with no where to go, and nothing to do, and a major risk of being seen by anyone, I'd hide behind the house and wait out the school day sitting in a freezing cold grey alleyway numbing my bum on the ground. All I'd have with me was my school bag, and the only things in that of any interest were my history and geography school books, so I'd spend the day reading them, along with library books on related subjects.
And each year in primary for at least 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th class, I was sent to the darling 'remedial teacher' every history and geography class, because I was 'special', I was 'dyslexic', I was 'dumb'. And every year the only 2 exams I'd do OK on were history and geography. And the funny thing is, no one asked. No one wondered how for 4 years I hadn't attended a single history or geography class because I was too 'special' to be allowed and still I got As in those subjects while continuing to fail or scrape through everything else. I kept waiting for someone to notice, for someone to acknowledge that the remedial classes I hated weren't working, and to let me back in to the classes that did actually interest me, but no one ever did. And of course, being me, I never once spoke up, or said this to anyone, so I can't entirely blame the parental units, or the idiot teachers. But I also think back to the fact that maybe, If I'd got just a little encouragement for doing well in those subjects then, I'd have realised that I was studying, that’s why I was getting those grades, and that most importantly, I COULD study.
Moving on to secondary school, and the pressure to do this strange, mythical thing called 'study' got so much more intense, but my conviction that it was a born skill I just didn't have deepened. Like so many other dyslexic people, Conor included, secondary was a big improvement. No more remedial torture, and a better range of subjects that actually held some interest for me. For the first time I was encouraged in my love of history, was allowed into the class, and had a history teacher who took me under her wing. As much as I would let her, that is. I also discovered for the first time I was good at maths, but hated the teacher, and went to battle with him. He quickly spotted that I was doing my homework every day during the first 5 minutes of class, and made no efforts to hide the fact that he then deeply resented when only myself and Susan (who I'd be doing the homework with) ever actually got the answers right. Using that age old weapon of 'you haven't shown your written work' he'd fling my work back at me with 'F's' all over it despite my having all correct answers. No learning to study there. This seemed to only prove that it was some other strange thing that the other girls did that I couldn't, with the added mystery that it wasn't even productive because it led to them getting the wrong answers and having to have simple concepts explained over and over again.
3 years in, and the inter cert loomed. This was the last year it was called the 'inter', after that it became the 'junior cert', and is more or less the same as GCSEs, sat at 15 or 16. I was a few months away from being 16. We had 'mock exams' just after Easter, administered and graded by the school teachers, who unsurprisingly all hated me at this stage. Lets face it, I seldom turned up for school, never did my homework, and had several other non-endearing qualities, such as my habit of putting my school tie over my nose and trumpeting like an elephant when class got horribly boring. I failed almost all my mocks. A few D's, mostly E's and F's. But this was a big state exam, and I started to panic. At least I had a few comrades in arms panicking with me, all with similar failure, and they asked me to join their 'study group' after school. What the hell, I thought, it can't help, but it can't hurt either. And Elizabeth generally took the lead while Susan and I giggled and messed. She'd have the past exam papers out, and desperately ask for help because she didn't understand how to answer a question.
'But we did that in class, don't you remember?' I'd ask in frustration, pull out the book, and show her where to find the answer. Then I'd go home at night, put up with the hour long lecture 'where the hell have you been, do you know what time it is?' Could I have told the maternal relative that I was studying after school? Yes. Did it even occur to me to do so? No. I was a teenager, OK, it’s not supposed to make sense. Anyway, off I'd go to my room, and have another look back over the stuff from the books, reassure myself that Susan and I had given Elizabeth the right answer, maybe read on a little more, and go to sleep.
3 short weeks later, we'd gone over each subject once. The exams hit. I sat them. I tried to forget about them. And the inevitable day arrived early in the next school year. Results. They ranged through from D's to A's, but no fails, everything was up at least three grades on the mocks. From NG to D, from D to A. And it struck me. The only difference between the mock and the real exam was that I'd spent one or 2 hours reading over the book. Well, that, and it wasn't graded by a teacher that knew me and hated me. But mostly the couple of hours reading and explaining it to Elizabeth and Susan. Shit, could THAT be what this word 'revision' means? You just read back over the book, focusing on the bits that interest you most? Damn, imagine if I'd looked over more stuff, or looked over it twice instead of once. Then I could have got the D's up to A's too.
So, with leaden feet, having put it off as long as possible, I dragged myself home and reluctantly passed my cert over to the mother. She laughed. She cried. She hugged me. She ran out to the gate and stopped passing strangers. She told poor unfortunate victims that her daughter and just got 5 honors and four passes in her inter cert. She told them how I was dyslexic, and how I'd never done well in school, and had epilepsy, and 'clumsy child syndrome' (that’s called dyspraxia nowadays), and been investigated for autism several times because I was so slow and problematic, but here I was with fantastic inter cert grades. Then she went in and threw herself into a fantastic celebratory dinner for the family, while dashing every chance she got to the phone. Calls were made to relatives of friends of distance acquaintances that night to tell them my grades and why we were having such a big party.
Patronising Bitch! I thought to myself, and wouldn't come out of my room, keeping a pillow over my head so as not to have to overhear the phone calls. No dinner for me that night. Because I'd just discovered what study was, after all that time, and felt so horribly disappointed in myself.
Sometimes in monopoly you get to pass go, collect one hundred, but just couldn't be arsed to keep on playing anyway. Well, I passed go, I collected the inter cert results, but really couldn't be arsed with school any more either. Living in my own bed sit, with my own job in a shop was better, for the next few years. Until, in my late teens, I found myself with a baby to support and a wage that was identical to the lone parents allowance, despite a promotion to junior management, off the shop floor. Suddenly school looked like a good idea again. But could I do it? I really didn't believe so. It was all rather scary.
As it turns out, school wasn't an option. There wasn't a community college in Dublin willing to take a 19 year old with childcare needs. Either they only took mature students, (I had several more years to go to get into that category) or they had no childcare supports. Night classes called. Different culture, different subjects. Psychology, sociology, economics. I loved it. I did really well, and in three years got my diploma. Now I was exactly hitting the right age to be a mature student, and with a diploma colleges were willing to overlook the absence of a leaving cert.
University College Cork offered, and I accepted. With Conor by the hand, and a rucksack with all my worldly possessions on my back, two saucepans dangling from straps bashing off my thighs, I answered the call, and got on the train. It was terrifying. Would I find somewhere to live? I did - a grotty bed-sit after 2 nights in a youth hostel. Would I find a good school for the kid? I did. Sort of. But most of all, would I be able to STUDY? I'd done the diploma after all, but that was all about just reading lots of interesting stuff. Surely college would be different. Surely college would be hard.
Well, I threw myself into it, and really enjoyed it, and submitted my first assignment. An essay. For Social Policy. Title: ‘Is childhood a modern invention?’ The title caught my eye from a long list. I started with Philippe Aries, and worked my way from there, using proximity on the library bookshelf as my main guide. By the time I had every book I could find read I’d also reached a conclusion of sorts – that every historian declares that ‘childhood’ as we know it was culturally invented at the end of the historic period that they studied, regardless of what the time period was, and that this tells us more about the prejudices and assumptions of the historians than anything else. Anyway, essay submitted. Results back. 69%. Huh? What does that mean? One comment scrawled on the cover. ‘Very interesting. Needs proof-read.’ Again, I say ‘huh?’ Very interesting, needs proof-read. What the HELL does that mean? Off I went, after class, to ask the very imposing and intimidating Professor Powell. He looks at me blankly, wondering who the feck I am. He looks at my essay and breaks into a big smile. ‘Oh, yes, I remember this essay very well. I learned A LOT from this essay. It was very in depth and very interesting.’ I will always remember those words. HE learned a lot from MY essay!!! But, but but but… why 69 exactly? I got the answer to that too. It was so full of spelling errors it was hard to follow in places, and would have got a clear first otherwise.
Damn. That didn’t happen on the diploma. Back in those days I’d been told not to worry about the dyslexia, and just get the ideas out of my head and on the paper. So, we are back to having marks taken off for spelling, now, are we? Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, a world of fuck. So, I learned to find proof-readers, and hassle proofreaders to do a good job. I learned to use a computer and tussle with American spell-checkers. Most of all, I learned that hard work followed fun, but it was worth it because it turned 69s into 75s. And with the 75’s came the constant reassurance that I was one of the brightest and the best. Which is kind of nice to be told, and probably the reason I’ve found ways to stay in college environments ever since. Because in my fucked-up life, it’s the only place I have or could ever be that.
Anyway, from that first essay I struggled on, and it wasn’t always fun, it was often hard work, and lonely, and scary. The poverty was often grinding and I learned to count lumps of coal, and that the sting of cold on your back hunched over a computer, when it gets really intense, feels exactly like a burning heat, so you almost expect to see blisters. I learned that when I gave the child all the food I ended up in hospital with nasty infections and high temperatures with the same bug that gave other people a slight cold. I learned that college is not easy; it takes dedication, commitment and major sacrifices, but was worth every one of them.
So, to bring this long, long ramble back on topic, what did I learn specifically that I can now use with my students? I’m not sure I could or should teach then exactly how many lumps of coal can make a small fire for an hour. London is a smokeless zone anyway.
But, some general lessons I can draw out.
Study is hard work, but it is also fun, and the fun needs to come first.
The fun comes from interest, and interest comes from choice. This, I think, is a biggie. When I recollect that first essay on the history of childhood I can still recall the exact appearance of the page, inevitable coffee stain and all, that I chose it from. It was the bottom one. And the question seemed so bizarre and out of left field that it caught my curiosity more than all the others put together. I was having images of Athena being born fully formed from Zeus’s ear and picturing societies without children but men with huge ears, so my sense of humor was enlivened along with my curiosity. Throughout the 3 years I chose my way through college. Set courses in first year, but major choices of assignments and essay and exam topics. Pick one from a list of six, or 2 from 12. At least. After that we also chouse all our subjects. As I recall there was one core research methods course and everything else was from a list of options. In our course currently we offer no choice. All assignments are set, and they are all ‘linked to practice’ in such a way that every assignment is cast in stone, linked to a specific skill in a specific order and the student must relate it directly to their work experience. Zero choice. No room for interpretation, or picking an interesting subject just because it’s sparked some curiosity and running with it. The only thing they get to pick is their dissertation topic, and surprise surprise, they struggle to do that. That’s the first thing that has to change. I want to bring in varied assignment topics in all years, and options of study in years 2 and 3.
If the fun comes from interest, the interest comes from relevance. It’s not surprising that as a mother whose entire non-college life revolved around her child I was interested in a childhood question. It asked something that made sense to ME. From there on, I followed my own life through college, to an extent. In economics I worked on questions on poverty and unemployment traps. No prizes for spotting where that fits in. In psychology I studied learning styles and stress as questions. And learned not only what to answer on the exam question, but real practical stuff for myself. Stress. Peak performance. Panic attacks. Oh, THAT’S why I have them. And THAT’S what I can do if I start to hyperventilate going into an exam hall. None of that was explicitly spelled out for us (don’t ask me why, it was so obvious) but it was all there to be interpreted from the page of the assigned readings. And so I became captivated and kept on studying past the point of the recommended readings because I just wanted to know more. And of course in sociology I took Feminism and made it my own, my identity. That hardly needs spelled out either.
This relevance I think is done slightly better on our course than choice is. But it could still be improved on. No two students are alike, or have the same background. Also, I think we focus so much on what the students do, and make the course relevant to that, we forget to ask who they are, and link it in there.
The fun comes too from the acknowledgment, and there is no getting away from that either. I enjoyed college because I was good at it. The ones who don’t enjoy it so much aren’t so good at it, and that becomes a self-repeating cycle. Scholarship titles motivated me to study and to keep studying. After all, once I’d been officially declared to be a college scholar in first year, I couldn’t let any future exam results slip, could I? That’s easy to do with the students who start out good, and I make deliberate efforts as a teacher to comment every time I see good work, or even improvement in very weak work with students. But how do you cope with the failing student who is not improving? This I haven’t figured out so far.
Finally, the fun comes from identity. I threw myself into being a college student. It became who I was, not just something I did. I fit quickly into a clique in the class. We started off as being the misfits, but quickly become the brainy ones who got all the firsts. We met to study. We met to debate philosophy. We read books that we knew would never come up on the exams, and met in the 24 hour coffee shop to argue all night about them, because we were STUDENTS! And that’s what students did. We had the cheek to compare ourselves to when Marks, Engles and a few others were all studying at the one university in Berlin at the same time, and wondered if they ever got together for these kinds of debates. We didn’t have jobs. We starved in our garrets and become pretentious obnoxious snobby jerks as we held our debating marathons that excluded anyone who wasn’t studying philosophy. We were going to change the world! Seriously, we really, really were. (cringe now) Which probably made us horrible people during that time, but it made us damn good students.
Our students now are on a course that is so practice oriented I worry that they don’t have the chance to develop this identity as students in the first place. We bring them in one/one and a half days a week and disperse them on work placement the rest of the time. So they do not and could not form the kind of study groups I took part in. College doesn’t and can’t become the BIG thing in their lives. And this is one of the reasons I’m in favour of block placements, so that for one semester a year at least they are just around college more, with more days, and more time off during the day to just go for coffee together, and just be students debating lecture content in a coffee shop. Let it become who they ARE. It probably wouldn’t work for all of them, but I’ve a feeling it might work for some of them.
And finally, the fun came from confidence. We knew what we were doing. We knew what was required of us (proper spelling and grammar and all, but at least we KNEW that). We were shown how to reference, and write bibliographies, and find books in the library, and on a deeper level we were shown how to critique rather than just describing a text, we were shown how to read a little, ponder a little, read a little more. We knew that we had to work hard, because we were always pushing at the margins of our current abilities, but never asked to go beyond them. Success was always possible. It was not like school where ‘study skills’ was a magical gift I lacked. It was college, and in college things were clear, and I knew what to do, and that I could do it.
But there is a deeper level to this, for the students confidence in general. Our university, and particularly our programme is known to an extent as the goopy course in the goopy uni for the goopy students. We get the misfits from education and health transferred over to us. We get the students who DON’T go across the river. We get young black working class highly disadvantaged women in large numbers. And they are very bright and determined. They have to be, to get to college at all, but they are never told this. And they think of themselves as the goopy students all the way through, and continue to perform this way. We were the goopy students too, on our course, but somehow early on we just turned that around and became the brainiacs of the class. Because we were given confidence by being shown clearly what to do, had it made interesting, relevant and fun, and were rewarded when we then did well.
Which brings things back full circle. A study skills programme incorporated in an interesting way into first year. But as I was writing it, I was afraid it was a little to dry, too much about the Harvard referencing system, and not enough about why study is better than drugs, welcome to my wonderland.
So, having given up half a day to write this, do I now have a clearer idea of what I want for our current students? Do I have a better idea of HOW to welcome them to my wonderland? The lesson is this, I think. Our revalidated programme is not only going to have my study skills unit, it will also have more choice, more variety in assignments, and a move towards block placements with full blocks in college not on placement. Beyond that I’m still in the dark, but I think that’s a good start. Now, to get it past the ‘team meetings’ where everyone just wants to defend the old way of doing things, just because its what they always did. One Kevlar vest or other protection against regular back stabbing and occasional full frontal assaults needed, please, if anyone has one to spare.
This from a kid who seems to be doing 3 to 6 hours solid work a day. But it’s all work in front of a computer screen - art, programming and story writing, and therefore he doesn't think of it as 'study', which he clearly associates with being stuck with a pile of text books he doesn't want to read.
As I've already talked about, I'm rewriting the course at the moment in work, and currently focusing on 1st year. One of the biggest questions for me is how to get the new students studying. I want our programme to teach them HOW to study, but much more than that, I somehow want to give them the JOY of study, the pleasure of study, the adventure of study. I want to give them that 1st year feeling I had of 'wow, this is better than drugs, it's about opening your mind to a whole new universe, and yet strangely it’s legal!'
And I'm really enjoying that part of my job, being able to think through the design of a good course that will teach students how to engage. But I still think I'm falling short of the mark. What I'm pulling together will teach them the dry skills of reading the damn books, but I don't think it will give them the magic, that moment Conor expressed after 6 hours hard work of 'I don't have to study, just have fun'.
So, I've been thinking how did I learn this myself, and I know it was a long slow lesson. The funny thing is, as a kid I somehow held the belief that 'ability to study' was a sort of strange attribute that some people just had, and others didn't. Like some people just had blue eyes, and others didn't. There wasn't anything you could do about it. And I very much didn't have it, so I failed my way through school rather spectacularly.
I first developed this idea in primary - we would be told exams were coming up, and to go home and 'study'. I quite honestly didn't know what on earth the teachers meant. So I asked. And I was told 'revise'. Great, that made it very clear. Not! So I asked the other girls in the class, and they said, read back over the things we've done. OK, a little clearer. I took out my maths book, and sat there in total confusion, reading over sums I'd already done, thought 'this is stupid, I'm not learning anything, I've already done this stuff' and gave up. I decided that I just wasn't able to study, it wasn't my fault, I just was that way.
The funny thing is, even then, I did study regularly. I just hadn't any concept that is what I was doing. I studied not because I was a good student, but because I was a bad one. I'd mitch off school at least once or twice a week, because I hated it so much. And with no where to go, and nothing to do, and a major risk of being seen by anyone, I'd hide behind the house and wait out the school day sitting in a freezing cold grey alleyway numbing my bum on the ground. All I'd have with me was my school bag, and the only things in that of any interest were my history and geography school books, so I'd spend the day reading them, along with library books on related subjects.
And each year in primary for at least 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th class, I was sent to the darling 'remedial teacher' every history and geography class, because I was 'special', I was 'dyslexic', I was 'dumb'. And every year the only 2 exams I'd do OK on were history and geography. And the funny thing is, no one asked. No one wondered how for 4 years I hadn't attended a single history or geography class because I was too 'special' to be allowed and still I got As in those subjects while continuing to fail or scrape through everything else. I kept waiting for someone to notice, for someone to acknowledge that the remedial classes I hated weren't working, and to let me back in to the classes that did actually interest me, but no one ever did. And of course, being me, I never once spoke up, or said this to anyone, so I can't entirely blame the parental units, or the idiot teachers. But I also think back to the fact that maybe, If I'd got just a little encouragement for doing well in those subjects then, I'd have realised that I was studying, that’s why I was getting those grades, and that most importantly, I COULD study.
Moving on to secondary school, and the pressure to do this strange, mythical thing called 'study' got so much more intense, but my conviction that it was a born skill I just didn't have deepened. Like so many other dyslexic people, Conor included, secondary was a big improvement. No more remedial torture, and a better range of subjects that actually held some interest for me. For the first time I was encouraged in my love of history, was allowed into the class, and had a history teacher who took me under her wing. As much as I would let her, that is. I also discovered for the first time I was good at maths, but hated the teacher, and went to battle with him. He quickly spotted that I was doing my homework every day during the first 5 minutes of class, and made no efforts to hide the fact that he then deeply resented when only myself and Susan (who I'd be doing the homework with) ever actually got the answers right. Using that age old weapon of 'you haven't shown your written work' he'd fling my work back at me with 'F's' all over it despite my having all correct answers. No learning to study there. This seemed to only prove that it was some other strange thing that the other girls did that I couldn't, with the added mystery that it wasn't even productive because it led to them getting the wrong answers and having to have simple concepts explained over and over again.
3 years in, and the inter cert loomed. This was the last year it was called the 'inter', after that it became the 'junior cert', and is more or less the same as GCSEs, sat at 15 or 16. I was a few months away from being 16. We had 'mock exams' just after Easter, administered and graded by the school teachers, who unsurprisingly all hated me at this stage. Lets face it, I seldom turned up for school, never did my homework, and had several other non-endearing qualities, such as my habit of putting my school tie over my nose and trumpeting like an elephant when class got horribly boring. I failed almost all my mocks. A few D's, mostly E's and F's. But this was a big state exam, and I started to panic. At least I had a few comrades in arms panicking with me, all with similar failure, and they asked me to join their 'study group' after school. What the hell, I thought, it can't help, but it can't hurt either. And Elizabeth generally took the lead while Susan and I giggled and messed. She'd have the past exam papers out, and desperately ask for help because she didn't understand how to answer a question.
'But we did that in class, don't you remember?' I'd ask in frustration, pull out the book, and show her where to find the answer. Then I'd go home at night, put up with the hour long lecture 'where the hell have you been, do you know what time it is?' Could I have told the maternal relative that I was studying after school? Yes. Did it even occur to me to do so? No. I was a teenager, OK, it’s not supposed to make sense. Anyway, off I'd go to my room, and have another look back over the stuff from the books, reassure myself that Susan and I had given Elizabeth the right answer, maybe read on a little more, and go to sleep.
3 short weeks later, we'd gone over each subject once. The exams hit. I sat them. I tried to forget about them. And the inevitable day arrived early in the next school year. Results. They ranged through from D's to A's, but no fails, everything was up at least three grades on the mocks. From NG to D, from D to A. And it struck me. The only difference between the mock and the real exam was that I'd spent one or 2 hours reading over the book. Well, that, and it wasn't graded by a teacher that knew me and hated me. But mostly the couple of hours reading and explaining it to Elizabeth and Susan. Shit, could THAT be what this word 'revision' means? You just read back over the book, focusing on the bits that interest you most? Damn, imagine if I'd looked over more stuff, or looked over it twice instead of once. Then I could have got the D's up to A's too.
So, with leaden feet, having put it off as long as possible, I dragged myself home and reluctantly passed my cert over to the mother. She laughed. She cried. She hugged me. She ran out to the gate and stopped passing strangers. She told poor unfortunate victims that her daughter and just got 5 honors and four passes in her inter cert. She told them how I was dyslexic, and how I'd never done well in school, and had epilepsy, and 'clumsy child syndrome' (that’s called dyspraxia nowadays), and been investigated for autism several times because I was so slow and problematic, but here I was with fantastic inter cert grades. Then she went in and threw herself into a fantastic celebratory dinner for the family, while dashing every chance she got to the phone. Calls were made to relatives of friends of distance acquaintances that night to tell them my grades and why we were having such a big party.
Patronising Bitch! I thought to myself, and wouldn't come out of my room, keeping a pillow over my head so as not to have to overhear the phone calls. No dinner for me that night. Because I'd just discovered what study was, after all that time, and felt so horribly disappointed in myself.
Sometimes in monopoly you get to pass go, collect one hundred, but just couldn't be arsed to keep on playing anyway. Well, I passed go, I collected the inter cert results, but really couldn't be arsed with school any more either. Living in my own bed sit, with my own job in a shop was better, for the next few years. Until, in my late teens, I found myself with a baby to support and a wage that was identical to the lone parents allowance, despite a promotion to junior management, off the shop floor. Suddenly school looked like a good idea again. But could I do it? I really didn't believe so. It was all rather scary.
As it turns out, school wasn't an option. There wasn't a community college in Dublin willing to take a 19 year old with childcare needs. Either they only took mature students, (I had several more years to go to get into that category) or they had no childcare supports. Night classes called. Different culture, different subjects. Psychology, sociology, economics. I loved it. I did really well, and in three years got my diploma. Now I was exactly hitting the right age to be a mature student, and with a diploma colleges were willing to overlook the absence of a leaving cert.
University College Cork offered, and I accepted. With Conor by the hand, and a rucksack with all my worldly possessions on my back, two saucepans dangling from straps bashing off my thighs, I answered the call, and got on the train. It was terrifying. Would I find somewhere to live? I did - a grotty bed-sit after 2 nights in a youth hostel. Would I find a good school for the kid? I did. Sort of. But most of all, would I be able to STUDY? I'd done the diploma after all, but that was all about just reading lots of interesting stuff. Surely college would be different. Surely college would be hard.
Well, I threw myself into it, and really enjoyed it, and submitted my first assignment. An essay. For Social Policy. Title: ‘Is childhood a modern invention?’ The title caught my eye from a long list. I started with Philippe Aries, and worked my way from there, using proximity on the library bookshelf as my main guide. By the time I had every book I could find read I’d also reached a conclusion of sorts – that every historian declares that ‘childhood’ as we know it was culturally invented at the end of the historic period that they studied, regardless of what the time period was, and that this tells us more about the prejudices and assumptions of the historians than anything else. Anyway, essay submitted. Results back. 69%. Huh? What does that mean? One comment scrawled on the cover. ‘Very interesting. Needs proof-read.’ Again, I say ‘huh?’ Very interesting, needs proof-read. What the HELL does that mean? Off I went, after class, to ask the very imposing and intimidating Professor Powell. He looks at me blankly, wondering who the feck I am. He looks at my essay and breaks into a big smile. ‘Oh, yes, I remember this essay very well. I learned A LOT from this essay. It was very in depth and very interesting.’ I will always remember those words. HE learned a lot from MY essay!!! But, but but but… why 69 exactly? I got the answer to that too. It was so full of spelling errors it was hard to follow in places, and would have got a clear first otherwise.
Damn. That didn’t happen on the diploma. Back in those days I’d been told not to worry about the dyslexia, and just get the ideas out of my head and on the paper. So, we are back to having marks taken off for spelling, now, are we? Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, a world of fuck. So, I learned to find proof-readers, and hassle proofreaders to do a good job. I learned to use a computer and tussle with American spell-checkers. Most of all, I learned that hard work followed fun, but it was worth it because it turned 69s into 75s. And with the 75’s came the constant reassurance that I was one of the brightest and the best. Which is kind of nice to be told, and probably the reason I’ve found ways to stay in college environments ever since. Because in my fucked-up life, it’s the only place I have or could ever be that.
Anyway, from that first essay I struggled on, and it wasn’t always fun, it was often hard work, and lonely, and scary. The poverty was often grinding and I learned to count lumps of coal, and that the sting of cold on your back hunched over a computer, when it gets really intense, feels exactly like a burning heat, so you almost expect to see blisters. I learned that when I gave the child all the food I ended up in hospital with nasty infections and high temperatures with the same bug that gave other people a slight cold. I learned that college is not easy; it takes dedication, commitment and major sacrifices, but was worth every one of them.
So, to bring this long, long ramble back on topic, what did I learn specifically that I can now use with my students? I’m not sure I could or should teach then exactly how many lumps of coal can make a small fire for an hour. London is a smokeless zone anyway.
But, some general lessons I can draw out.
Study is hard work, but it is also fun, and the fun needs to come first.
The fun comes from interest, and interest comes from choice. This, I think, is a biggie. When I recollect that first essay on the history of childhood I can still recall the exact appearance of the page, inevitable coffee stain and all, that I chose it from. It was the bottom one. And the question seemed so bizarre and out of left field that it caught my curiosity more than all the others put together. I was having images of Athena being born fully formed from Zeus’s ear and picturing societies without children but men with huge ears, so my sense of humor was enlivened along with my curiosity. Throughout the 3 years I chose my way through college. Set courses in first year, but major choices of assignments and essay and exam topics. Pick one from a list of six, or 2 from 12. At least. After that we also chouse all our subjects. As I recall there was one core research methods course and everything else was from a list of options. In our course currently we offer no choice. All assignments are set, and they are all ‘linked to practice’ in such a way that every assignment is cast in stone, linked to a specific skill in a specific order and the student must relate it directly to their work experience. Zero choice. No room for interpretation, or picking an interesting subject just because it’s sparked some curiosity and running with it. The only thing they get to pick is their dissertation topic, and surprise surprise, they struggle to do that. That’s the first thing that has to change. I want to bring in varied assignment topics in all years, and options of study in years 2 and 3.
If the fun comes from interest, the interest comes from relevance. It’s not surprising that as a mother whose entire non-college life revolved around her child I was interested in a childhood question. It asked something that made sense to ME. From there on, I followed my own life through college, to an extent. In economics I worked on questions on poverty and unemployment traps. No prizes for spotting where that fits in. In psychology I studied learning styles and stress as questions. And learned not only what to answer on the exam question, but real practical stuff for myself. Stress. Peak performance. Panic attacks. Oh, THAT’S why I have them. And THAT’S what I can do if I start to hyperventilate going into an exam hall. None of that was explicitly spelled out for us (don’t ask me why, it was so obvious) but it was all there to be interpreted from the page of the assigned readings. And so I became captivated and kept on studying past the point of the recommended readings because I just wanted to know more. And of course in sociology I took Feminism and made it my own, my identity. That hardly needs spelled out either.
This relevance I think is done slightly better on our course than choice is. But it could still be improved on. No two students are alike, or have the same background. Also, I think we focus so much on what the students do, and make the course relevant to that, we forget to ask who they are, and link it in there.
The fun comes too from the acknowledgment, and there is no getting away from that either. I enjoyed college because I was good at it. The ones who don’t enjoy it so much aren’t so good at it, and that becomes a self-repeating cycle. Scholarship titles motivated me to study and to keep studying. After all, once I’d been officially declared to be a college scholar in first year, I couldn’t let any future exam results slip, could I? That’s easy to do with the students who start out good, and I make deliberate efforts as a teacher to comment every time I see good work, or even improvement in very weak work with students. But how do you cope with the failing student who is not improving? This I haven’t figured out so far.
Finally, the fun comes from identity. I threw myself into being a college student. It became who I was, not just something I did. I fit quickly into a clique in the class. We started off as being the misfits, but quickly become the brainy ones who got all the firsts. We met to study. We met to debate philosophy. We read books that we knew would never come up on the exams, and met in the 24 hour coffee shop to argue all night about them, because we were STUDENTS! And that’s what students did. We had the cheek to compare ourselves to when Marks, Engles and a few others were all studying at the one university in Berlin at the same time, and wondered if they ever got together for these kinds of debates. We didn’t have jobs. We starved in our garrets and become pretentious obnoxious snobby jerks as we held our debating marathons that excluded anyone who wasn’t studying philosophy. We were going to change the world! Seriously, we really, really were. (cringe now) Which probably made us horrible people during that time, but it made us damn good students.
Our students now are on a course that is so practice oriented I worry that they don’t have the chance to develop this identity as students in the first place. We bring them in one/one and a half days a week and disperse them on work placement the rest of the time. So they do not and could not form the kind of study groups I took part in. College doesn’t and can’t become the BIG thing in their lives. And this is one of the reasons I’m in favour of block placements, so that for one semester a year at least they are just around college more, with more days, and more time off during the day to just go for coffee together, and just be students debating lecture content in a coffee shop. Let it become who they ARE. It probably wouldn’t work for all of them, but I’ve a feeling it might work for some of them.
And finally, the fun came from confidence. We knew what we were doing. We knew what was required of us (proper spelling and grammar and all, but at least we KNEW that). We were shown how to reference, and write bibliographies, and find books in the library, and on a deeper level we were shown how to critique rather than just describing a text, we were shown how to read a little, ponder a little, read a little more. We knew that we had to work hard, because we were always pushing at the margins of our current abilities, but never asked to go beyond them. Success was always possible. It was not like school where ‘study skills’ was a magical gift I lacked. It was college, and in college things were clear, and I knew what to do, and that I could do it.
But there is a deeper level to this, for the students confidence in general. Our university, and particularly our programme is known to an extent as the goopy course in the goopy uni for the goopy students. We get the misfits from education and health transferred over to us. We get the students who DON’T go across the river. We get young black working class highly disadvantaged women in large numbers. And they are very bright and determined. They have to be, to get to college at all, but they are never told this. And they think of themselves as the goopy students all the way through, and continue to perform this way. We were the goopy students too, on our course, but somehow early on we just turned that around and became the brainiacs of the class. Because we were given confidence by being shown clearly what to do, had it made interesting, relevant and fun, and were rewarded when we then did well.
Which brings things back full circle. A study skills programme incorporated in an interesting way into first year. But as I was writing it, I was afraid it was a little to dry, too much about the Harvard referencing system, and not enough about why study is better than drugs, welcome to my wonderland.
So, having given up half a day to write this, do I now have a clearer idea of what I want for our current students? Do I have a better idea of HOW to welcome them to my wonderland? The lesson is this, I think. Our revalidated programme is not only going to have my study skills unit, it will also have more choice, more variety in assignments, and a move towards block placements with full blocks in college not on placement. Beyond that I’m still in the dark, but I think that’s a good start. Now, to get it past the ‘team meetings’ where everyone just wants to defend the old way of doing things, just because its what they always did. One Kevlar vest or other protection against regular back stabbing and occasional full frontal assaults needed, please, if anyone has one to spare.
