Best study spots (and techniques) within 10 minutes of Locust Walk
If you are a student at the University of Pennsylvania (most subscribers here), this is exactly the post you need to read going into finals (in just 10 days!)
So I’ll give you two birds for the price of one Deep Dives post. I won’t just tell you the best spots to study on campus. I will also share my takeaways from skimming (not reading) “What the Best College Students Do“ - Ken Bain
Before we dive into specific study spots and study techniques, let’s get some foundational ideas out of the way. Not everyone has been reading obnoxious books on learning, studying, self-improvement, and so on. Feel free to skim/skip the next 2 sections if you’ve heard them before.
The Growth Mindset
A fixed mindset is one that emphasizes fixed attributes like raw intelligence as the driver of results or learning. However, a growth mindset is one that emphasizes effort as the primary driver of learning and improvement. The term, “growth mindset“ was coined by Carol Dweck, whose TED Talk you can find here.
Cultivating a growth mindset means there is always a path to better performance and better grades. Your effort is just sometimes nonlinear in your results.
With a growth mindset, you’re more confident when taking on new challenges. You perform better on exams because you are not quick to give up. People with growth mindsets work longer at problems and therefore succeed more.
Intellectual curiosity
There’s no advantage to belaboring this point right before finals. If anything, it will mostly inform how we go about classes next semester. The key idea is that: learning class material is more efficient when you find it interesting.
I recently read about appreciating the beauty of the challenges we face. I think I initially read it on Twitter but this ending scene (a eulogy) from The Blacklist Season 8 Ep 6 (that’s your spoiler alert) puts it perfectly. I’ve bolded the most relevant parts.
- Glen.
- Right.
Glen was...so many different things.
A son. Civil servant. A proud member of the Spare Me bowling team. Two-time runner-up at the Southern Regional Tournament. And a great... A truly great tracker.
But he was... Ah, brother. He was a lot more than that. Glen was...infuriating. Insulting. Just so maddening. He was a hedonist, a chauvinist, a liar, and a cheat, but there was one thing Glen was not. And that's afraid.
Glen was not afraid. He wasn't afraid of judgment. Of being wrong.
He wasn't afraid of friendship. Or romance. A bad joke. A good laugh. He was never afraid of a good time. Or bad timing. Or consequences. Or of an impossible task. Or any kind of danger. And he certainly wasn't afraid of me. Ever.
No matter how hard or unfair life was to Glen...Glen loved life back.
Intellectual curiosity requires consistent appreciation (love) for the subject matter.
The good and the bad parts. The easy and the challenging parts.
The best study spots
You will know most of the locations I am going to mention. This makes sense. I don’t have some super-specialized knowledge about the best places to study. Rather you can thank other students who sent me their best study spots. I’m just a collator.
Also, I am sharing them because the first takeaway from “What the Best College Students Do“ by Ken Bain is to study in different locations to strengthen memory and recall.
The goal is not just to discover new study spots but to try to rotate between as many as you’re comfortable with.
Huntsman Group Study Rooms (GSR’s): Wharton students can book up to 3 30-minute sessions. Of course, you can book more time if you pool resources.
Studying with others can be very effective. Don’t roll your eyes just yet. Yes, studying in a group doesn’t work for everyone. And even for it to work, you all need to be on the same page about studying. A good motivator is the dread of upcoming finals.
The benefit to studying together is that it looks REALLY bad to be distracted on your phone when you clearly have finals in mere days and everyone else is studying.
Tangen Hall: At the corner of 40th and Sansom streets lies the new Entrepreneurship building (Venture Lab). You might not know it because it’s only been open as of 2021. Even now, you have to apply for access if you’re in Engineering, Wharton, or the Design School (and College, etc? I’m not sure).
Wharton Academic Research Building: This building is also new, but you don’t need to apply. Right outside Upper Quad Gate, this building is visibly new in the interior. It has a nice modern feel but nothing spectacular (just like every option I’ve mentioned). You want to collect as many infinity stones (study spots) as possible and not get bogged down with comparisons.
5th Floor Van Pelt, East Asian Studies room: VP is large and my most prominent memories are in the basement grinding CS homework in my first semester. But there’s a lot to explore on the 6 floors and basement. In fact, another great spot in VP is the 2nd floor Lippincott Financial Lab.
Starbucks in general but specifically at the Bookstore
The M&T Office
Fisher fine arts library
Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics
The best study techniques
I skimmed “What the Best College Students Do“. This means I can only share the high-level takeaways. But this is sufficient. If you’re studying at Penn, you likely already have productive and robust study techniques.
All we need are some reminders.
Learn as though you will teach
When you convince your brain that you will have to teach what you’re learning, your brain says “Hey, this is important. Note it down. Make sure it makes sense“.
Test yourself rather than rehearse
Recalling information is different from identifying information. When we review notes, we refresh our memory and say to our brain “Hey, you should still know this. Remember it.“ But when we test ourselves, like with a practice midterm, we practice the skill of recalling information — which is exactly what you need for exams.
Actively connect new concepts to known concepts
The connection from new concepts to old does not have to be bizarre, but making the connection strengthens our memory.
The bizarreness effect is why this trick for remembering names works: Make an unusual connection between their name and some information you know.
“The name John might make you think of John Lennon, the Gospel of John in the Bible, John F. Kennedy, or it could even simply be that you have a friend or family member that is also named John”
If you enjoy reading my posts, there are two things you should consider.
First, If you feel as though you enjoyed reading a post, especially more than my other posts, the easiest way I can get this feedback is through “likes“. I am at the stage of my writing where I have (mostly) mastered consistency but now I simply want to know what you enjoy reading so I can write more of it.
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