Study Smarts: How to Learn More in Less Time

2. Eliminate Brain Interference

46 STUDY SMARTS REMEMBERING TIP 2 Eliminate Brain Interference The brain is like a radio. Some people come equipped with automatic frequency control. They're the kind who can study in the middle of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Most of us aren't that lucky. We can't turn a switch in our heads and automatically tune out interference. We've got to work hard to concentrate. Our best recourse is to eliminate as many distractions as we can in advance. Most distractions come in through our senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. Eliminating most of them is easy if you think about it. If you study in your room, turn away from the window and close the door. Face a blank wall for best results. If you study in the library or student union, find a spot where people aren't constantly walking past the edge of your vision. Stay far from the smells of food, too. If you're a nibbler, keep pretzels or small candies close at hand. That should eliminate interfering urges to think about what to eat. Try to avoid nervous habits like chewing fingernails or twisting your hair, too, or you'll end up thinking about the llair and nails and not about the subject you're studying. One good way to kick nervous fiddling is to keep a pencil or pen in hand and think about what notes you ought to take. Everyone knows that the sounds of whispering friends are as distracting as a loud party. But few of us like to admit that background music is also interference. Dr. Mack T. Henderson proved through research that college people who usually study with music in the background study better when it's turned off. If you must have noise in your background , try a tape or record of white noise. Remembering Tips 47 You can eliminate some more brain interference by organizing so that you have your study tools ready in advance. If you stop in the midst of working a sample math problem to figure out where you put the calculator, it's going to take several minutes after you find it to get your mind back in the right memory groove for math. Some brain interference is caused by irrelevant things that we're trying to hold in our memories: test dates, deadlines, the time of the dance Saturday evening. Get things like this out of your head and onto paper so you won't have to fight against their interference. Keep a written calendar of deadlines , appointments, coming events, birthdays, and such. Tack up reminder lists of errands to do, letters to write, phone calls to make, questions you want to ask friends and teachers. Keep trivia like this on paper and it won't cause brain interference. Emotional interference is hardest to counteract. If you're in love, you're going to find it hard to study. If you're in trouble, it'll be hard to keep other facts and ideas in your head. If you're angry at a teacher's unfairness, even that can interfere with remembering. Love is a great feeling you won't want to get rid of, but take some steps to solve your troubles and vent your angers so you can get them off your mind. If nothing else helps, see a school psychologist. The only emotion that seems to help you remember better is anxiety. If you're anxious about passing a course, that could motivate you to remember better. But if it's a medical lab test you're anxious about, it's the wrong kind of anxiety when you're studying French. Only tension about the French course will help you remember French. Brain interference also comes when you study similar subjects one after the other. That kind of interference can work backward and forward. If you study the declension for go in French and then, soon after, in Italian, learning the Italian verb forms can wipe out part of your memory of the French forms. Or what you learned in French can interfere now with remembering the Italian. 48 STUDY SMARTS The more similar the kinds of learning taking place, the more back-and-forth interference you'll get. So when you make up your study schedule, separate two language courses with the study of history or chemistry, and separate physics and calculus with...