Counselors and therapists have noted a link between how people are doing and how they feel about themselves.

• The Challenge
• Piece-Work and Rewards
• Do One More
• Study Methods
• Improved Grades
• It's for Everyone

The Challenge

Five students who volunteered in college counselor Ljungberg Fox's office in Kalamazoo, Mich., shared a common problem: they needed to improve their grades.

"Four years of nagging anxiety combined with either failure or compensating behaviors of cheating, meaningless memorizing (cramming), and disguising ignorance, must have their effect (on students)," Dr. Fox noted.

This study, however, focused specifically on how the students could develop efficient study habits and thereby gain control over how they were doing.

Fox told them that if they followed his instructions, they could become so efficient that they could avoid most evening and weekend studying. All agreed to try and Fox designed a simple program for them to try out.
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Piece-Work and Rewards

The essence of his program was that they should begin by taking the next free time -- even a short period -- and going to a place where they had no habit of "goofing off," such as the library or an empty classroom.

They should sit down and do a specific piece of homework that would take about five minutes. Then they could do whatever they otherwise would have done instead of studying. They should repeat the process frequently -- doing "piece-work" jobs and getting a time reward.

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Do One More

Next, the students would try several pieces of work until they felt like quitting -- and then do one more before they quit to go do something else they would normally be doing. They would do the first set of jobs rapidly and happily, because that was agreed to, and then do the next piece in the same frame of mind because they knew that as soon as the short job was done they could go and play.

Doing the one more piece of work provided an inner reward for perseverance -- rather than their just cutting out when they felt like it.

This reward helped them increase their attention span for the amount of time they could study in an organized, concentrating way.

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Study Methods

Gradually, the students found they could increase the number of study jobs they could do comfortably at one sitting (up to an hour's worth) before taking a short break -- about par. Then he introduced the old standard "SQ3R" study method to them, and they tried that.

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Improved Grades

Fox found that the student who improved the most in grades at the end of the term had gone from a straight F to a straight B average, and the person who improved least had boosted the average by a complete grade. Only one spent weekend time studying (two hours on Saturday mornings) and none spent time studying after dinner (they got the work done during the day).

They were proud of themselves, self-confident and doing better personally -- with their families and friends
-- and academically.

A side experiment with students studying French used a graph to measure (and stimulate) increases in translating speed, with good results.

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It's for Everyone

The "Kalamazoo Connection" applies not just to college students, but to high school students and to adults. It is not a matter of just studying. How you take care of the business of your life affects how you feel about yourself, how you relate to others, and nearly everything that happens in your daily life.


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