Day 15: Focus x And x Coffee
It's a bit weird for me right now, coming off of what I think will be a pretty bad test and coming into a pretty bad position for the start of the year. I am starting to be unable to function as quickly as I used to be able to, and boy am I feeling it. While, even in IA, I managed to stay ahead in terms of simple speed when I handled tests and all, this semester seems ... different. This blog post is an attempt to diagnose this, as this speed is something I normally bank on so my test scores are not terrible.
1. I am not as sure about my answers as I used to be. As this is all new content for me for the most part, my internal clock is set afire and I am a lot more careful going through tests. This is the most important factor, as it leads to a lot of double-guessing and double-checking when the answer is either wrong or right. What I am curious about is why this phenomenon started to appear this semester unlike last semester, when I was also learning new content more or less. Perhaps this is a side effect of taking so many higher level courses at once?
2. I am also making more mistakes on questions, thus making me need to correct myself more and more. This sort of behavior encourages my desire to double-guess myself on techniques and understanding, leading to problems where I simply have no idea why I am wrong and am scrambling to figure out why when I should be figuring out the next problem and tackling it instead.
3. Besides these, I am also seeing that these problem types are new in the sense that I have little to no intuition on how to tackle them when compared with my peers. This is rough as I need to spend a minute or two identifying the problem type rather than actually solving the problem. It causes me to falter when normally I can simply blast ahead and keep going.
These normally would not be of too much concern, as most of my work tends to be rather computational and I tend to have enough time and enough space to mess around. However, as the workload is much higher this semester, I need to keep my wits about me and manage my time and energy far better than last semester. My best bet to get 100% better is to simply do more practice and actually review my notes by creating study guides, looking up content, reading ahead, etc. In other words, I think its time to start bringing out the big guns and use my favorite part of my personality: the one that likes to condense information to its simplest parts, and take that to the next levels of understanding. If I do not do this, then I fear that my grade will start slipping, and who knows if grad school will be anything after that point? I need to get going and get stuff ready.
1. I am not as sure about my answers as I used to be. As this is all new content for me for the most part, my internal clock is set afire and I am a lot more careful going through tests. This is the most important factor, as it leads to a lot of double-guessing and double-checking when the answer is either wrong or right. What I am curious about is why this phenomenon started to appear this semester unlike last semester, when I was also learning new content more or less. Perhaps this is a side effect of taking so many higher level courses at once?
2. I am also making more mistakes on questions, thus making me need to correct myself more and more. This sort of behavior encourages my desire to double-guess myself on techniques and understanding, leading to problems where I simply have no idea why I am wrong and am scrambling to figure out why when I should be figuring out the next problem and tackling it instead.
3. Besides these, I am also seeing that these problem types are new in the sense that I have little to no intuition on how to tackle them when compared with my peers. This is rough as I need to spend a minute or two identifying the problem type rather than actually solving the problem. It causes me to falter when normally I can simply blast ahead and keep going.
These normally would not be of too much concern, as most of my work tends to be rather computational and I tend to have enough time and enough space to mess around. However, as the workload is much higher this semester, I need to keep my wits about me and manage my time and energy far better than last semester. My best bet to get 100% better is to simply do more practice and actually review my notes by creating study guides, looking up content, reading ahead, etc. In other words, I think its time to start bringing out the big guns and use my favorite part of my personality: the one that likes to condense information to its simplest parts, and take that to the next levels of understanding. If I do not do this, then I fear that my grade will start slipping, and who knows if grad school will be anything after that point? I need to get going and get stuff ready.
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