Monday, June 22, 2015

(06-21-15) Note to Self

Today, I was pondering the various study habits students have and the tremendous benefits of taking good notes when learning.  These thoughts came to me while reading the biography Benjamin Banneker: Surveyor, Astronomer, Publisher, and Patriot, written by Charles A. Cerami.  Perusing the story of Benjamin Banneker, America's first professional astronomer, is exhilarating for me because I can certainly relate to his ardent yearning for knowledge and disappointment when other obligations or family matters would interfere with my education.  However, to be frank, that is but one amongst several reasons why I feel like I can relate to his story.  His yearning for knowledge and the retention of it compelled him to write daily about what he had learned that day from the educational books that he would voraciously read. 

I have yet to read the author explicitly say this but I am thoroughly convinced that this man, or more accurately "boy" at the time, took great notes as he studied alone for years without a tutor nor teacher.  Reading about how he was a self-taught boy genius, used his ingenuity to astound the likes of white people that looked down on him and contribute to a nation that relentlessly asserted that people with his skin color were incapable of being smart caused me to think about how people become so intelligent.  In my lifetime, I have learned that most scientists have become so intelligent via the similar study habits and work ethic between them.  Within that work ethic is a consistency of taking good notes when learning or contemplating an idea.  This in turn reminded me of how I struggled in one of my physics classes last semester due to my insufficiently effective study habits. 
As I continue to write this blog post, I must say that I consider words like "good", "smart", "intelligent", etc. to not be sufficiently descriptive words.  Also, I consider them to be frequently, erroneously used in our society despite the simplicity of their definitions and I hold them to merely be relative in comparison to some other person, place, or thing.  So, forgive me for the use of such words without a thorough explanation of what I mean.

A studious person is one who takes notes consistently and using a variety of well-known study habits: reciting the study material verbally, writing down the study material repeatedly, describing the study material in one's own words, and memorizing the study material.  Prior to this year, I did not utilize all of these good study habits.  I recently learned the hard way that it is of the utmost importance that I do so.  I may not aspire to do everything Benjamin Banneker did in his many successful years as a student and professional American scientist, but I do hope to gain the level of ingenuity that he had as a scientist.  I feel like I can certainly have a brain as developed as his if I continue to take good notes regarding my scientific ideas and class lectures as well as employing the various study habits that make studious individuals succeed in academia.

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