Reply To: Diagnosed 9 mos ago, still in denial, scared about meds, studying problems… :(

[Patte Rosebank]

University/college involves a completely different learning model than we’re used to, and that’s why so many of us who have done well in school up to that point, crash & burn so spectacularly.

In elementary & high school, you learn by discussing the material in class, and doing assignments, which are handed-in and marked. Discussing the material means you are listening, analyzing, and talking about it. You’re involved with it, so you’re much more likely to absorb it. And the daily discussions, plus the short-deadline assignments, require you to keep up with the material, and give you instant feedback.

In university/college, you’re expected to learn by sitting in a classroom with way more students than you’ve ever had in a class before, and taking notes while the professor talks AT you. You don’t have time to analyze the material, because you’re too busy trying to sort-of transcribe it, so you don’t miss anything.

Unfortunately, it’s a very specialized skill to be able to transcribe live material, without missing anything. Even if you use a Stenotype machine (which is a shorthand typewriter) as they do in courtrooms and live closed-captioning—which NO student can afford to buy or learn to use. Trying to condense live material into notes adds another layer of multitasking.

So, at the end of the lecture, you realize that you have pages of notes, but no real understanding of what the hell you just sat through.

There’s no structure or feedback for months, because you’re given assignments with deadlines that are months away, and near-total freedom to complete them—just as long as they’re handed in by the deadline. Nobody even takes attendance, so if you don’t feel like going to class, you can easily get away with it. No structure at all! Classes like that were completely the wrong fit for me.

The few classes I had that were smaller and followed the high-school model of discussion-based learning, were my favourites, and this was reflected in the high marks I earned in them. Even when the subject wasn’t my favourite (such as “The Works of Samuel Beckett”), the discussion-based model and the enthusiasm of the prof (who worshipped Beckett), held my interest and involved me.

If high schools were required to teach students the special skills to prepare them for the university/college system, and course catalogues were required to state whether a course was taught by lecture or by discussion, so we could choose courses that would fit with our learning style, far fewer of us would crash & burn on arrival.

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