Follow My Path to Academic Excellence and Make it Yours

There is a well-known aphorism expressed variously that asserts, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” 

Esteemed Stanford University professor Carol Dweck is best known for her work on the growth mindset. It’s defined as believing that you can get good at something, almost anything, through effort, grit, and energy. You are not limited by the capabilities and genetics that you had at birth. There are, of course, some real-world limitations that we all face, such as not having the ability to become an NBA star if you are only 5 feet tall.

If you have a growth mindset and believe that your intellectual growth is only limited by your effort, intention, and dedication, there is almost nothing you can’t achieve.  While the teaching "growth mindsets" to students does have some controversy, it still is widely accepted to be valid.

Being a successful student, particularly at the university level, can be daunting. The majority of us never approximate our full potential as students. I’m here to tell you that I was a lifelong underachiever until I discovered a set of strategies and tactics that unlocked my full academic potential and my ability to be a masterful learner. These tools changed my life forever.

The good news is that are some shortcuts and hacks can make the road to success straighter and shorter.

Do you believe that an average student can rise to the top of their class if taught how to learn, provided they apply that knowledge with grit and persistence? That is precisely what I did. After years of floundering, I learned how to learn. I was fortunate enough to stumble upon some highly effective study techniques based on cognitive psychology. This changed my academic life and my entire future.

Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” 

When I finished high school in 1970, I graduated in the middle of my class. Throughout the K-12 years, I struggled with school. My parents afforded me lots of after-school tutoring. I wasn’t learning disabled. My root problem was that the ways that I studied were ineffective. That led to a lot of frustration. Accumulated frustrations led to poor effort. I didn’t know how to be a good learner even though I have a higher than average ability. I have consistently scored well on standardized exams, but I was never a decent student.

After high school, I attended college for one year, but I had no interest in my studies, I struggled, and then I dropped out with a C+ GPA. I took a few years off and tried a mishmash of life experiments. During that break from college, almost accidentally, I discovered how to learn.

After two years, I resumed college with my newfound skills, and I was able to go from zero to 100 in my academics. On the way to receiving my bachelor degree, I achieved straight A’s, including 11 A-pluses. I was awarded the  A+ grades because my test scores were perfect and far ahead of the other A students in the class. 

I was fortunate to get into medical school, given my blundering freshman year performance. I was only accepted to only one out of the eight med schools that I applied to. I matriculated with a chip on my shoulder, ready to employ my newfound academic superpowers. What followed was miraculous. I was the top scorer on every single exam single during my four years of medical school. From there, there I went on to do a residency in radiology at Duke University. I was appointed the chief resident in my final year at Duke.

What did I change in my approach to studying and learning after I returned to college? How did I transform from being a lifelong struggling student to an academic star?

In the iDoRecall blog, I will teach you the exact strategies I used to transform myself from a lifelong average student into the top student in every one of my classes.‍

My story is particularly inspirational because I’m not the most intelligent person that you’ll ever meet. In fact, the story really isn’t about me. It’s about the study strategies and techniques that I used. They are backed by several evidence-based cognitive psychology principles. 

There is a lot of excellent research on what works and what doesn’t help students and learners achieve success. We already know a lot about how we learn. But the reality is that very few students or even teachers have learned how to learn, and as a result, they don’t utilize these best practices when studying or teaching others.

I’ll close by naming the most powerful tools for being a successful learner. They will be the topic of many of the posts in this blog.

The single most crucial proven technique is retrieval practice, or what many research psychologists call the testing effect. Practicing memory retrieval of the facts, concepts, and bits of knowledge we learn is the most effective tool for remembering those learnings.

We will cover other vital strategies and techniques in the iDoRecall blog, including spaced-repetition, spacing of knowledge acquisition, interleaving, variation, reflection, and generation.

If you follow my prescription, you’ll learn how to learn and you’ll achieve more academic success than you ever dreamed possible.