Author of "How to Win at College" and "How to Become a Straight-A Student," Cal Newport '04 shared the insights presented in his books at a lecture in Moore Hall Tuesday evening.
Newport, who began his quest for academic success during his sophomore year at Dartmouth, compiled his most valuable findings into the two books after graduating.
"Maybe brilliant success is not necessarily the result of being a brilliant person, maybe it's an emergent property from a lot of small changes, a lot of small habits," Newport said of the inspiration for researching his first book.
Newport's research proved successful during that academic year, when he achieved a flawless grade point average, which continued through sophomore summer, despite factors that seemed to make academic success during that term unlikely -- including a house off campus with friends and a backyard pong table, a constant stream of beer he said Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity unknowingly supplied and an ongoing battle with mononucleosis.
During his second year of college, Newport began taking note of his study habits and experimented with them to learn what was successful. According to Newport, breaking work down into one to three hour blocks throughout the day proved more efficient than working on everything in the evening.
"When you're working in a big long stretch, your third hour of work is not nearly as productive as your first hour because you get tired, you get bored," Newport said. "But you never get bored in your first hour."
Newport added that biologically, students have more energy during the day than in the evening. He also suggested taking a few minutes at the beginning of each day to plan a specific schedule of which assignments to complete at various times and the most convenient places to work on them in order to maximize efficiency.
When in class, Newport found that transcribing professors' lectures proved unproductive when studying for an exam. Noting that most of what professors say in class is evidence for a grander point, he suggested taking a minute after the lecture to write down the question the professor was trying to answer at the top of the page and the conclusion drawn from the evidence at the bottom.
"You would come away with the information captured in a format which explicitly captured the big ideas as opposed to just the evidence by itself," Newport said. According to Newport, this strategy improved his grades and decreased the time he needed to study for essay exams.
Newport explained a third change he made to his study habits to cut back on the time necessary to write a paper and improve the quality of his writing. Instead of keeping a pile of books related to his paper topic, which he would thumb through as he wrote, Newport photocopied chapters of relevant books along with their title pages, making notes on the top of each packet about what pertinent information was inside and where it could be found.
Among the failed experiments, Newport noted attempts at speed reading -- which thwarted his ability to retain information -- as well as designating study days and free days, which he found exhausting and stressful.
In writing his second book, "How to Become a Straight-A Student," Newport interviewed 50 other straight-A students from prestigious universities to find out what worked for them. Approximately one third of the students interviewed were from Dartmouth.
"I sort of like the philosophy a lot of students have at Dartmouth about balancing work and play," Newport said of the reasoning behind his selection of students to interview.
Advice abstracted from the students includes lecturing information aloud to oneself when studying, rather than reading notes silently. According to Newport, this method helps one absorb the information better and faster. Another suggestion was to find an isolated place to study in order to avoid distractions; as an undergraduate, Newport studied in the Dana Biomedical Library.
"The idea is not that that's a complete program, that you're supposed to do all 75 of those things," Newport said. "What I was trying to do is be provocative and get students thinking about what sort of systems, what sort of changes could I make."
Newport's measure of a student's success was not entirely academic, and he spoke about achieving goals outside of the classroom.
An "inspired period of frenzied effort" does not lead to a great achievement, Newport said -- students looking to achieve a goal must set strategic intermediary steps over time.
"A little bit of planning goes a long way," Newport said. "If you trust that your plan is smart, you don't have to trust that you're going to be smart every day of the term."
