ADVICE TO MY SON 21: HOW TO BE AN EFFECTIVE STUDENT

Like many of my fellow evangelical Protestants, I tend to take a non-formal approach to prayer. Rather than worry about the location or position of my body, I focus only on the sincerity of my heart. Though this approach has its merits, I’ve learned from my Catholic brothers (and from C. S. Lewis) that what we do with our body does, in fact, affect our prayers. As creatures who are fully physical and fully spiritual (the theologians would say we are enfleshed souls), we cannot help but be influenced by whether our body is sitting, standing, or kneeling in a prayer closet, at a church, or on a couch.

In the same way, my son, the location and position of your body exerts a powerful influence on the quality and effectiveness of your studying. If you do your homework assignment lying on a bed, or reclining on a couch, or sitting on the toilet, you are not going to bring to it a seriousness of mind and purpose. Yes, there are times when it is good to relax and take a casual approach, but when you are reading a great work of literature or a complex textbook, you need to be doing it at your desk with your feet planted firmly on the ground and a pen gripped firmly in your hand.

First, find a place that you associate with intense studying—it could be the desk in your room or a carrel in the library or a study area in the dormitory lounge—and make that your haven for rigorous reading, thinking, and writing. Train your mind and body to eliminate distractions when you are at that particular place so you can focus completely on your work.

Second, find a time of day when you can throw yourself fully into your studying. A good place to find such times is in the dead zone between lunch and your first afternoon class, or between your last class of the day and dinner, or between dinner and your night time activities. These times are very often frittered away on meaningless things. You blink and they are gone, and you have nothing to show for them.

Think how much more you will enjoy your dinner and your dinner conversation if you have just finished one hour of concentrated study. Better yet, think with what guilt-free joy you can say “yes” to an evening invitation to a party if you have been working steadily for the last ninety minutes on an essay.

You need to find a rhythm that balances strenuous effort with a series of small rewards: two hours of reading followed by the watching of a sitcom you enjoy or the playing of a video game; finishing the rough draft of an essay followed by a movie with a friend or a game of ultimate Frisbee; an afternoon of research in the library followed by a leisurely stroll across campus or a run to the ice cream parlor. Just make sure the reward follows the work and not vice versa!

Be good to your body and respect its need for variety. Muscles grow and become toned through a repeated regimen of stretching and releasing. The brain too is a muscle that needs periods of exertion and relaxation. Find that rhythm and that regimen, and you will find that you can both produce fine academic work and enjoy yourself along the way.