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Class Secrets

How pass hard class

How To Pass A Hard Class

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Ken Tangen

You know the difference between an easy and a hard class. There is some variation between people as to which topics are hard but when you expect to be in a class you think will be difficult there are several things you can do.

You already know what to do for an easy class. Go to class, smile at the professor and pretend to pay attention. You also will ask for a detailed study guide, and wait to study until you have to.

In contrast, a hard class requires a different approach. I originally had Biological Psychology in mind but these suggestions apply to any course preconceived as difficult.

Your mileage may vary but in general, in order to master this material, you must invest 300 hours in studying. This does not include class time, labs or study sections. That’s  20 hours per week for 15 weeks of the semester or 33 hours per week for a 9 week quarter.

Clearly, no one has that much time. That’s why you need a plan.

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Building Vocabulary

Vocabulary building

Organize-Process-Test-Repeat

by Ken Tangen

Learning vocabulary is an essential skill for anyone wishing to succeed in higher education. You may not like facts but you have to conquer them. Sometimes there is no option to memorizing the bones of the body, the views of rationalists or the elements of the periodic table. Here is how to do it.

I introduced the OPT-Repeat model for learning vocabulary in Captain Psychology’s How to Learn Vocabulary: Biological Psychology. In this four step model, OPT means to organize, process and test. Repeat means that the process is recursive. You often have to go through the organize-process-test steps repeatedly.

You can use this model for learning any list of terms.

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Freud Report

Freud by Andrew Bosley

An In-Depth Look At Sigmund Freud

by Ken Tangen

Although there is great diversity in approaches to mental health, all forms of counseling ultimately owe their own foundation to the work of Sigmund Freud. Unlike most other theorists, he was not associated with a university, nor was his system based on experimental evidence. Although Freud performed some experimental research early in his career, it had no real relevance to his later theory.

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Wundt Report

Wundt
The Wundt Report

by Ken Tangen

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) may be the underachiever’s patron saint. He didn’t get along with other students, was ridiculed and punished by his teachers, and flunked a year of high school. To say he was shy and lacked initiative is to understate the matter. Wilhelm was afraid of the other village children, and dreaded public events. Even his town’s annual Easter-egg hunt was painful for him because the other children pushed him aside (Hilgard, 1987). Yet from the slow start of a daydreaming child, he became an elected politician, and one of the most prolific and productive scientists of the 19th century. Although Freud and Ribot were hard workers and insightful theoratians, neither can match the systematic precision or sheer volume of work produced by Wundt.

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How To Calculate Statistics

How to calculate statistics

Measurement is the heart of statistics but most people think of it as calculating. So here is how to calculate statistics.

How To Calculate Basics

N & n. Capital N for a population or total number of people in a study. Lowercase n for number of scores in a sample or subsection of a study.

Mini & Max. Min is the smartest or minimum score of a group. Max is the largest or maximum score of a group. Both are useful for finding input errors. If scores are supposed to be from 1 to 5, a maximum value of 44.5 indicates something is wrong.

Totals are just sums. Add up the scores.

Data Matrix is a row-column table of scores.

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