This is the second blogisode of College Chronicles, a blog-based reality show in which we follow real students struggling to balance academics with the rest of their life. Click here for the full series archive.
Meet Welton
Welton is a rising junior at Harvard, where he studies linguistics. He’s no stranger to diligent school work:
“The key to my studying is taking excellent and well-distilled notes from lecture and discussion section, as well as on all the required readings. It’s a ton of work initially, but for me, the payoff is enormous.“
An Old-Fashioned Studier
Welton admits that he often defaults to brute force tactics to make the grade:
“One strategy I use a lot when studying for tests is ‘rote review.’ For two classes last semester…the only way I could think of to tackle this was to sit in the library for about 12 hours each day (with requisite breaks) and go through all my notes, memorizing as much as possible. “
A Full Schedule
Will Welton be able to keep up in the new semester? His time-consuming tactics may have gotten him this far, but this fall his slate of activities includes:
- Editing a quarterly magazine
- Doing research with a professor
- Remaining active in an undergrad political organization
- Begin preparation for the LSATs
“Ideally, I’d be able to get everything done with less caffeine and more free time!”
Stay Tuned…
Stay tuned, this fall, to see how Welton handles this challenge during the first half of his semester, and, also, to discover what will happen after his mid-semester academic intervention.