The Grade isn’t the Whole Story
There is something oddly powerful about seeing a grade appear on a screen.
For a few seconds, one number can completely change how you feel about the hours you spent studying. A 7 would make me think that whatever I did, it worked. On the other hand, a 4 made me wonder where I went wrong. I didn’t have the answer figured out for a long time, but once I did, everything changed.
A grade can certainly tell you how you performed in the examination. But one thing is for sure is that, it cannot tell you how you learned.
There were exams where I walked out happily, knowing I did well. There were other days where I simply sat at my desk, staring at a question, while I wondered how something I had studied for so long suddenly seemed so foreign. Finally, came the grade. The grade didn’t always match my expectations, or feel worth the long hours I had studied. In the end, all that seemed to matter was the final number that appeared on the screen. The worst part is, somehow that number always ended up becoming my conclusion to the entire process.
When Studying Felt Like Learning
I would often finish studying and feel productive, like I had done a lot. My notes were covered, pages had been read, and important notes were highlighted. It looked a lot like learning, and it felt like it too, but honestly, I don’t think it ever truly was. I would come across something slightly unfamiliar and realise that I wasn’t really able to apply and connect what I studied with what actually mattered.
My problem has never been that I never cared enough. On the contrary, I cared a lot about my grades, maybe even too much. I wanted to do really well, and I wanted to feel prepared, as did a lot of my peers. I just hadn’t realised that being a good student and being a good learner were unbelievably different.
Learning Means More Than Knowing
I think for me, one of the biggest changes was realising that studying and learning go hand in hand, and they need to be done effectively in order to bear its fruits. Reading through a chapter, highlighting important points, or making pages of notes can make you feel pretty productive, but they don’t test whether your brain can actually retrieve or use the information at all, which is the most important thing for your ability to grow on an intellectual level, and in an IB schooling system.
Just knowing a concept isn’t enough. It’s really important to challenge yourself to apply what you know to difficult or unfamiliar situations, and that is what can actually help you learn. If you can only answer a question when it looks exactly like the example you studied, you haven’t really mastered or even effectively learned the concept yet.
Finding What Actually Works for Me
I started making a simple change which totally flipped around how I perceived my learning. Instead of making notes and reading through material like I did before, I started actually solving difficult, application-based questions, and actively working my brain to make the connections in what I learned. Personally, I love to use the Feynman Technique, where I pretend that I am explaining a difficult concept to someone younger than me. Additionally, I’ve found that it really helps me to solve timed practice papers which are just confusing and challenging enough to leave me more than prepared for my exam.
Here’s the catch though, there will never be any kind of perfect study method, because everyone learns differently, and all of us are unique individuals. But here’s my advice, try to experiment with methods that actively make you retrieve, explain and apply what you’ve learned.
Learning How to Learn
Now, my final advice to you. After each exam, it is vital to record how prepared you felt before each exam and how you were actually able to apply your knowledge during the exam. This is really helpful to identify the exact point where you may be facing barriers, which can really help to avoid them in the future.
The goal isn’t to study more. It’s to find the methods that make your brain work harder and, more importantly, work smarter. Here’s what I want you to take away from this article: be a true IB learner, because just knowing concepts isn’t going to help in the real world, but making connections and learning how to apply your knowledge is extremely important.
I still don’t think I’ve figured out exactly how I learn. I don’t think anyone really does. But now, when something doesn’t work, I don’t immediately blame the result. I question the process.
And maybe learning how to learn isn’t about finding the perfect method. It’s about learning enough about yourself to know when to change it.
