How to Become a Straight-A Student - Book Review

Straight A, guaranteed

It may be a bit strange to think why I would pick a book like this and read it after so many years of academia. The following were some of the reasons I could come up with,

• Although I was not a straight-A student at college (a decade earlier), I did score a lot of As (more than 80%). Getting to them was not an easy task, I had to follow a series of shortcuts and techniques. I wanted to check whether some of the techniques appeared in the book or not. The answer was both Yes and No.
• I am a fan of Cal Newport's work especially his books "Deep Work" and "So good they can't ignore you". So I wanted to finish off his other books. This one apparently he had written around the time I had graduated.
• I am already in the process of mentoring a lot of young blood towards altering the way they approach education as I personally feel the education system is royally broke. Newport should definitely have thrown light on that. And I could use some of the points in my mentoring sessions for primary and college students. They are enhanced multi folds after I've read this.
• Education should not be stressful. Instead, it should be fun and adventurous. The starting few pages of the book hooked me up in this direction.
• I wanted to use some of these techniques in my own work environment as my field (or any field for that matter) requires a good amount of constant learning. Newport's cheat sheets at the end of each chapter are a phenomenal source to fuel one's efficiency!

The core concept of this book is the strategy of "divide and rule". No matter the size of the problem you are trying to solve, the assignment you are trying to submit, the book you are trying to complete - this strategy works out perfectly. Especially in the arena of Academics and in Professional projects as well, the strategies laid out in this book could be applied to rip open any problem. Every student aspiring to get to Straight-A with least effort and maximum efficiency should read this.

Cheers!
Braga

My Pilot

Time : 2:18 AM
Date : August 06 2007
Bored after reading my 38th wordlist in GRE Barron's book, i thought i would take a break. Amidst studying the list, lava showed me a post in his blog. It was impressive. Moved by that, i thought why not create my own blog? Had to copy lava's title though ;-). Two full days i did not touch my book. Watched two movies Zodiac and Apocalypto.
Zodiac was a nice movie. Started watching that movie with Jp, Karate and lava at usual 2 AM on saturday night. Jp retired at the start going into deep sleep. Karate was there for some half hour watching the murder scenes alone by some X serial killer he had to retire as well. Our lava murthy tried his max to keep himself up for some 70 mins, but he too cant withstand as it was already 3.10AM and still some 70 more mins were left in the movie!! Everyone were asleep. So i switched over to headphones and finished off that movie. It was good. I've seen many movies of this kind - serial killer based. Some of them include se7en, primal fear, silence of the lambs where the killer will finally be revealed through some three to four twists in the climax. But in this movie which is based on a real incident, the killer is still not found, although they have one suspect name 'leigh', but this case is still open in vallejo, SF. Finally went to bed at 4.45 AM.
Next day woke up at 2PM. Well i did not intend to. A phone call from my relatives made me do it. That full day was spent playing chess. Night ordered pizza and finally felt that two days i did nothing. Out of guilt, started a wordlist and then this blog. Enough for a pilot version. I stop here.