Your Academic Toolbox

In their work, carpenters and woodworkers complete various tasks like measuring, cutting, and joining as they construct houses and furniture. In order to do these tasks, they employ tools like measuring tapes, saws, chisels, screwdrivers, etc.

Similarly, students in school are asked to complete various tasks, and to do so they employ a set of academic tools—certain skills, strategies, and techniques—that make the tasks possible.

And just as a good carpenter matches the right tool to the job at hand and occasionally must repair or sharpen a tool, acquire a brand new tool, or improve their technique with a tool, so too does a wise student keep their academic toolbox filled with ever more refined and useful tools to continue to succeed in school.

So what are these tasks and what are these tools that make up one's academic toolbox? Let's discuss four broad categories, which I call importing, processing, exporting, and self-regulation.

Importing

The first big category of academic task you are typically asked to do is to transfer information from the world around you to inside of you—in other words you are asked to "import" information.

Importing information is the foundation of most college classes. In history, you learn about the important people, places, and events that led up to the world we inhabit today; in anatomy, you learn the names, locations, and functions of parts of the human body. Almost every class you take will ask you to import a huge amount of information into your brain, so your importing tools need to be well-tuned and efficient in order for you to succeed.

Here are some key importing methods you may be required to use for your classes:

• Reading: You're doing it right now! In a narrow sense, reading is moving your eyes along a printed page, taking in the meaning the words convey. In a broader sense, however, reading doesn't have to be strictly visual (think braille and audiobooks), strictly print (ebooks, websites), or even strictly words (sheet music, graphic novels, diagrams).
• Listening: Information comes in through your ears as well, such as when you listen to a classroom lecture or to a discussion among classmates. As with reading, though, listening isn't strictly auditory (is watching a recorded lecture on mute with the captions on reading or listening?).
• Observing: Your instructor may demonstrate a procedure in class (solving an equation or taking a patient's vitals, say), and you are expected to import the information by closely observing the actions they perform.
• Using other senses: Importing isn't only done through our ears and eyes, though those are often the senses we rely on most. We also import information by smelling, tasting, and touching. For example, I once took a geology class wherein I learned to identify some rocks and minerals (specifically salts) by licking them.°
• Measuring: Another method of importing information, especially in the sciences, is by taking measurements of things—the growth of a plant, the flex of a mechanical component, the size of an angle, the layout of a room. Measuring allows us to add some objectivity to how and what we import because it gives us consistent units to compare with.

As you can see, there's a lot of overlap among these importing methods, and you are often using several at the same time, both inside and outside of class, in order to acquire the knowledge you need. Sometimes you are importing processed information (as from textbooks and lectures), and other times you are importing raw data (such as when taking measurements or making observations).

There are many skills, strategies, and techniques we can use as tools to import information successfully. I'm talking about things like taking notes in class, annotating a text as you read, drilling with flash cards, practicing a procedure (such as doing math problems or performing CPR), memorizing a passage, and many more. Some of these might come naturally to you, and others may require more deliberate effort to make work.

Processing

Once we've imported information into our brains, college classes generally expect us to do something with that information. You aren't just a bank account wherein information is deposited and later withdrawn unchanged—you must process the information in various ways as part of your education. Here are some of the most common processing tasks students are asked to perform:

• Comprehending is the most basic level of processing, meaning you retain and understand the information you've imported.
• Applying is when we use the knowledge we've acquired to perform tasks, such as when a math major solves new equations using the procedures learned in class or a computer science major tinkers with code to put programming principles into practice.
• Analyzing is when we methodically and closely examine how something is constructed or structured or how it works. For example, a music major may analyze a famous composition, a business major may analyze a case study of how a company overcame a difficult problem, and an engineering major may analyze the structure and construction of a bridge.
• Evaluating is when we assess the quality of something, and it often follows and is informed by analysis. For example, students in a writing class may peer review each other's essay drafts, offering advice on what is strong and what can be improved in classmates' writing.
• Synthesizing is when we make connections between disparate things we've imported to create something new. For example, a pre-med student may combine what they've learned about human anatomy, disease pathology, and patient care to diagnose an illness and create a treatment plan for a fictitious patient. Or a history major may draw on primary sources (journals and letters) as well as secondary sources (scholarly articles and books) to argue for a new interpretation of the causes and effects of a past event.

The overarching term you'll often hear in college to describe the set of tools used to perform these processing actions is critical thinking, and it's one of the things that best distinguishes a college education from vocational training or other types of post–high school programs. Someone who is merely trained is usually expected to perform tasks in a repetitive and predictable manner, while someone who is a critical thinker can be relied on to innovate, to respond to unexpected situations in creative and constructive ways, to question the status quo and work to improve outcomes, etc.°

But more concretely, critical thinking is enabled and facilitated by specific strategies like writing out or diagramming our ideas, talking things through with other people, taking a walk and letting our minds wander, engaging in brainstorming sessions, etc.

Exporting

Once we've imported and processed things, the final step is usually to export information back out into the world—this is often where grades come into the picture. In order to assess how much and how well we learned, college classes may ask us to demonstrate our learning in one or more of the following ways:

• Testing and quizzing are, to many, the most stressful form of exporting. We demonstrate what we learned by answering questions and solving problems.
• Writing asks us to export information in the form of sentences and paragraphs or some other textual format. We may be asked to write short answers on a test or longer, more complex and developed essays to convey our ideas in a more formal and developed way.
• Presenting is similar to writing, but we deliver our words orally—usually in-person and in real-time and often with visual aids. For example, an advertising major may present a pitch for an ad campaign they developed for a sample client.
• Demonstrating/Performing: Some disciplines require students to show their learning in a practical demonstration or performance, as when a nursing student takes a practice patient's vitals or a music student gives a concert.
• Discussing is a way that teachers can more informally check student learning in class, by asking questions and inviting students to push the resulting conversation along.
• Teaching/Tutoring: Not all exporting happens in class or for a grade. Students who excel at a class can become tutors and teaching assistants, helping other students more effectively import and process information.

I wouldn't be surprised if reading that list made your skin crawl a bit. Exporting tasks, for whatever reason, are the focus of a lot of student anxiety and frustration with school, as evidenced by how many terms we have to describe how they can go wrong: test anxiety, writer's block, stage fright, etc.

You've probably developed a bunch of tools to help you succeed at things like taking tests and writing essays—specific strategies and procedures you work through to ensure a successful outcome. Or, alternatively, you might feel that the tools you have available to you aren't enough to guarantee success and are looking for more or better tools as a result (we'll talk about that more below).

One thing I'd like to point out here is that many of the exporting tasks are actually tools for completing the processing tasks mentioned above. Writing, for example, is a key tool we often use to help ourselves think through and process what we are learning—in other words, writing is both a process and a product. Similarly, the processing tasks identified above are also the tools we use to complete the importing tasks above them: analyzing and evaluating information is a great way to ensure that you've fully imported what a class wants you to know.

In other words, importing, processing, and exporting aren't really separate, discrete actions. We are really doing them all together, all the time. But it can be helpful to separate them out in order to consider where your own strengths and weaknesses lie.

Self-Regulation

There's one final category of tasks and tools that exist outside of the importing–processing–exporting workflow but that affects all of them. I'm referring to your ability to regulate your behavior and environment so that you can perform the other academic skills effectively. I call this category "self-regulation," and here are some the places it pops up:

• Time Management refers to your ability to effectively arrange your minutes, hours, days, and weeks in order to be able to spend adequate time and energy on school.
• Goal-Setting is your ability to define short- and long-term goals and plan to achieve them.
• Establishing Routines is your ability to apply a regular rhythm to your days and weeks, which can minimize the effort it takes to manage your time effectively and avoid procrastinating.
• Sleep Habits are often the first casualty of the college student who is packing too much stuff into too little time, and the effects can ripple out to all other areas of self-regulation.
• Attention Span and Focus refer to how long you can stay engaged with a topic or task and how intensively you can concentrate on it. For most people, these are inversely proportional: the stronger your focus, the shorter you can maintain your attention, and vice versa.
• Managing your Environment is your ability to put yourself in surroundings conducive to your learning. Some people need silence; others need white noise or music. Some need a desk and chair; others work best in bed or outside. Some

Students just starting college often struggle with self-regulation because they are experiencing a greater degree of freedom and a higher level of responsibility than they ever have before in their lives. High school generally requires students to be supervised in class for roughly 35 hours a week and assigns a limited amount of homework outside of those hours. College, on the other hand, is largely the inverse of that, with an average of 15 hours of class a week and roughly twice that in out-of-class work to do to keep up. Adding to that the fact that many students are living away from home for the first time (with no curfew or parental oversight) and they might be holding down a job to make ends meet, and it's no wonder that self-regulation can be a struggle.°

There are countless self-regulation tips, tricks, and strategies we can have in our toolboxes, things like keeping a calendar or to-do lists, exercising regularly, scheduling study time in shorter or longer chunks, choosing where to do our schoolwork and with whom we do it, etc.

The important thing to remember, however, is that with self-regulation, the tools that work for each of us are highly individual. For example, while one person may find the quiet of the library a perfect setting in which to focus, another may require the crowd noise of a coffee shop. While one person may benefit from planning out every day to the minute, another may thrive more with only a list of rough priorities that they can fit in as the day develops.

Conclusion

The thing about a toolbox is that it isn't static—you can remove tools that aren't working for you, find new tools to do old jobs in new ways, and sharpen tools so that they are better able to do what you need them to do.

There's a saying that "it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools." What it means is that, if a craftsperson isn't able to adequately complete a job, they shouldn't blame their tools for the failure but instead the skill and effort they applied to the task. After all, a good craftsperson would acquire or hone whatever tool is necessary to get the job done.

I think it's largely the same for us as students. We are often tempted to not take responsibility for the effort we have to put in to develop the tools we need to succeed. My advice, therefore, is to be proactive.

Figure out where your strengths and weaknesses are and make a plan to improve. Don't just wait for a college class to give you what you need. Attend your instructors' office hours and seek their advice. Find out what kinds of tutoring, coaching, and mentoring your campus offers. Explore the resources here on Grover's English and on other sites. Check out books and articles that are focused on helping you be a better student.

Build the academic toolbox you've always wanted to have.