University IS a great place to meet eccentrics. You expect as much when you sign up for it in your CAO form. Some students are quite blatant in playing up their quirks: they're the ones who want to become college "characters". But if you want to witness some real eccentricity, watch the way people study in the privacy of their own flats. One friend of mine could only revise when wearing her pyjamas. Another liked to reward himself after a long night's cramming by having a Cornetto for breakfast. Most memorable of all was the housemate who, in the last few days before her exam, would take to studying in the shower room, with only a quilt and a teapot for company.
I knew this book would bring back memories too traumatic to relive. Screwing up the courage to start it, I was displaying the classic symptoms of the poor student: lack of motivation, negative preconceptions about the study matter and a new-found interest in the length of my toenails.
However, Aidan Moran's book, Managing Your Own Learning at University, is more readable than you might expect. He wants to give his readers "driving lessons" in learning. Most students, he argues, are prepared for the intellectual demands of university, but few are able to achieve an adequate level of self-discipline in their new environment. Anyone averse to having their intelligence slighted should avoid this book. At the beginning of the section on "reading and summarising skills", Moran announces: "The purpose of this chapter is to show you how to think while you read." He is also blunt in his exposure of bad study habits: "Having a photocopy of something is no guarantee that you will understand it."
Instead of promising yourself to "do some reading later on", you should write down: "Tonight, between 7 p.m. and 7.50 p.m., I will read Chapters 14 to 17 to find out . . ."
Moran, a psychology lecturer at UCD, argues students are served poorly by the secondary school system, which does little to foster the critical, questioning cast of mind which he regards as being essential to success in university. Indeed, he goes so far as to argue that critical thought is "actively discouraged" in some schools. Thus first-years are ill-equipped to cope with the extensive reading lists, loosely defined syllabi and unsupervised "homework" they are expected to deal with in college. Nor should they expect their tutors and lecturers to take account of any deficiencies in their secondary schooling. "Students may be shocked to receive a mark of only 50 for a project or essay that would have earned them a mark of 85 in school," as Moran puts it.
The book is strongest when dealing with the culture shock of the first few months at university. Moran is also particularly good when advising on how to get the best out of lectures, even bad ones.
Where he's less strong is in dealing with exams. Granted, if you've followed the advice contained in this book throughout the academic year, the exams will be a piece of cake, but Moran has little to offer students who've left things until the last minute. Anxious students won't get much solace out of advice like "exams should be regarded as a formal opportunity to show what you know rather than as attempts to find out what you don't know".
There is no advice in the book on how to cope with study while also trying to deal with the kind of emotional trauma that's an occupational hazard of being an undergraduate - for example the break-up of a relationship two weeks before your exams begin. Parts of the book could have done with a lighter touch - in certain sections it reads like a psychology textbook. Indeed, Moran would have done well to employ a student as a ghost writer, as the tone is sometimes Victorian in its primness. (There's also the fact that some typographical errors got past the proofreader at UCD Press.) A rather weak attempt to appeal to the "student" sense of humour by interspersing the text with some "zany" cartoons does nothing to make up for these failings.
Such small lapses don't take away from the value of this book, which should be required reading for anyone who's serious about excelling in their university exams. For the rest of us, it's a fascinating, sometimes scary insight into the mentality of organised students.
Managing Your Own Learning at University: A Practical Guide by Aidan P. Moran, University College Dublin Press, £5.95
