Guest Speaker: Prof. Katherine Marshall
Place: University of Cambodia, Phnom Penh
This seminar was conducted at UC Conference Center on August 2, 2011 from 5:30 pm to 7:30pm with Prof. Katherine Mashall as the guest Speaker. There were many UC university students and professors to attend this seminar and its outcome was very successful. From this seminar, both university students and professors at the University of Cambodia got profound knowledge about university education as well as the improvement for study life. Learning is eternal for all scholars, so the idea for the improvement is necessarily for all of them.
As a participant in this seminar, ideas learnt from Prof. Katherine Mashall as well as other university students was known to me and I will share this profound knowledge to everyone today! Before getting to the ideas from Prof. Katherine Marshall’s perspective, the important note to be remembered for this topic is “Work Hard! Work Smart! Keep Love to Learn!”. In fact, all the ideas from Prof. Katherine Marshall for how to get the most of university education are raised down here!
There are ten main ideas from Prof. Katherine Mashall for everyone to consider:
First, know how you learn clearly and set the right way to get success in your study at university. You should be aware that different people have different learning style, so don’t be upset for your unique way to learn compare to other best students’, but you should observe the best study skills from those students, superiors, and professors and reflect back on your own to practice with your full responsibility for success in your university education.
Second idea is time management. Since time is moving, not standing still, all of you should take action to do this for self success as soon as possible. The early step of time management is self-awareness for how you spend your time. For each of your activity per day, how much time do you spend on each one? Be sure to alert for your spending time and be cautious to avoid taking much time on unnecessary things. More importantly, you should know when your productive time is and keep that duration for your learning to go smoothly. Another step in time management is learning to value time. Time that is gone will never return to you! One day you spend on useless activity should be eliminated as soon as you can! Remember “Time is money!” Keep in your mind that time is valuable and expensive than everything in this world since you cannot turn it back to you even though you have a lot of money, so spend your valuable time carefully on your study. The final step is setting clear objectives as well as your life goals for both short-term and long-term plan. Do not forget to ask yourself what importance for your life is and what make you special in these days. To think and keep your objectives and goals in long-term memory, you should think in the quiet place and write down all your goals for next 5 years or more years towards future the same as the importance to be done now or tomorrow. With your clear objectives and goals, break all important actions to be achieved daily or weekly. At least once a week, you should do the time sheet schedule for the next 7 days. Weekly schedule is the most effective way to do time management and you will have specific things to do for the whole week. By doing this, it is believed that you can save much time and your spending time is being used for useful things link to your objectives and goals. If you can, do the daily schedule to manage your time more easily!
The third idea is to think about “People”. Find out what kind of people around you can help you to succeed in your university life. In fact, those people are all people surrounding you at your university. The main people can develop your knowledge quickly are all your professors. They have a lot of experience in both learning and teaching; you should communicate with them politely and friendly in order to learn from their experiences to modify on your study at university. Your professors can guide you more than the books could towards your university success! Another people to learn from is all your classmates as well as university seniors. You should consult with them towards your problems in study, especially your university seniors. They experienced more than you, so you should listen carefully to what they say and reconsider on which advices you can practice for your own success. Furthermore, you should study in group with your classmates to share ideas, to test your ideas, and to know how somebody else thinks.
Fourth key idea is to learn from role model in the society and famous people in the world you admired in life. I know that you will know what is special about your favorite person? Therefore, only thing for you to do is to do the research on how they achieve their best legacy or how they take the responsibility for their study and work. Also, you should seek their profound concepts and learn from their mistakes in life to reinforce your study; for example, like Confucius concepts, Kakvey Krom Ngoy (Khmer Educational Poem Author), Helen Keller’s concepts, Martin Luther King’s concepts, and so on. Do the analysis on their concepts carefully; you will gain profound ideas for your study towards the great achievement!
Fifth idea is to be the solution, not a problem. This means that born as a human-being, you should think before you speak. Every where university life is the difficult thing to deal with, but you should be patient and serious. You should do what your lecturers ask you to do first before doing complaint to create problems within your class. Try to find the best way to adapt yourself with the study works. Remember to contribute your best efforts to your study at the university and act as the solution to cover all problems occurred within your university courses.
Sixth idea is your own characteristics towards success. You should think about your own behavior and attitude whether they are useful to complete your university achievement or not. If not, do your best to change for the strong one! Whatever your characteristics is, develop yours for struggling towards your success. You should taste all the difficulty at your university and take adventure for every thing occurring within your university. Then learn from those adventures as soon as possible as the step to put your own responsibility on your study completely.
Seventh idea is being able to communicate with a variety of people. University education requires you all to experience different kind of people. Two things needed to do carefully is speaking and writing. Speak is the way to interact directly with other people surrounding you, so you should learn the best technique to speak politely and friendly. The better your speech is, the better communication you get! Also, writing could help you to convey your information to others formally to follow the rule of English grammar and writing skills. You should enable your capacity in these factors to make sure that you can write the message as well as articles excellently. At the university, study is competitive between you and other students; only excellent writing and speaking could make you the golden egg among other university students.
Eighth idea is to do a clear presentation and strong public speaking. During the university education, presentation is the common thing for all students to experience. It is sure that for your first presentation, you will not feel familiar with it. However, you should reinforce your presentation skill as soon as possible to succeed in your study. Also, presentation could allow you to share your own ideas and opinions on specific topic in order to make sure others agree with you. If there is an opportunity to do public speaking, you will gain more chance to get success. Speak more and more in public, especially during the seminars or special programs will help to get ideas and feed back from your colleagues and professors. In getting feedback or criticism, you should be patient to listen and accept for all of it whether it is positive or negative. Then do the analysis how feedback and criticism could help you to develop your presentation skill as well as public speaking skill better. Remember “learning from mistakes is the best way to reach your goals successfully!”
Ninth idea is to develop a sense of question and be open-minded to learn from every body. It is very important to listen to your instructors as well as your classmates attentively. Then you should question in your mind why it is in that way and ask quickly to get the clarification from them to make you more understanding why! Sometimes, answer does not satisfy you, so you could share your ideas to debate and if majority agree with them logically, you should accept it.
The final idea is to develop honesty and integrity in your university life. Real honesty and integrity from you all create the friendly and happy environment in learning at university and encourage yourself as well as your classmates to love learning. It is hard to develop these factors if you do not get it from birth, but you should make yourself familiar with it in order to go along with the university education happily. You should not cheat during the class examination and be just & fair towards everyone at your university. Remember not to show your name or face in the criminal case on famous newspaper like Phnom Penh Post or New York Times. To make everything consistent during your university degree, you have to show everyone all your goodness, great achievement, and admiration getting from them for your own work. Only thing to do is to develop profound knowledge as well as practical skills to express who you are!
During the Q & A session, many good questions were raised by UC students as well as professor; and the answer from Prof. Katherine Marshall is really good to listen. However, in here I would like to do the summary on the main ideas getting from this last session.
How can we seek our productive time for study?
The short answer is to study how you learn and observe what time is the most comfortable one for you to study quickly with sharp brain.
How can we improve reading skills to push our study at the university?
You should find what you enjoy to read first and then force yourself to study important part of your courses. More importantly, you should avoid online reading since it is not suitable for you to do the concentration in reading; and you should encourage yourself to read more by telling yourself that this is very important; you cannot put it away like that!
How can we do to be a solution?
It is depend on personal choice whether to be complainer or actor. However, to be a solution, you should learn to be positive on thing in front of you. Just do it until finish! If you cannot complete, just ask the way to go on.
How can we eliminate our procrastination in our study?
Simply, procrastination occurs when you do not want to do or to write. For example, long paper needed to be written, but you usually procrastinate, right! Therefore, you should start now to take a piece of paper to write (at least you start!). Remember “Take a start through your own way to start your work!”
Is it good to diversify our goals?
Yes, it is. One straight goal is hard to achieve and our lives is changing. Therefore, multi-goals are common to majority around the world. What you can do is to balance your goals and judge things could be done to achieve those goals right now. Your goal achievement is based on the current opportunity for you to catch up!
By: POK Panhavuth
