Dig Deep

You can’t read your textbook the same way you check your Facebook page, at a quick, superficial level. Many students assume that the mind is a bin or a sponge; you just pour information into it, and it stays there. Sorry. For the information to stay there, you have to process it until you get it. When you put in effort to understand something, you are signaling your brain that the “something” is worth remembering. An excellent way to do this, as you read, is to try to connect the new information to information you already know. Suppose you read about the four basic perspectives of psychological science (biological, learning, cognitive and sociocultural). Taking each one, you could think of examples you have read about or that apply to your own life: “Many of my friends take medication to manage their depression or anxiety; that would follow from the biological perspective’s approach.”