Turn it off, Turn it on again

Published 22 June 2011 by Adam Culligan, National University Liaison

There have been a number of little technical marvels introduced into my life over the past decade.  Today's graduates and undergraduates have access to all these same marvels and yet we all end up having to rely on the one massive technical marvel, the human brain. Exams are haunting students by the thousands all across Australia right now and so many of your "marvels" are conking out on you.  What is the average grad to do?

 

I have been hammering away at all of my non-bio marvels this week with some annoying glitches catching me out on a daily basis.  My iPhone, my macbook, my software, hell even the air conditioner in my home (not an apple product) were giving me fits.  After getting the same advice over and over for a number of "glitches" over the past couple of days, I recently received the following from the support team at Rovio (developers of the smash hit iPhone app "Angry Birds")

"Have you tried turning your phone completely off and then on again?"

....and then it dawned on me..turning things off and on again (or rebooting for the techhies) works so often it would be infuriating if it wasn't so effective! Every issue I've had or been privy to over the past couple of weeks has been fixed (or fixed itself) by simply holding the reset button, flicking the switch or shutting down completely. So why is it I am writing about it?  Because this is probably the best study advice you will get this exam period.

It's 3am and you are cramming all you can into your skull hoping that somewhere in the gooey gray undergraduate mess that is your brain, it will cling on and lie in wait until summoned by question 67 of 200 or essay response 8 part B.  I applaud your efforts and sympathize with your situation.  We all know it pays to study in bunches and after a good sleep or meal when you are at your best…but do we heed this advice? Not often enough. After all, Hayden might be the first ever Masterchef competitor ever to get TWO immunity pins…am I right?? So here is my advice, it isn’t necessarily about what time of day and what you eat before hand and how all your relationships are going. While all these things can affect how well you study, sometimes the best thing you can do is simply shut off. Take a break. Go watch Masterchef. Allow yourself to calm down and lose focus for a few minutes. You can do anything you like in this break: you can go for a run; go for a beer; play a video game; call your mom (might not be stress “relieving”). Just make sure you do your best to turn your brain off and upon returning to the books, turn your brain back on. This allows for all the “programs” running in the background to get shut down and not restarted. It allows for the focus of your “CPU” (brain) to be on only the task at hand, not donating some of its precious strength to keeping the rest of the stuff running.

So, is this new advice? No. Is this ground-breaking research? No. Is this the right time for you to hear that maybe you just need to back away from your books and go grab an ice cream? Probably. Good luck to all of you out there and feel free to throw your study tips on our facebook page! We love hearing about the quirky ones.