Perfectionism is not, in and of itself, a negative trait. Perfectionists are often conscientious high achievers; our greatest weakness is also our greatest strength. But those trying to be constantly perfect can find that every task feels like an unconquerable burden and every essay a path to failure, however unlikely our friends and family might find our doom-laden predictions. Here are three thoughts to use to beat the unrealistic idealism that may currently be beating you.
What is perfect, anyway? Maybe you could decide. Perhaps perfection could simply mean sitting down at your messy desk, ignoring the clothes on the floor, and spending 10 minutes planning the first half of your essay. In this deeply imperfect and challenging world, if you were to be reasonable with yourself, your definition of perfect should, and could, be different. Redefine perfection: make it doable and make it your own.
A to-do list is a depressing sight, if, at every item, we are telling ourselves that we ‘have to’ or ‘must’ do this or that. But turn ‘have to’ into ‘get to’ and suddenly life seems more joyful. Perhaps it is an irritating piece of advice, an unwelcome call to simply have more gratitude, but studying is essentially an overwhelmingly positive thing. You are learning and growing, and you have access to great materials and educated teachers; you are lucky. And so, even if it feels at first like you are lying to yourself, tell yourself, next time you inspect your to-do list: “I get to plan my essay today”.
We will do it, but we are waiting for the perfect time when we are in the mood. Because we know we can do it well, and not just well but REALLY well. And so that is the aim. This isn’t laziness, for the fear is real: we cannot bear to submit anything less than our best; we cannot tolerate failure; and we want to be proud of what we have achieved. We have visualised (or we think we have) the perfect essay or assignment. But the truth is that you have a deadline. Perhaps you could achieve perfection if you had eternity to complete it. But you don’t. Most tasks have a timeline, whether it is 6 years to complete a part-time PhD, or one night to finish an essay. And the test is not what you can achieve, but what you can achieve in the time you have to complete it. The definition of perfect might simply be this: finished.
Whatever subject you are studying or qualification you are studying for, contact with your teacher or tutor – even when remote – is an invaluable part of that process. They are usually the subject experts, have a full understanding of the assessment process and have, more often than not, supported many other students who felt exactly the same as you do now about their learning. Whether you are confident in your subject knowledge and looking for ways to stretch yourself in order to achieve the very best results or are still a little uncertain and unsure how you might secure the grade you need, your tutors can provide you with the support you require. Here are a few simple strategies every student should try in order to boost the benefits of the contact they have.
Put simply, meet their expectations! If they provide a task, complete it. If they set a deadline, meet it. If you have a meeting, be there. Programmes of study and assessment schedules are in place to meet the needs of everyone; ensuring that there is adequate time for covering all of the content, assessing progress and providing feedback. A tutor works with many students and if you don’t adhere to the plan then you are unlikely to get the time you deserve. If there is a problem with the schedule set out for you, talk to your tutor in advance so that they can make any amendment they possibly can in order to make sure that everyone’s needs are met. If a tutor sees you are committed to your learning and doing what is required they are likely to go above and beyond in the ways in which they support you.
As already mentioned, the tutor is the subject expert. They have the knowledge of the subject but also the ways it is assessed and how to ensure you can demonstrate it when required to do so. Listen to their advice. Take notes where required. Follow their suggestions. However, if there is something you are unsure about, don’t be afraid to ask! Questioning is key to developing a deeper understanding and mastery of a subject but is also a great tool in ensuring there have been no miscommunications or misunderstandings. Your tutor will respect your ability to really engage with the content you are covering together and look for ways to address your questions in more detail.
Receiving feedback is one of the most important parts of the learning journey. However, many of us find getting feedback something that is really, really hard! Instead of thinking about what is said by your tutor as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’, try to consider what you can learn from it instead. If you are given praise for a certain aspect of your work, think about what you did that made this so effective. If there are comments relating to something that hasn’t worked out so well then think about what you might do differently next time. Reflection is key to making progress. Also, apply the same thought process when it comes to your attitude to learning. If a tutor comments on this, avoid taking it personally and think of how you might use what they have said to become a more effective learner.
Don’t forget that any contact that you have with your tutor is designed to benefit YOU. If you are in need of something specific from that contact then, again, do not be afraid to ask! In reality, this involves planning and preparing for any contact you have before you have it. Make a note of any questions you have when studying independently. If you need to revisit any material with them, ask in advance. If you have found a subject area particularly easy or hard, let them know. Remember, your tutor will be looking to support you in a way that is personalised to meet your needs too, so the more effectively you’re able to communicate these, the better they will be able to do this.
In Part 1, I discussed how we artificially divide up areas of human knowledge to our own detriment. In Part 2, I will look at ways in which we can create a society that looks beyond these classifications towards a multidisciplinary world.
Perhaps the logical place to begin this epic untangling of divisions is in the education system. Schools are a place where subjects exist, almost pathologically, in isolation from each other. An expert who is educated only in their own subject explains their knowledge, before children are passed to the next expert. Physics, biology and chemistry are often separate subjects. Children are not often challenged to explain natural processes from multiple perspectives simultaneously. Maybe if they start to explain things in terms of atoms, chemicals and biological systems from the beginning it will yield huge breakthroughs in the future.
Science is increasingly moving towards enormous datasets that will be processed by artificial intelligence. Fortunately, artificial intelligence does not just adopt one perspective when analysing data, like a person does.
However, perhaps the easiest, most human solution to the segregation of the sciences is to encourage more time in the same rooms. Of course, there are many interdisciplinary conferences, and many subjects are closely aligned, but that could be made far more commonplace. It is challenging to do so as we are moving into an age of such complexity that within even a single science there are hundreds of lifetime’s worth of subspecialisms. How can any inter-disciplinary dialogue be created effectively when they all almost speak in different languages?
Such is the barriers that must be overcome, whether through a change in mindset or the intelligent reorganisation of existing systems.
Our tribal ancestry has never completely left us. We still love to linger in “in-group, out-group” psychology. Look at our political parties, not permitted to be in agreement with each other even if they are. This is evidenced in literally every discipline, workplace, and academic circle. “Why doesn’t [insert other group’s name] understand that this is the way it works?!”.
I’m not advocating intellectual relativism. There is a right and wrong in some cases. But we need to tell people from the earliest age that there is no black and white. For example, Music contains Science; when strings vibrate at frequencies that are pleasing to the ear, and when these frequencies are doubled, the same note is produced. We evolved to appreciate these frequencies as a way of bonding in human communities. All subjects exist on a continuum.
There is no telling where this will take us if we are able to emancipate ourselves from the separate rooms we have put ourselves in. Perhaps this is the next step in our social and psychological evolution.
Someone once asked a group of top scientists and researchers why the chicken crossed the road to reach an attractive rooster. The evolutionary biologist said “because her ancestors out-competed their rivals by responding to romantic bids, despite danger”. A sage psychologist disagreed. He claimed angrily that it was necessary to consider the principles of behaviourism to understand the chicken. A vet claimed that she had just had surgery which had improved her circulation, and it was undoubtedly due to the increased blood flow. Such is the way of the multidisciplinary.
Clearly, you could keep going ad-nauseum. The point is that all of the scientists have a valid point. Aristotle created one of the earliest systems of classification, and formed part of the method of seeing the world we now know as “Science”. The world is immensely complicated, however, so it was necessary to further classify into many different sciences, each with its own specialists. As is the way with humans, we then proceeded to forget that these classifications of different sciences were, in fact, imaginary and made for our own convenience. Undeniably, classifications are very useful to us indeed. If you wanted to answer the chicken question from every conceivable perspective, you would be drowned in possibilities.
This dividing up of continuums can be seen throughout the human experience. With language there is a phenomenon called “allophony”. This is effectively having multiple spoken sounds for one letter. If you say “little”, for example, the first “L” is not the same as the second (which is a “dark L”, in phonetics). English speakers will often not register this, whereas a speaker of a different language would be able to easily. Similarly, if there is a name for a colour in one culture (a random point on the ultraviolet spectrum), those people will struggle to differentiate it from different tones of the same colour. People from other cultures with distinct names for those shades will identify them easily. These examples effectively demonstrate the way that the human brain leans naturally towards segmentation and classification.
One of the main problems is that the disciplinary approach stifles cooperation and growth. Often, psychologists and psychiatrists will angrily disagree about how we should interpret human behaviour. Without dialogue though, it will stay as just another blinkered squabble. These issues can be found throughout the sciences, as well as many other disciplines.
So effectively, we are dealing with a human limitation, our need to classify to understand, and our forgetfulness that this is a man-made construct. The challenge of the next scientific paradigm will be to knock down many of these walls and, at least attempt to, see things from a multidisciplinary perspective.
In Part 2, I will explore some possible ways that we can create more of a multidisciplinary society and begin to move away from the old models of thought that have taken us a long way, but in many cases have outgrown their use.
Choosing subjects to study is an important consideration, of this there is no doubt. However, in recent years the campaign for jobs and the drive for individuals to study employment-specific STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects has left the arts, the humanities and the social sciences in an undermined position.
From Sociology to Literature, History to Psychology and Geography, these, and many more are all considered to be under the broad umbrella of the Humanities, with Psychology, Sociology, and Geography sub-grouped into social sciences.
So would anyone consider studying a course that sets you up for what some have termed as ‘career suicide’? Is it worth it? What will be achieved other than a confirmed ability to follow a prescribed syllabus and learn the required information to pass exams or produce coursework?
George Anders, in his book entitled You can do anything: The Surprising power of a ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Education, says “curiosity, creativity, and empathy aren’t unruly traits that must be reigned in to ensure success. The job market is quietly crying out for people who can bring a humanist’s grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future.”
Tempering the needs of a rapidly growing STEM world needs to be the humanising of The Arts, ensuring that the heart and soul of the species, as well as its stomach and head, are catered for.
So what will studying the Humanities actually, broadly, offer? Aside from all the subject-specific knowledge, ‘training’ in the Humanities and Arts offers an unparalleled depth of personal growth and mental diversification. The development of a student’s ability to critique systems of behaviour, work and politics ensures that individuals are able view their work (and life) situation with a clear and reflective, empathetic yet unflinching gaze.
Being able to hold and ‘apply’ multiple perspectives on a subject and really ‘feel’ the impact of those perspectives offers real-time, realistic views on potential impact and change in any given area. The student is working towards gaining an understanding of the historical, predictive, economic, social and cultural layers that are part of any given situation. It is far from easy, rather it is the equivalent of a mental Olympic sport, and no mean feat.
The training involved in developing these capacities and increasing the knowledge base behind them is not as simple as it is often made out to be. It is a lifelong pursuit in stretching understanding and increasing mental flexibility. To be able to juggle the range of incredible global and individual states and concepts is every bit as important a role as Einstein believed it to be when he is quoted in Phillip Frank’s book, Einstein: His life and times : “the value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think of something that cannot be learnt from textbooks”.
Knowing oneself in relation to the micro of one’s own society and the macro of an increasingly globalised world can be applied to the job market as well as to the after dinner discussion.
To be able to holistically, empathically, and with humanity, understand the multiple situations and issues that humanity faces, and to be able to address them from a standpoint that is complementary with the STEM point of view will always be valuable. The Arts and Humanities offer us more than ‘just’ problem solving, they offer us the movie reel, as well as the means and the reasons for creating the necessary artefact.
Locating the human self in the midst of the need for new technology and adapted processes is a way of ensuring that the species stays positively anchored in more than just a physical, practical way. What does it mean to be human without the arts? Considering a social, economic and political world without the evolving soul of humanity is merely an existence.
So, go ahead and follow the passionate pursuit of intellectual and artistic learning and see which worlds open up for you to explore. A colourful, terrible and incredible past and future of the world awaits.
To find George Enders’ book You can do anything: The Surprising Power of a “Useless Liberal Arts Education, follow this link: https://www.georgeandersbooks.com/
Follow this link to find Phillip Franks’s Einstein: his Life and Times
Due to their flexible nature, and the fact they can be studied from home, modern students are starting to seriously consider online undergraduate degrees.
There has been some scepticism about the credibility of online degrees in the past. The BBC reported several years ago on the prevalence of fake courses. The existence of these, as well as fake institutions and falsified certificates, made for a bad reputation. However, we shouldn’t tar such institutions with the same brush anymore. In fact, quality distance learning has been around for a long time. The well known Open University has been offering credible degrees of this nature for decades now.
Most recently, there has also been an increase in the number of traditional bricks-and-mortar universities offering online degrees. The University of Essex, The University of London, and The University of Derby are among these.
An Online Degree presents a great opportunity for students looking for a more cost-effective, flexible way to study, then. But one important question that must be asked is, what do employers think of them?
Research by The Open University has produced results showing that there is increasing respect among employers for online learning. They found that nearly three quarters of those surveyed believed online courses to be valuable when hiring new employees and promoting existing ones. It’s also true that there is likely much greater trust with employers now than there was a few decades ago, due to the fact they can see modern online degrees are now backed by credible institutions. In addition, the UK government has given employers the ability to go online and check if a university is an officially recognised institution.
As you can imagine, it’s a new field and there isn’t much research around. It’s likely that as credible online degrees become more normal, the attitudes of employers are likely to shift further in favour of online undergraduate degrees. Even if you don’t want to go all-in with an online degree, there are other options. Why not hedge your bets and do a blended degree, combining flexible online learning with face-to-face tuition?
One of the biggest challenges of exam season is scheduling revision according to your exams timetable. Especially since it is entirely possible that you will have multiple subject exams in one day.
Start by having your exam timetable in front of you. This will be the base of your revision timetable. The timetable will allow you to visualise the space you have in between exams.
Now that you can see this, schedule your revision in those spaces and divide your time accordingly between subjects for upcoming exams. I have purposely not advised you to divide your time equally. This is because for you, some subjects might need more time than others.
The art of prioritising is the key to success when revising in between exams, or even trying to manage the revision of multiple subjects at the same time.
Here is the definition of ‘revision’ from the Collins Dictionary – “read things again and make notes”.
Note, it does not state that it involves learning new things.
So, when you are revising, focus on reinforcing topics that you already know. You may touch on new bits of information which you learn, which is fine. But you shouldn’t be aiming to learn entirely new topics.
This is where prioritising comes into play. You should be prioritising the hardest topic, or the one you feel the least confident on. It is tempting to avoid this because it doesn’t feel good to struggle. But to get the most out of your revision, this is the way to make something you find hard a little bit easier.
This goes hand-in-hand with prioritising. Look at your timetable and make a realistic judgement of how much you will be able to cover during the space in between.
If you overload your plan, and do not take relaxation into account, your revision won’t be effective. It will also affect your state of mind and lead to stress which in turn, will affect the quality of your revision and exam performance.
Hopefully, these tips will help you think strategically and make the task less overwhelming. Good luck!
Why do we do what we do?
That is the core question you will be asking yourself as a student of Psychology. Clinical, social, criminal, sports: there are many specialities to be explored if you’re interested in a career in the subject, but a solid grounding in the core theories and principals of the science of the mind is required first. This is what courses in psychology – such as those at the GCSE and A level offered here at Oxford Open Learning – can offer you.
Psychology is a science, so you will be using objective scientific methods to theorise, test and make conclusions about the human mind and why we behave in certain ways in certain situations and environments.
It might be helpful to think of the study of psychology in terms of two main areas. The first is cognition, which considers the brain’s internal functions, such as memory and perception. The second puts these processes into their social context, looking at the way humans interact with each other and our environment: communication, social influence, and mental disorders like schizophrenia and depression.
You will approach these psychological questions from a number of different perspectives, all of which have been developed as distinct branches of the subject. Perhaps the two most noteworthy are the biological and behaviourist approaches. The first of these states that human behaviour is a product of the brain and nervous system’s biological functions. This includes its physiology; for example, how brain injury can affect behaviour. An interesting case of this arose in 1848, when a railway worker named Phineas Gage found his entire personality changed after he miraculously survived an accident in which an iron rod was driven through his head, destroying most of his frontal lobe. Genetics are also important here, for example to investigate whether certain psychological characteristics, such as intelligence, are passed on from parent to child. Charles Darwin and his On the Origin of Species was a major figure in developing this perspective.
Where biological psychology looks to internal functions, the behaviourist approach believes that a person’s external environment and their life experiences has the biggest impact on their character and behaviour. You might have heard, for example, of Ivan Pavlov and his theory of classical conditioning – he demonstrated that dogs change their behaviour (salivating) in reaction to a stimulus – such as a bell ringing – when they learned to associate the sound with the arrival of food.
The differences between these two approaches can be summed up in the phrase “nature vs. nurture”, the debate between those that believe that personality is pre-wired by genetics, and those that support the view that it is our environment and experiences that shape us the most. But these are far from the only two approaches to psychology.
• The evolutionary approach says that many of our behaviours are “left over” from humanity’s hunter-gatherer era over 10,000 years ago, and that they are developed primarily with survival and reproduction in mind.
• Cognitive psychology likens the brain’s processes to those of a computer, with information input, storage and output.
• The controversial psychodynamic approach famously developed by Sigmund Freud and his contemporaries.
Although the roots of psychology can be found in the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, it has only come to be recognised as a scientific discipline in the last 150 years or so. It asks a simple question that branches off into a complex web of fascinating answers – and to further questions, many of which are yet to find any definitive answer at all.
Understanding how and why humans behave as they do is a hugely desirable skill in a wide range of fields. Gaining this understanding through the study of psychology can put you on the path to many different careers, possibly even more so than the technical skills and knowledge you will gain.
Certain attributes are essential if you are to become a successful psychologist. You will need to have a good sense of empathy in order to understand the often complex internal problems people face, as well as the patience and problem-solving ability to get to the bottom of their issues and offer effective solutions. You will need to have a good moral and ethical compass and be sensitive to racial, cultural, political, and religious differences. Above all you will have a passion for the subject and a commitment to lifelong learning: this is a constantly evolving field that you will need to evolve alongside to be successful. If you think you have what it takes, read on.
A psychologist can choose to specialise in a number of sub-disciplines. A clinical or counselling psychologist would be most people’s image of the profession – they talk to clients about mental health issues, such as anxiety or depression, or life events such as bereavement, and recommend treatments or therapies to aid in their recovery.
Forensic psychologists aid criminal investigations through criminal profiling, as well as working closely with offenders and victims in rehabilitation programs.
Sports and exercise psychologists may work with sports teams or individual athletes to train their minds to better deal with pressure situations, allowing them to perform to the best of their ability.
Industries that need to carefully assess the psychological well-being of potential employees are always in need of psychologists. The aviation industry is one example, where pilots must be evaluated for their mental stability and ability to react with a clear mind to pressure situations.
If you enjoy the theoretical side of the subject, experimental psychology could be for you. It involves designing and carrying out experiments to test new psychological theories, driving forward advancements in the field. This is often twinned with teaching the subject at higher education level, although if you want to teach the subject to younger students (at GCSE or A Level), you will also need a teaching qualification.
It is not just within the psychology profession that studying the subject can come in handy. Understanding how the human mind works and why we do what we do will be a useful skill in any career that involves working directly with people, as will the attributes of empathy, problem solving and others mentioned earlier. Jobs in the police and justice system, social services, market research, advertising, human resources, and management are just a few examples.
If any of this sounds like it’s up your street, studying psychology can be a highly rewarding experience that can lead to equally rewarding career prospects. Get started by applying for a Psychology GCSE or A Level course with Oxford Open Learning.
There are many acronyms, such as PPE (Point, Evidence and Explanation), that can help you craft the perfect essay. And whilst it is not always suitable to take a strict formulaic approach, they are certainly useful to help ensure you meet all of your assessment objectives.
However, acronyms are useless if you do not understand the exam question in the first place!
Here is a quick guide to some of the common types of essay questions.
A strategy I suggest all of my students is to underline the key words in a question.
This not only helps you understand the question, but also ensures you stay focused on answering it. It is especially useful when you have two questions disguised as one.
Here is an example:
Starting with this speech, explain how far you think Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a powerful woman.
What are the key words here? I would identify them as:
This helps you break down the question. You need to:
Essays typically have a few key words that they stick to. Let’s look at them and what they mean.
Compare
Many find this the hardest. It requires you to discuss the similarities and differences between the two sources that the essay question refers to.
A good strategy is to formulate paragraphs that start talking about one source, followed by the other. Your concluding sentences can be used to tie them together. Or, you can start with words like ‘both’ to explain a similarity’, followed by ‘having said that’ to describe a difference.
When planning a ‘compare’ essay, it is helpful to create a similarity and difference table.
Discuss
These questions can feel quite open ended. To ensure that you don’t digress away from the main focus of the question, use my strategy to underline keywords.
‘Discuss’ questions require you to explore and analyse with a focus.
Usually they want you to explore different theories, interpretations and opinions such as, “I think that…because…”; “…however, some may interpret this as…”.
Explain
This is usually followed by words like ‘how’ or ‘the ways in which’. So, although they are quite open-ended like ‘discuss’ questions, you will find that the wording of the question will guide you.
‘Explain’ questions require an in-depth exploration of a topic or theme. Although you may demonstrate your understanding and analytical skills by including other topics or themes, the focus of your essay should be threaded throughout it.
How
These questions are not much different to the other types of questions. This is because the other types still require you to describe the ‘how’ – for instance, writer’s methods, language choices etc. They also require you to provide evidence from the text and apply your understanding to answer the question.
All in all, whatever the type of essay question, you will need to apply the same skills. They all involve an exploration of a topic or theme and need you to analyse different interpretations. The only difference between them is the wording and structure you choose for your essay.