Academic Anxiety: Part 1
/In our first post, we discussed why we started Life Together. Although the business just recently started, Allyn and I have been thinking together for quite some time on how we could blend our different professions. Allyn has been tutoring students for over 10 years and one of the major roadblocks he regularly comes across is fear. As a therapist, I’ve worked with people who suffer from debilitating anxiety and children who have difficulties functioning in school for a variety of reasons. For that reason, we felt academic anxiety was a perfect first step.
In my work with various populations, I actually see a great deal of similarity between what my clients often face and what I understand about Allyn’s students. Specifically, what often inhibits my clients from getting better is not simply the illness they suffer from, but all of the other social and environmental complications. Likewise, Allyn often finds it is not only the difficulty of a given subject that hurts students, but rather problems with sleep, homework, diet and other habits that are part of the cycle.
Some answers to these difficulties are straightforward: Get to bed earlier, eat less sugar, watch less TV. But other answers are more elusive: Is there really a “best way” to study? How do I make this seemingly irrelevant topic interesting?
There are actually answers to a lot of these questions. They’re not just from personal experience, but are also backed up by science. Allyn and I have led academic anxiety workshops specifically addressing these challenges, teaching research and evidence-based practices that students can use at home and parents can use to support their children in getting through those roadblocks.
One evidence-based study technique, believer it or not, is humor. Take this example from the journal, College Teaching (Vo. 54, No. 1, pages 177-180) by Randy Garner, PhD, who found that
“students were more likely to recall a statistics lecture when it was interjected with jokes about relevant topics. For example, in a lecture segment on reporting research findings, Garner used a metaphorical joke about a planned escape by one of two prisoners in a desert jail. One prisoner tries to escape after unsuccessfully persuading the other to go with him, only learning--after breaking out--that escape is futile as there is nothing but sand for hundreds of miles. After he's captured and returned to his cell, he tells the story of failed escape to the other prisoner who subsequently shares that he tried to escape a few years earlier. Incredulous, the first prisoner exclaimed, "You knew! Why didn't you tell me?" whereupon the other remarks, "Silly man, you should know that no one reports negative results.”
You don’t have to be a professional comedian. In fact, you don’t have to be funny at all; just don’t take the work too seriously. Keep an eye on the clock and give topics their due respect, but remember to crack a joke here and there since research proves laughter decreases stress hormones and increases concept retention.