HOW TO STUDY

Among the most important things, then, for a student to learn, is how
to study.  Without a knowledge of this his labor may be largely in
vain.  He may pass his examinations and yet know nothing thoroughly and
have little power.  The importance of knowing how to study is evident
when we realize that the amount of knowledge that a student can acquire
in college, compared with the whole mass of human knowledge, even that
bearing upon a single specialty, is entirely insignificant; and
furthermore, that a student is generally quite unable to foresee with
any degree of correctness what his work in life will be.  Unless,
therefore, his education has enabled him to take up a new subject or a
new problem and to study and master it {4} himself--that is to say,
unless he has learned how to study, how to use his mind properly and to
direct it efficiently upon the subject in hand--his education may have
benefited him little and may not have fitted him for the career in
which he finally finds himself.
Important as it is to learn how to study, it is singular that most
students do not learn it, and that little effort is made to teach it.
It is assumed that children know how to study because they have brains.
Probably a large majority of our college graduates today have not
learned how to study properly, and find it difficult or impossible to
take up a new study and master it.  They have only learned how to do
certain routine things in a mechanical way.  They have learned by rote.

George Fillmore Swaine