A college professor in Australia thinks she may have found the secret to success in education. She says that when she was an undergraduate “a departmental librarian called Anne was doing something any psychologist would say was impossible. Every year, with near-perfect accuracy, she would predict which third-year undergraduates would be awarded first-class degrees.
“Anne didn’t know how their essays were rated, what A-level grades they had under their belts, or how they scored on IQ tests. . . . All she knew was how often she had seen students in the department library: reading course notes, photocopying journals, borrowing books. And the handful of students who Anne saw a lot — conspicuously more often than the other students in the same year — were going to get a first.
“Anne was working on the principle that in academic achievement it is self-discipline, not talent, that counts. Ten years on, a study published recently in Psychological Science has come to exactly the same conclusion.”
So don’t waste your willpower on trifling things. Get those petty annoyances out of the way so you can concentrate on the important stuff. “If you are about to embark on a big project you court disaster if at the same time your life is cluttered and demanding, or you also commit to draining attempts at self-enhancement. . . . Where are the students whose self-discipline is constantly worn away by other concerns? Not in the library reading course-notes, photocopying articles or borrowing books. And if they are relying on their smarts to get them to the top of the class then there will be disappointment ahead.
“But don’t just take my word for it. Ask a librarian.”
(The Australian, 14 June 2006)
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