Maximize your learning potential with these easy changes
Translation: Colin Fisher
Dear reader,
It’s not long til exams. Stress is increasing, you don’t know what you should eat during class breaks because you eat like trash or not at all, and, worst of all, everything you have studied goes in one ear and out the other. You study all night to add hours to the day and when you at last stagger to your bed you can’t sleep from stress and anxiety. What can you do? Reading this article would be a good start.
University life tends to be one vicious cycle. You start the semester too slowly, thinking to yourself “pshh, it’s so many weeks to exams…” So when exams approach, the pressure and the stress build up. There definitely aren’t any magic fixes to any of these problems, but if you continue reading I can give you a couple good points that will come in handy here.
Get up off your ass and move!
Picture: Proportion of Icelanders who describe themselves as having poor physical health, 2019-2022
One of the best things that you can do for your health is to move; how great is that for me as a physical therapy student? Studies have shown that physical activity can improve attention decrease anxiety, and decrease symptoms of depression . According to statistics from the Directorate of Health (see picture) there are all too many Icelanders who describe themselves as being in poor or bad physical health, or around 41%, and this rate, unfortunately, has increased in the last four years.
Public health guidelines generally recommend 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day, so a good start would be to get up from the books and take yourself on a 15 minute walk in nature. According to these guidelines, moderate exercise is, for example, brisk walking, biking, swimming, or doing housework like sweeping the floor, mopping, and hanging up the laundry. Proximity to nature can improve the symptoms of anxiety and depression, along with increasing cognitive function. If I was you, I’d think about taking a break from the books to clear the mind and nourish the body with exercise.
Speaking of nourishing the body, isn’t it difficult to do anything with an empty stomach? You have to have energy for all this exercise, and then we just need to talk about nutrition…
Good nutrition makes a difference
Tómas Helgi Kristjánsson, article author.
Have you considered that what you put into yourself is possibly the key to better performance in school? It may have occurred to you, but with healthy choices, you can not only improve your grade in Health I, you can improve your quality of life and decrease the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
According to studies, anxiety can be lessened by having enough omega-3 fatty acids, magnesium, zinc, B-, C-, and E-vitamins along with the amino acids lysin and arginine. Foods such as oily fish, eggs, whole wheat, nuts, seeds, beans and vegetables contain these important nutrients, and you should consider eating more of them if you don’t do that now. Who knows if that will help you?
One vitamin group is very important if you’re watching your health: B-vitamins. B-vitamin deficiency is connected with, among other things, irritability and depression. At the same time, deficiency in the B-vitamin folate has been connected with dementia in older people. You can’t forget there’s a life after university…
You’re probably thinking to yourself that you can do something other than eating healthy food and exercising to improve your lifestyle and your academic performance and you can probably guess what it is…
Sleep (regularly) my darling…
Obviously, sleep is beloved. It’s the only time of the day when your brain is free from the stimulus of the day and we can recharge the batteries. Despite the fact that sleep is wonderful, about 30% of Icelanders in the age range 18-44 sleep less than six hours a night. Research suggests that the longer students sleep, the better they do in their studies. However, it seems that it’s not enough to get enough sleep - rather, stable sleeping habits should be maintained, and those who are able to maintain regular sleeping habits tend to do better in school.
As we talk about the importance of getting enough sleep and having a stable sleep schedule, it’s important to talk about what happens in the brain while we sleep. When we sleep, our brains are working over the information from that day, storing it in long-term memory and improving the ability of neurons to make new and more efficient connections, which are, of course, what needs to happen for us to learn new things. There is no doubt that without regular sleep, the student’s brain cannot function properly. Do your brain, and yourself, a favor, and get good and regular sleep.
Do this for you
Since you are now almost done with this column, I trust that you will, from now on, always make sure to exercise out in nature during study breaks, eat healthy and nutritious food, and follow a good sleep schedule to maximize your learning outcomes. You can also just study steadily through the semester, but that’s not as interesting.
The life of a university student isn’t easy, and as I said before, there are no magic fixes. To make your life easier, I’m giving you a little checklist that you can use to see whether you’re on the right path to maximize your learning potential and make your mental health better. You just write in how many times a week you fulfill every task, and in how many weeks, and then see whether you are improving and pave the way to improved academic performance and better health!