mulberryshoots

So, I guess you know that our granddaughter, A., is going to Johns Hopkins University in the Fall. We’re excited about driving up to be at her high school graduation this coming weekend and we’re planning to manage getting there with some helpers along the way. In the meantime, we’re hoping that G.’s back will improve along with my mood by that time.

We have two apartments that are rented on the second floor of our Queen Anne Victorian home and the smaller back apartment has been occupied by a UMassMedical student for the past few years. “C.” has been a model tenant: studious, responsible and patiently good humored when something needs to be fixed. We invited him to have dinner with us last night and it was good to catch up on his plans for this upcoming last year of medical school. He’s done well with his studies, getting A’s on his exams and applying himself to being accepted to his specialty for clinicals in advance of applying for residencies at hospitals located in Boston and New York City.

Today, he helped us hang out clean sheets out on the line since both G. and I are rather limited these days on being able to do simple chores like that. When he brought the dry sheets back upstairs before lunch, I asked him what advice might be helpful to a college freshman going away to college and what had worked well for him. He mentioned that he’d been through 4 years of college, 2 years of graduate school and now, 3 years of medical school and his response was:

          “Everybody’s different. There’s no advice that works for everyone. Find out what works best for you and stick to it.”

He said that many of his classmates study at the library before exams and that what he found works for him is to study intensively by himself for three days before an exam. That’s what works for him and not to worry that he should do what OTHER students did (in the library) just because that’s what works for THEM. Of course, finding what works best for us, individually, can also be a trial and error process we have to discover for ourselves on our own.

This may sound like bland advice. But, in my generation, certain “rules” for studying were doled out: “don’t let yourself get behind,” “ask if you don’t understand something,” etc. among others. Nowhere did someone say, “be yourself and find out what works best for you…then stick to it!”

So that, dear reader, is a generation gap that’s worth mentioning, don’t you think?

“Vive la difference!”