Brain Train: Studying for Success

This chapter marries and extends two separate chapters from the 1984 edition, which offered 'A Student's View', written by Chris Pope, and 'A Teacher's View', which I wrote. I have effected this merger for two reasons.

First, for reasons explained in the Preface to the second edition, I decided to dispense with a co-author this time around, and in those changed circumstances it was inappropriate to retain that first title. I nevertheless remain very grateful to Chris for his wise and valuable contribution: much of its essence is preserved here.

Secondly-and more important-I rather regret the 'them and us' contrast that the original pair of chapters may have implied. For I would now want to stress as a fundamental principle that:

All successful advanced study hinges on a fruitful partnership with one's teachers.

The respective roles and tasks differ and the teacher's status is on the surface senior and more authoritative. But the goal is identical: the success of the student, i.e. you. And the best chance of that happening is if student and teacher work together in harmonious honesty and a direction that is clear to each. In this respect, once again, you are in charge: you need to make the best use of your teacher if s/he is to help bring out the best in you.

I would like to think that few lessons anywhere are a complete waste of time, of no value whatever to every single individual present. Nevertheless, anyone who has ever been a student, even for a relatively short period of time, will at some time have sat in a classroom bored rigid, thinking how much more progress one could make if one were alone. Indeed, with the ever-growing range of textbooks available nowadays, and the major increase in part-time and/or distance

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