Students Success Stories

Story from W.D, Canberra

Although I completed Sandy’s Student’s Seminar in Year 9, it was really at my Mum’s insistence.  However the seminar became an awareness of what could be done.  I took no action in Years 9 and 10.  At the beginning of Year 11 I worked through SSS book, colouring in each summary page of the book.  I then used my Peaceful Place (PP) and played the Accelerated Learning music during my study time.  I did not do any mind charts at this time.

Following the Trial Exam in Year 12  I was disappointed with my Business Studies Trial Mark of 60%.  It was essential that I do well in this subject so I turned again to Sandy’s book “Students Steps to Success”.  I committed myself to mind mapping the complete Year 11 and Year 12 course in Business Studies prior to the HSC (primarily this meant summarising the text book).   I always played Accelerated Learning music and worked in my PP while I prepared my mind maps.

I had a bit of an extra disadvantage because in primary school I wore coloured glasses because of being diagnosed with Scoptic Sensitivity.  At the end of Year 7 the school was worried about my reading ability and sent me to a special course with my Mum and when I was tested again in Year 9 my reading was still at primary school level.

All the preparation was worth it with my joy of achieving a mark in the top 10% of the state in the HSC and the best thing was I only had to read the textbooks once.

Of course I did a lot of preparation and I have made a detailed account of the steps I took between the text books and final mind map (Sandy has a copy of all this).  These steps to mind mapping could be reduced with practice.

The hardest part of the exercise was the first 3 weeks (that is the note taking time for the whole course) when self-sabotaging thoughts included “What’s the point”,  “All this time and for what benefit”,  “It won’t work”,  “Others aren’t doing it, why should I”,  “This is NOT fun – just a waste of time”.  My dedication to my goal was tested many times and I felt like giving up.  However once I progressed to drawing and learning the mind maps it all changed.  Seeing 100 plus pages of textbooks on one A4 sheet was the first benefit I realised.  From there it was full steam ahead – learning and recalling the mind maps was the easy part.  You can imagine how great I felt about myself and felt that all the time and work was worth every minute when I got my result.