Before the Bell

A brief look at the material before a class noticeably changes the lesson itself.

You don’t need to understand everything in advance. It is enough to look through the main concepts, the structure of the topic and some examples. Then the teacher’s explanation doesn’t land on an empty space. You already know where the confusion arose, which terms keep recurring and what question is worth asking.

Without that preliminary look, a lesson often runs in delivery mode. You are simultaneously trying to understand the subject, write down the wording and work out what exactly you didn’t understand. The last task usually loses.

A useful sequence looks like this:

1. skim the material;

2. mark the parts you don’t understand;

3. listen to the explanation;

4. ask a question;

5. test your understanding on a problem of your own.

The question is especially useful when the class feels boring. Boredom sometimes means the material is too easy. Sometimes it means the material is too hard and the mind has quietly left the room. In both cases a question brings participation back.

You don’t have to ask it out loud at every opportunity. You can write it down and check later. But a good question turns a general lesson into a personal investigation.

The same works far beyond school. A doctor’s appointment lasts twelve minutes. Someone who has written down beforehand when it started, what changed, what they took and what they want to find out spends those minutes on the illness. Someone unprepared spends them reconstructing their own chronology out loud — “in the spring, I think, or no, more likely after the holiday” — and remembers the main question in the lift. The same happens at a meeting whose agenda went out the day before and nobody opened: the first twenty minutes go on working out why everyone is here.

Preparation takes a few minutes and always looks unnecessary beforehand. Its point is not saving time but changing the owner: someone else’s twelve minutes become yours.