Intellectual Life Skills: Critical Thinking

¶ … Intellectual Life Skills: Critical Thinking and Decision Making, Time Management Strategies, and the Effective Identification of Fallacious Thinking

Critical thinking and the decision making process is one of the most important life skills one can derive from an academic education. A student today is overwhelmed with a seemingly infinite array of choices and potential life paths. A student must be forever asking him or herself, what are my strengths, how can I overcome my weaknesses, and what options are possible or impossible to have at the same time? Answering all of these questions are all crucial aspects not simply of finding one's self as a person -- rather, such self-examination is a crucial part of effective and practical decision-making that is necessary to succeed in school. One cannot, unfortunately, 'have it all' so critical thinking and planning, eliminating the possible and deciding upon the best possible options is important when addressing life's problems and challenges. Such critical thinking and decision-making skills provide a student with a systematic process to employ, when, for example evaluating his or her falls semester's course load.

The student can ask, upon considering the options, what must I take to meet university requirements, what classes are necessary to my major or to my future career plans, what classes provide needed levity to an over burdened schedule, and what classes are compatible with my life and work patterns? Asking these questions, and identifying and listing these questions in order of priority, demonstrates that critical thinking and decision making is not simply important when a student is reading a book, but a crucial life skill the student can and must use in his or her immediate present in a practical fashion.

Very well, the hypothetical student has his or her classes -- but how to succeed in those carefully selected classes? While everyone, it seems, complains about not having enough time in today's over committed and over stressed society, deploying effective time management in a student's daily life is not simply about obeying the student's schedule and 'coming to class.' Time management is also crucial during those ungoverned hours of a student's life. Appropriate time management facilitates a student's ability to learn and to improve one's overall quality of life, as well as make the most of the quantity of time one has for certain tasks.

For instance, when studying, tackling the most difficult subjects first, when one is mentally fresh, whether one is a morning or a night person, can be an effective method to grasp a difficult study area. Using short and frequent study sessions throughout the semester rather than cramming is another important time management technique -- and even simply making the most of one's spare moments leaves one with the satisfaction that one does not simply have clean laundry, but can go to bed an extra hour earlier, rather than begin one's calculus homework at midnight! ("Time Management," 2002)