Week 8, post 2 - selective attention

I find myself suffering from the downsides of selective attention a lot in school and in my outside reading. In school, I always do well in classes I am interested in, or that I find easy. For instance, I had a lot of US History courses that I got A’s in. This semester I have a nutrition course and so far I have an A+. But classes that do not interest me as much, and especially ones that I find more difficult, I find myself struggling in because I find it hard to pay attention. The classes are not necessarily harder, but for instance in my Western Civilization and Ancient History classes, I find myself completely lost and so my mind often wanders. This is similar when I do reading – whether it’s for school or not, if the material is interesting or the book is more interesting, I read it faster and absorb the content better.

To overcome selective attention I try to apply the concepts that I’m learning about to concepts that I find more interesting. Like in my ancient history class I try to find similarities between that era and the US history eras that I like more. I also try to eliminate noise and focus on the task at hand instead of thinking about other things. I try to focus on the class, or the book, that I need to focus on, and spend extra time on things that I would rather spend time on later. Essentially my thinking is, while I’m here I may as well submerse myself in the information being given.