Trouble with application of knowledge... Affecting Uni work!

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When you learn things, are you just memorising them or can you apply the knowledge that you've learnt to a new situation? I found that I did very well in my GCSE's (UK qualifications obtained at the end of High School - age 16), not as well as expected at A-level (UK qualification at the end of Sixth Form - age 18) and I'm struggling currently at university. This is because I found that for GCSE, application wasn't very important, at A-level application was quite important, and now at university application if very important!

Has anyone else experienced this?
If you have, how did you get over this?

I don't know if this is "normal". I'm perceived as being a very bright person, but I feel like I'm performing near the bottom of my class at uni, and I'm scared that I really won't do well. (Currently I'm in my first year. I did my first in another subject last year, but I had to switch because of health reasons, and it wasn't as interesting as what I do now).

Also, it's not just at university, it's when people ask questions that really young teenagers can answer, whether it's by common sense or application, but I simply can't answer it.

Edit: Changed subject from 'Learning - just memorising or application too?' to 'Trouble with application of knowledge... Affecting Uni work!'

Just food for thought - I am middle aged and am half way through to my degree after never having been before. I hope this is reassuring: from my observations and feedback from profs, who themselves have had such an experience, many students who were used to A's in high school have quite a shock when they hit university and their grades tumble. I think there is a 65% drop out for first-years at our institution.

I have also heard professors say things that make me very surprised - I think, "wow, and you are smart - I can't believe you just said that!" So, please don't judge yourself too harshly!

That being said, I forgot to see if you stated whether you have a diagnosis - a little support from the disability department can help you through.

You will wrestle harder with university material, and I am told that is a good sign. But, I tend to memorize my whole class to get through, and that is exhausting - there are better ways, I hope. This year I am recording classes and I have extensions on assignments and tests, for example. I do have good study habits by staying top of my reading and doing regular review. I wonder if it would help to put your learning into some kind of a story?One where you the information would be applied in the telling. I need "pictures" in my mind to hold - some material lends itself better to this need than others.

Thanks for your reply!

Cool. I'm glad that you're doing a degree; it's never too late!

I have heard that a lot of people drop out in the first year of university too, however I still don't feel like it's the same. I can't explain it. Even at GCSE for example, I hated Physics and I didn't understand it, but I was able to memorise it and therefore get an A*. I'm not sure if it's my learning style or what. Also, I have a bad memory (partly because of my M.E) which doesn't help, and I haven't managed to keep on top of my reading (also due to the fatigue experienced because of M.E).

Another thing is that even if something seems really obvious, and it's not necessarily something that you're taught/you're just meant to know it, I don't know it for some reason.

E.g. I had to be told that the steering wheel of a car doesn't control the back wheels as they don't turn, just the front wheels. How does anyone know that without being told?

E.g. I opened a tin of baked beans and sausages, tippied it upside down so that the contents would go into the saucepan, but it wouldn't come out. I was trying to tap it on the sides and at the top and it still wouldn't come out. I knew that if I used a fork/spoon etc, I could get it out, but I wanted to try and avoid using more utensils than necessary. So my boyfriend suggested hovering the can on its side over the hot hob on the cooker to make the juice less viscous and expand the side of the tin, but I couldn't think of that, and even when he did tell me to do that, I had to get him to explain why. I'm doing a science degree!! ! Why don't I know these things?!

I'm so confused. I feel really unintelligent tbh, and I don't know if anything can help. I don't currently have a diagnosis as I'm not certain I have AS (depsite feeling very comfortable on WP and having a lot of similarities with others on here), and I don't think I have the courage to go, but even if I did, I don't know how the university would be able to help me.

I think I have to truly understand the material before I can apply it. Also try to think of ways to apply things.

The problem I have is AFTER college/university. I learned -- and continue to learn just for pleasure -- all kinds of really great interesting things in college...that has done me NO good in the real world. I know almost nothing that has a practical use. My family members can work on cars and build houses and build a campfire, and seem to have learned it by osmosis. I, on the other hand, can tell the difference between Mozart and Beethoven, and know what chiaroscuro means, and can use a electronic card catalog. None of those things will come in handy in rural East Texas.

I found this really hard too, and still do! When I first started uni (doing languages), I dropped out after 7 weeks due to a combination of social issues and not 'getting' the course. When I reapplied two years later (philosophy and literature), I had a similar problem and nearly failed first year. Luckily, I had an incredible tutor who noticed that I like fairy tales and started relating everything we studied (literally everything) to traditional fairy tales which was AMAZING. Suddenly it started to make sense, and I did all my essays for second and third year about fairy tales and got pretty good marks for 'original thought'...! I did an MA in creative writing (rewriting fairy tales) and am now doing a PhD, which I never thought I'd be able to do a few years ago. Am finding the 'scope' of the PhD hard though- I want to focus totally on theory about fairy tales and mermaids and write it into a novel but my tutor wants more character development (and more than one character)...

What are you studying? Can you relate it to anything you're interested in? If you have a tutor you get on with, it's definitely worth speaking to them. It's not that you're any less bright than you were at school- uni seems to wants a 'mindjump' (that was how I described it to my tutor) that isn't logical, a sort of 'leap' from what's in books/on the page to something else that doesn't follow directly and that was the bit I found hardest.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one! Obviously I'm not glad that you struggled too; I'm glad that you managed to find a solution an turn it all around, but I am glad that I'm not alone in this.

I just don't understand why I'm like this. I've always been like it, it's not that it's a big jump from A-level to Uni as such, it's just the fact that I've always struggled with it, but the level of importance of application of knowledge has increased significantly from A-level to Uni, if that makes sense?

I've asked around, and I've noticed that generally, people don't do well if they haven't worked for it etc, but I am working for it!

I also don't feel like I'm explaining what I'm feeling properly. It almost feels ineffible, argh!

One of my other issues is that when taking down lecture notes/revising, I think that everything is important, so I find it hard to work out what I need to include and what I don't need to include. Summarising really isn't a strength of mine! Is this a general fault of the population of NT's or is this an AS thing?

Btw, I am studying BSc Biomedical Sciences in the UK. I'm not sure how to change it into something that I'm interested it. I AM kind of interested in it, but I'm not obsessed with it. Also, as mentioned above, I think that an issue is that maybe I'm not learning everything that's key because I obviously can't memorise 6 thick textbooks (3 per term) over 2 terms...

I found the jump from GCSE to A level hard too- I did languages and the shift suddenly changed from actual language work to culture/society etc which I didn't get and wasn't particularly interested in. I liked the 'jigsaw-like- aspect of languages and I'm a grammar geek!

For me, the jump from GCSE to A level was harder than A level to uni, but I found the unstructured aspect of uni a lot harder than school- I only had 12 contact hours a week and that amount of unstructured time scared me so I started lots of voluntary work and got a part time job, although then I panicked that I didn't have enough time to do the work- no win situation! I think you're right- it's hard to know what to take down in lectures (I used to take notes on everything and learnt to write v quickly so I didn't miss any of the lectures by writing it down!). i think that's a problem for everyone!

I don't know about the level of application of knowledge because I still don't really understand what the course at uni was about (or how we were supposed to apply it in the first place!), lol, i spent most of first and second year feeling totally lost and not getting any of it but once I started linking everything to fairy tales, I made that 'my' way of doing the degree and even though it wasn't what they wanted (at all!), i had no idea what they were actually expecting or looking for so instead of looking really stupid again, I did it in a way I understood and made sense to me and ended up getting good grades from some tutors (not all- I had two tutors in particular who wouldn't give me tutorials coz they didn't agree with how I was doing the work) and a good degree in the end. At PhD level, you get a lot more freedom . I think that sort of thing's easier with a creative-based subject though (I'm not creative/imaginative at all but I wanted to learn to be, and I realised that that sort of degree was ideal for people who didn't 'get' how to do the degree coz a lot of the tutors LIKED a different approach). Could you talk to one of your tutors about it? They might be able to help.

You don't need to memorise everything- the exam will only be about specific parts of the course so focus on the aspects you're interested in most in detail, then write about them. Talk to tutors about how the exam will be structured. (I'm being a bit hypocritical here- for my other degree (MSc Psychology), I had a massive freakout about a stats essay which I could do and it terrified me, and have now been blocked from the uni website and am panicking coz I have exams this week and can't access lecture notes or exam timetables!). Good luck with everything at uni. Did you go straight from school? My undergrad degree was at a uni close to home but I went a lot further away for my MA which was really scary at first but that place I went to was incredible and ended up being the best few months of my life and I really didn't want to come back :/ still miss it!

I found the jump from O Grade (the equivalent to GCSE here, at the time) to Highers very big, probably similar to what you experienced. I got all 1s and 2s for my O Grades (equivalent to B+ and above), then struggled to get a B and 4 Cs, the following year. I studied biology at uni, which in my course really was a lot of remembering, not so much application of knowledge, so I did fine. I think 4th year would have been different, but I left before that, due to social anxiety.

I do think I struggle quite a bit with applying what I know, at the time required. I noticed this just a few months ago, when I went on a salsa class. I was really competent and confident and the friends I went along with had me coach them, between lessons. I was prepared to go to the next level, but my husband and friends weren't confident enough with the basics, so we never went. We went to our 'graduation' party and I danced with a more experienced dancer. He knew I had just been on the 8 week beginner course, so he was doing the basic moves we had learned there. He was leading and positioning his hands in such a way that I should know what move we were doing next. I was all over the place, as if I was a complete beginner (which is not how I had felt in the class at all). I was so embarrassed. I don't think I'm too confident and cocky, as I really found the class easy, for the most part, and the teacher could see I was doing well. But, applying what I could do was a completely different situation. Had we had choroegraphed moves, I definitely would have been fine with it.