Audio: What Really Matters: Study Skills

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Vicky: All right, now we have someone we want you to meet- If you haven’t already. We mean really meet her and get to know her work. Because if you have young ones in school that need better study skills-

Jen: Most of them do.

Vicky: Then this is your opportunity to soar- hint, hint.

Jen: Ah, is that a pun?

Vicky: Hint, hint. We’re going to call our friend Susan Krueger. Call: Now Susan was once a frustrated student who struggled in school and now she is teaching others how to get better grades in less time. She’s a great resource for us.

Susan: Hello?

Vicky: Hello, hello, it’s Vicky and Jen.

Susan: Hello, how are you?

Vicky: Hi!

Jen: We’re doing great.

Vicky: We’re having fun today.

Jen: Yes we are.

Vicky: Celebrating and all.

Susan: Yes, congratulations that’s absolutely outstanding. What a benchmark for you: three hundred episodes.

Jen: Thank you.

Vicky: Thank you, Susan.

Jen: We’re quite proud.

Susan: Yes, and I’m proud for you. Very good.

Jen: Thank you.

Vicky: Do you have a benchmark, as you say, that you would like to share with us today, because we’re all into happy news right now.

Jen: Yeah.

Susan: Great. Yeah, I have a great story to share with you.

Jen: Okay.

Vicky: I have to stop you.

Jen: Uh-oh.

Vicky: You’re a really good story-teller.

Jen: Yes.

Susan: Why thank you.

Vicky: You are, and I say that.

Jen: Except when you interrupt her.

Vicky: Oh, I know, I know, but I had to, because her newsletter is really good.

Jen: Yes, yes.

Vicky: Because we hear stories about maybe her son’s struggle in school or she had a great Halloween story about her grandmother. Man, she’s just- you’re a good writer and you’re a good storyteller. I just had to throw that in.

Jen: Yeah, yeah, okay.

Susan: Thank you, I appreciate that. I am glad you like my stories.

Vicky: Okay, so tell us another one.

Susan: All right; this is really amazing and I had nothing to do with it. It happened all without any of my personal knowledge until late in the development. A young man named Timothy Decatur, he is in sixth grade and he is from Madison, Virginia. He is in a middle school that’s sixth through eighth grade and he is the first sixth-grader, ever, to be voted student body president. What’s really remarkable about him is that he also has Asperger’s and a couple of years ago his parents were told that he would never be very social and they were given a lot of very limiting. Basically-

Vicky: Information, yeah.

Susan: Yeah, other people set the bars kind of low for him but he has blasted right through that and as the student body president he’s also very involved in sports. He started to recognize a lot of his friends were losing eligibility to play sports because they didn’t know how to study. This prompted him to think that there had to be a solution. He went online and eventually found information on our program; he found studyskills.com, and- by the way this story is laid out in some more detail at studyskills.com/timothy.

Jen: Oh really?

Susan: Yeah you can see a picture of him. It’s an outstanding picture of him the guy looks like he’s ready to take over the world as president.

Vicky: That’s awesome.

Susan: He read through- I can’t even imagine everything he read through on the website because he took a; he basically made a presentation to his school board, asking them to adopt our program. Again, this all happened without any of my knowledge-

Vicky: Really?

Susan: Yeah. Local newspaper wrote an article about it and I guess I should say to your listeners, I have a Study Skills curriculum for schools to use. To teach students how to study. He has this newspaper article that’s written about his presentation and I read the article and it was like reading my own words back to me. He did such a good job of transferring my message from my website and communicating it to his school board.

Vicky: Yeah. He did his homework- he researched.

Jen: Yeah.

Susan: He did. He really did. The school board was enthusiastic about the idea but of course budgets are a big concern.

Vicky: Yeah.

Jen: Darn budgets.

Susan: They might have this piece a little off. I’m not sure about this, but I believe they had asked his administration to come back and make a proposal a month later. A month later he wasn’t happy with what the administration had put together so with forty-eight hours’ notice he organized a petition and had 250 of his peers sign it.

Vicky: Wow.

Susan: Yeah, take it back to the school board and that was when, well shortly after that it came to my attention, because in the middle, after that school board meeting and I don’t know what happened at the second school board meeting, but I do know that he went on to apply for grants. If you’ve ever filled out a grant application-

Vicky: Oh my gosh, yeah.

Susan: It’s a lot of work. He ran into some problems with the grants. He missed some deadlines and then that was when he reached out to me. It was the middle of January, I believe, when I first received this email from him; outlining what he had done, and I was really inspired by his leadership. Obviously he accepted the message I’ve been trying to put out there and it resonated with him and of course that was very exciting for me. I wanted to do something to support him. At the time I received this email I happened to be sitting in a roomful of fellow entrepreneurs. This is my semi-annual meeting with my mastermind group where we all just share ideas, help each other troubleshoot problems and so-forth that we have with our small businesses.

Vicky: Right.

Susan: I read this email from him and the room was so inspired and-

Vicky: Oh, I bet.

Susan: One of the people suggested that he find a community sponsor to help fund this. Before I could really even think or inhale or anything another member of the group at the end of the table was from Virginia. He slammed his hand down on the table and he said, “I’m your community sponsor.”

Jen: That is so- yeah.

Vicky: That was fast! That’s awesome.

Susan: Yeah, so just like that we had a community sponsor.

Vicky: Oh my gosh.

Susan: We are still trying to work with the administration to see if this is something that they want to do. If they will make space for it, that’s kind of the hang-up point right now, but really the inspiring thing-

Jen: Wow.

Susan: For me was to know that there’s this inspirational sixth-grader out there who was given, by some people, was told he shouldn’t expect much out of his life and-

Vicky: Oh, wow.

Susan: Only two years later, look at the fight that he’s put forth for the benefit of his classmates.

Vicky: Let’s fast-forward ten more years. I mean, this kid is amazing.

Jen: He’s going to be amazing.

Vicky: You know what I mean?

Jen: He is already.

Vicky: That’s unbelievable.

Susan: He really is. He’s an inspiration to me; he’s an inspiration I think to everybody.

Jen: That’s great.

Vicky: Well, in the-

Susan: Regardless of what happens.

Vicky: Yeah, I mean that is such a powerful story. Yes, he’s inspired you, but it just proves how your program has made a difference in other lives. How you’ve touched so many other people.

Susan: Thank you. Of course that’s exactly why I do what I do; because I struggled myself and once I figured out how to avoid the struggle I certainly have dedicated my life to try to save others from that. Yeah, it is super exciting to know that that’s hitting a chord with him.

Jen: For everybody: it’s so funny because people that I’ve generally chatted with or whatever, people think “Oh I get good grades,” or “I don’t need to worry about that,” and “well, I can read the review sheet and I do fine. I’m a good test-taker,” that kind of stuff? It’s so funny because that gets you through maybe this stage of your life but then you go to college and then you later get a job.

Vicky: Right.

Jen: These study skills that-

Vicky: It’s more than study skills.

Jen: You teach about and have shown us about are so much more than that. It’s more than soaring at school. It’s more home, life, job, later –

Susan: are life-long skills, yeah.

Vicky: Life, yeah.

Jen: Yeah, it is. It really is. It’s a life-long skill that- and you think you might not need it but you probably- even the A students. It’s crazy.

Susan: There’s another story, too, that’s just evolved. We have a college intern that just started with us, I think about ten days ago and she was saying how she had a 3.7 grade point average graduating from high school two years ago. She got to college and was totally lost. She had no idea how to take notes, how to read the text books and she tremendously struggled through her first year.

Vicky: Yeah, that’s tough.

Susan: She’s been writing our latest- two articles from this week and next week are from her about her experience with that.

Vicky: That’s great.

Susan: Yeah she’s proof too, that it’s not about what grades you get but it really is just knowing how to navigate any of the challenges that come your way.

Jen: Yeah, and even I use some of the things at our house. I just have a third and fourth grader now and since it’s the end of the year and we’re heading into the next year… Fourth grade around here seems to be a doozy, and my younger kid is going to be in fourth grade next year and we’ve been starting to try to utilize good study skills and focus on that organization and that you shared with us about: This is what you do. You prepare yourself to do homework. Don’t just pull out that sheet and get started, you know what I mean? Think about-

Vicky: Gear up. Gear up for it.

Jen: Pre-assess what do we need to do. Is everything in the right pocket? Is everything; get your mind organized and focused and have that place that you do it and things like that. We’re doing all that stuff because we’re-

Susan: Great.

Jen: We need it.

Susan: That’s just great. That’s great, and if you do it regularly that process is really short and quick and fast.

Jen: Yeah, and it becomes a habit. It becomes something that you just do. You know that it helps you, you need it and it makes you more successful. There’s no doubt.

Vicky: We know from the three times Susan has been on our show that all of this spills on over into everything else in your life. Just being an organized person in other areas. Having a simple morning that runs smoothly and preparing for your career. It just all spills over into other …

Jen: Yeah, definitely.

Vicky: Other areas. Now, Susan-

Susan: Oh, yeah that’s very true.

Vicky: Summer is near. What will you do this summer for yourself, for your children? Are you going to take a break? Are you going to stay sharp? How does summer; what is summer like for you?

Susan: Summer’s going to be a little unique for us this year because my twenty-year-old cousin is living with us. He’s been living with us since January. He came as an intern and originally was going to stay just for a few months. He’s really interested in Entrepreneurship and also in need of study skills. He’s a really, really smart person but has been struggling in school so we worked together with an ADHD diagnosis this last few months and some study skills. We have connected so well, he’s been a fantastic addition to our family that he’s going to stick around for another year, at least.

Jen: Nice. Wow, great!

Susan: Our summer is about showing him how fantastic Michigan can be during the summer.

Vicky: Oh, that it is, yes.

Jen: Michigan can be fantastic in the summer can’t it?

Vicky: It is.

Jen: Oh, nice.

Vicky: We’re not too far from you. Yeah.

Jen: I know. Cool.

Susan: Yeah so we will be taking him to Mackinaw Island and Sleeping Bear Dunes and some of the other sites to see in Northern Michigan in the summer. I mean we’re just celebrating the new addition to our family and the fun that he’s brought for all of us. For my husband, myself and my son and daughter, too.

Jen: That’s great. That sounds fun.

Vicky: Doug and I had our honeymoon on Mackinaw Island.

Susan: You did? Oh, that’s exciting to know.

Vicky: Yeah, we stayed at The Grand Hotel. Just one night, of course, because that’s all we could afford. We were just young little yipper snappers, yeah. Then a few years ago before Ellie was born we were able to take Aden there. We went to Sutton’s Bay in Michigan and we took a day trip to Mackinaw to show Aiden. “Well this is where mom and dad had our honeymoon and-”

Jen: He’s like, “What’d you do?” And you’re like, “Uh-uh-uh.”

Vicky: We didn’t go there, Jen.

Susan: You rode horses, right?

Vicky: Yeah we rode the fairy to the island, yes.

Susan: That’s the thing about Mackinaw Island. There’s no cars allowed so you have to ride the horses.

Vicky: Right. Did you know that Jen about Mackinaw?

Jen: No, I didn’t.

Vicky: That you have to get there by ferry?

Jen: Never. I have not ever been there.

Vicky: Yeah. It’s neat.

Jen: I usually prefer to go south, where it’s warmer, you know. That’s so funny.

Vicky: Susan it has been a pleasure to talk to you again.

Jen: We’re so glad that we know you.

Susan: Thank you. Thank you for all the work that to empower mom’s to feel good about the wonderful jobs that they do. You guys offer a wonderful service. Great values; so I’m really pleased to be a part of it.

Vicky: Great. Well, thank you.

Jen: We’re happy we know you.

Vicky: Yes.

Jen: We’ll be in touch.

Vicky: Let’s be in touch. For sure.

Susan: Okay great. Thank you. Take care.

Jen: All right, Susan. Bye.

Vicky: You, too.

Susan: Bye-bye.

 

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