How to be a great student

I know I said I was taking a break but here are some tips for being a great student:

1. Honesty
It is vitally important that we have an open and honest relationship. If you played a hand badly I will want to know why. If the reason is because you were tilted then you must tell me you were tilted. I need to get inside your head and the quickest way to do that is with your co-operation.

2. Ask questions
I am sure you have tons of questions. Make sure you ask them during sessions and/or between sessions when necessary. There are no silly questions and you can ask the same question more than once if you need to.

3. Session Summaries
Write a brief summary of each session and send it to me. This achieves two things:
• Retention – Your brain gets another chance to retain what we have covered
• Understanding – I get to see whether you have fully understood what we have covered (and can quickly correct any misunderstanding before it turns to spew).

4. Identify and record ‘not sure spots’
There will be hundreds of times during a session where you are not sure what to do. You need to identify and record these spots somehow so we can work on them. You can Mark Hands in HEM, Keep a Journal or Spreadsheet or whatever you feel is best for identifying your weaknesses. Basically you are building a list of things you need to work on.

5. Contribute to Google Group
You should have received an invite to my student group (if you haven’t then get on my case right now!).
Have a browse and start posting on here frequently. Again there are no stupid questions and you will never get flamed.

6. Don’t relax between sessions
With coaching you get out of it what you put in. You will be provided with a video of each session so make sure you watch it back at least once and take extensive notes. I know students don’t do this often enough because they rarely come back with further questions or seek clarification on certain points. We are going to be covering some complex stuff as we go along and it is not all going to go in first time around.