Some people seem to do badly at school no matter how hard they try, so they tell themselves that they just don't have the talent. But in many cases that's not true.

I've been tutoring classmates for years, and I've come to think that the real reason they do badly is that they're not working the right way. It's not that they don't have talent, or they're not studying hard enough... they're just not studying effectively.

I had a friend in law school who spent 2 hours every evening reading her textbook, but she kept failing the tests. She told me she had no talent for law and might as well quit. But when I looked at her test the real reason was obvious. The test was conducted in essay format, and she didn't know how to write essays. Most of the time she wrote irrelevant answers, and even when she was writing the right thing, her answer was completely unorganised. She should have been practising analysing test questions and writing essays, not memorising textbooks.

I had another friend, this time from philosophy class. He could write well, but he was barely passing. I looked at his assignments, and again found that it wasn't about talent. The problem was that there was, well, no philosophy in his assignments. He wasn't arguing for a position; he was just writing long introductions to the topics. I suggested that he read articles from academic journals, figure out how they argued, and copy them. He got A- at the end of the semester, a big jump up from C.

That's just 2 examples; I could list more. (I'm an example as well: I used to think I was hopeless at physical education, but eventually realised the reason I kept losing was simply that I didn't practise enough, even though I thought I did.) My point is, a lot of people think that they have no talent at something when in fact they just haven't been doing it the right way. "Talented" people are just people who work hard and work right.