This course is for high school and university students, and for any young person ready to take their future into their own hands. The brain keeps developing until about the age of twenty-five, which makes the years of school and study a good season to build the habits that help it work well.
In this course you learn how your brain develops and why that matters for your choices, and you meet the brain systems behind focus, flexibility and mood, with what helps each one. You look at what hurts the brain, from drugs and alcohol to head injuries and poor sleep, and at the healthier alternatives, and you practise talking back to automatic negative thoughts. It is an educational course: it adds to, and never replaces, advice from a trained health professional, and one lesson covers when and how to ask for help.
The lessons run from Brain Basics and The Brain Before 25, through Prefrontal Cortex & Executive Function, to Nutrition & Physical Exercise and Mental Exercise & Stress Reduction. Every lesson has its lesson questions, with your answers compared against the facilitator's guide, and closes with My Lesson in Action, one first step for the week ahead. Along the way you write a one-page picture of the life you want and practise calming skills such as Belly Breathing. The last lesson brings it into your studying with Study Smarter: My Retrieval and Spacing Planner.
I suggest you begin with Brain Basics and its lesson questions. A free 24-hour trial of the whole course lets you look around first.
Dr Alten du PlessisFounder, LearnSmart4Life