Visualization is a creation of a mental vision of an event, action, or situation. It is the act of imagery-making. Of course, it is a personal development technique that can be used for different purposes. In particular, college students are more likely to benefit from this tool to mentally preview their high achievements. There are good reasons why one would need to visualize their goal. A university student might want to do that to perform well during thesis defense, classroom presentations, and speaking exams; they may also use vision to become outstanding and to shape the career ahead of them.

5 Reasons Why Every Student Needs to Develop Visualization Skills

Thesis Defense

It is so true that writing scientific research in the form of a thesis can be a painful process for graduate and post-graduate students. Not only could the writing per se be difficult; stress, anxiety, and frustration associated with it are factors which can only worsen the situation and slow down the students’ performance. Luckily, the student can make use of the visualization technique that lends itself to various aims.

As writers from Perfect Essay claim, visualization helps a student get started, make progress, and successfully finish their thesis. But, how? I would simply imagine my thesis defense day. Before I started working on my Master’s thesis, I have always pictured myself in front of the examiners and jury members, performing my presentation and explaining the details of my research enthusiastically, which pushed me forwards to invest more time and effort in writing my dissertation because I have already pictured my success.

Classroom Presentations

There are many students who prefer to be only listeners in the classroom. They do not like to be active participants perhaps on the account that they do not perceive themselves as capable of undertaking an informative PowerPoint presentation. This unease could arise from the lack of effective use of visualization. Indeed, instead of seeing yourself unable to face a classroom audience, you may want to start applying visualization in a positive way.

I also used to ask some of my family members to perform the role of the audience, as I also used to ask them to ask me embarrassing questions about the content of my presentation so that I avoid the abrupt embarrassment while presenting at school. When I started to perform my presentation, there was a voice in the back of my head that kept saying: “Oh, this set-up seems familiar”.

Speaking Exams

A speaking exam could be a student’s future event that may turn out to be a magnificent experience by visualization. Getting very good marks in a speaking exam is not impossible. It is an achievable academic goal. Let’s say that next week you are sitting for a C1 English oral exam. What you should do is not only memorize vocabulary and grammar rules to make yourself look like a proficient English speaker who has a good command of the English language. What can I do? You can simply foresee your exam day through the power of your mind. I cannot do that! Trust me you can.

Experts from Essay Zoo held that once you believe that you will do well on your oral exam, a mental schema begins to shape up in your mind; the schema may comprise the image of yourself engaging in a conversation with the examiners. Such a picture could be further developed through imagining yourself being asked questions about the topics you have studied in your English course. Indeed, you can also visualize what types of questions you might be asked, how you will answer them, and with which attitude. I tried this strategy every time I had an oral exam, and I got desirable results. Most of the time I got the same questions I expected, so my mind just resorted to the answer that I imagined myself providing at the time.

Academic Excellence

Students have various academic aims. There are those who, other than seeking success, would set high goals and would like to be the best—academic excellence. Such students seem to make the most out of visualization methods, as they use it continuously to remind themselves that they are second to none. The only mental schema mirrored on their minds is them being number one. According to cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics, schemata could represent actions, situations, events, sequences, and so on, which facilitates the students’ learning and performance. Thus, if a student familiarizes their mind to perceive them as the best when it comes to academic achievements, the same mental view would repeat itself over again and again to become a way of life that the student has already adjusted themselves to.

Professional Goals

Additionally, university students could also deploy visualization to fulfill their professional goals. Thanks to the image-making operation, a student can set professional objectives and perceive them. For instance, through such a self-development tool, a student may motivate themselves to study harder in order to realize some professional goal—internship, dream job, etc. A goal-oriented student who makes use of mental imagery along with deep focus and emotional energy can reach their dream job because they believed in it. That very belief could be incorporated into the shape of a mental vision that fosters self-improvement. Conformably with research in neuropsychology, the brain perceives the imagination of a certain action as if it happened in reality. In that, thanks to neurons and their patterns, our brains can interpret the input as a real stimulus. So, if you keep imagining yourself as a successful business person, chances are you will become one.

Wrap-up

To put it in a nutshell, the above-mentioned reasons justify one’s need for visualization. Naturally, every college student would appreciate being successful and outstanding. Mental imagery is a powerful tool that is at the students’ disposal to benefit from.