ABSTRACT
The shortest answer I can find to the question ‘What makes a good learner?’ is ‘One who can get started’. There is some truth in this over-simplification, verified by experience of leaving essays, revision and dissertations to the last minute. Plausible reasons to do something else instead flood into the mind. So does the picture of study for a degree being solitary confinement with books, notes and, if you are lucky, a word-processor. The mental image is completed if the study is done alone, surrounded by stale coffee mugs, yesterday’s cooking, in an unheated room, in the middle of winter, while wearing three layers of clothing.
