4 College Hacks That Will Boost Your GPA and Your Mental Sanity.
You Can Spend These Years Stressed or You Can Spend Them Growing. The Choice is Yours.
Before you get anywhere into this article I want to give you a little bit of a background about myself as a student, and a little bit of an idea for where I am coming from as I move into my points.
Coming up through school, I was never really that great of a student until around my junior year of high school.
Through middle school and early high school, I wasn’t a bad student by any stretch of the imagination (like all of the entrepreneur gurus claim they were) but I didn’t get straight A’s. I was a B and C student.
That all turned around for me during my junior year, and then carried into my first few years of college where I was consistently a 3.9 to 4.0 student.
That’s because I found out that all it really takes to get yourself the marks that you are looking for is to have certain practices that anyone can implement. Believe it or not, those “straight A students” aren’t really geniuses or trying incredibly hard.
They kind of just have discipline, and they understand the following.
1.) There is No Reason to try Being “Cool”
I was absolutely shocked when I first got to college and realized just how much 18 year old kids wanted to party, drink, and get into bed with each other.
I’d been going through all of the college applications and what not where you’d keep seeing, and sometimes even be asked if the primary reason you were going to school was to party. The fact that the honest answer for a lot of people is “yes” still amazes me.
If you are going to college because you see it as a way for yourself to drink, meet new people, and on and on and on… then you are really just asking to be stressed out and worried all the time.
Alcohol isn’t good for you, and I don’t need to get into that here. All of that socializing isn’t great for you either, because in most cases it just leads to awkward situations, drama, and heavy emotions that you have no idea how to handle when you are eighteen.
So seriously, if you want to do well in college (and moving on after college for that matter.) Just cut the crap and see what it’s like to act like a disciplined adult.
Go to bed by 10:00 PM and drink water. It really does go a long way, and you’ll perform better without even really having to put any excess energy into it.
2.) Just Pay Attention in Class.
One of the downsides of being the “good student” in your class or in your friend groups is the constantly being treated like you have some sort of secret that helps you keep your grades up.
I cannot tell you how many times I have gotten back quizzes or tests in school just to have friends that got lower grades tell me how “lucky” I am to have gotten a 100, or how it “must be nice to be smart?”
On the side, you get asked for advice a lot, but only when a big exam is about to come up. The worst part is that your actual advice of “take notes during class, and then go over them before class” is never what your peers are actually looking for.
Trust me, there really is no “secret” to remembering information. There are tips and tricks, and I’ll probably eventually put those into another article, but for now the biggest “secret” that I can tell you is that I just pay attention to what is going on when I’m in class.
That doesn’t just mean to listen to what the teacher is saying, but actually make it your intention to understand the material.
I always like to tell people that you “can’t remember what you never membered” and this is what I am talking about. You will not retain the information while you are taking an exam, if you never bothered learning the information in the first place.
3.) Always Remember That College is not the End Goal.
If you are in college, you should have goals that go well beyond your college years.
Maybe you want a particular job, or you want to start a business. Maybe you have a very well and clear defined mission, or maybe you don’t. No matter the case, college should not be your greatest accomplishment in life. It should, at most, serve as a path to get you there.
Personally, I have never gotten even half as stressed for my final exams as I’ve seen some people get over simple quizzes. I’ll never be one to tell you that your grades aren’t important, but a B is definitely not going to be the end of the world for you.
If anything, the world is shifting farther and farther away from employers caring about whether or not you even have a degree, let alone what your GPA was. So do not sweat it. This is also why it’s important to always keep your career in mind as your goal, and not the next assessment that you have.
Just letting some of this pressure off of yourself will help you to think so much more clearly, and in turn you will perform better anyway.
Stressing out over exams has got to be at the top of the list for why any students do poorly on their exams.
4.) Be Stronger Than the Exams
That leads me right into my last point where I’ll narrow in on exams themselves.
So many students are going to school with pretty much their only focus being to do well on exams.
They just go through the motions with their homework and their class participation, and then as soon as an exam is mentioned, the gears in their head start turning.
The class session right before an exam is always riddled with stupid questions about the exam, that really aren’t going to help anyone.
- What is the format of the test?
- How many questions are there?
- Will it be timed?
- Will the chapter that we just went over be on the exam?
Listen…
If you show up to class, pay attention, have the intention of learning the material, and have some confidence… you will not need to worry this much about the technicalities of your exams.
Keep it simple.
Exams are just questions.
You are asked a question… you give an answer.
Don’t read too far into it. Just answer the questions on the paper (or these days… the screen) and see how it goes.
Let the results tell you whether you need to be worried or not for the next steps forward.
If Nothing Else Works, Always Remember This.
You make a countless number of choices every single day, and every single choice that you make has to be made for some sort of reason.
Deciding to go to college is going to be one of the biggest decisions that you ever make in your life, even though it doesn’t feel like it for a lot of us since we are young, dumb, and overwhelmed when we are making this decision.
If you do not have any goal or desire to get better grades, or live a more stress free life while you are in college, then the above advice just isn’t for you.
I do not get a vote in how you live your life, and very very few people outside of yourself actually do. I’m just here providing the limited wisdom that I have, and telling you what I do.
I can promise you that if you put more of an effort into increasing your focus, relieving your stress, and maximizing your discipline, you will see good things come your way.
It takes time, and it takes effort. Not the kind of effort that you can “sprint” on and work your tail end off for a week or two to turn things around.
You have to form these habits in order to see any real improvement, and to see the benefits in the future.
If you would rather use your time to socialize, get away from your parents, explore the world, or whatever the case, then go and do that.
The first step toward your goals is always going to be identifying those goals and getting crystal clear about them.
