How to Be a Successful Student
Continuing your education is likely one of the most exciting, frightening, anxiety-driven things you will do in your life. However, it is also one of the most rewarding things that you can do. It is a great accomplishment and can open up many doors for you and your future. Before this can happen, it is essential to take it seriously and learn how to be a successful student, not just another student. Making yourself better is also the best way to make the lives around you better. To do that, you first need to be successful in school. The tips below can help you be a successful student and lay down the groundwork for you to be a successful graduate.
Make School a Priority
- A lot of things in your life require a time commitment, make sure school doesn’t get ignored
- Examine your reason for returning to school to help you realize how important school is
- Education is your tool to improve your life and the life of those around you, prioritize it at the top
Take a second to sit back and examine your life. You might be working at a job that you can’t afford to lose. You might be in a relationship with a partner you want to keep happy. Maybe you’re married and have children you need to provide for. Perhaps you are looking after a parent or other loved one that demands a lot of time. Maybe you have a dog or cat or different types of fur babies that you need to keep alive. Whatever you have going on in your life, the point is that almost everyone has multiple things that require a lot of their time and attention. A lot of priorities.
You have all that stuff going on in your life, and now you are also in school. Let’s take another second to figure out why you are in school. Maybe it’s to get a much better job than you already have. Perhaps it’s to provide a better life for your partner and your children. Maybe it’s to make your parents proud. You might want to get another fur baby to give your current one company. Whatever your reason for returning to school, you need to make it one of your priorities.
Ideally, you would make school your top priority. It is your tool to make a better life for yourself and all of the people that fall into your other priorities. However, it’s understandable if it doesn’t always work out that way, but you need to make it one of your top priorities. Your education is your way of making yourself better for yourself and others; you do not want to treat that lightly. You, and those whose lives you want to improve, are worth prioritizing at the very top.
Do More than is Asked of You
- Don’t just go to school to learn, go to school to grow
- Challenge yourself every day to do more
- If you go above and beyond imagine how far you will surpass your goals
You may think that going to school only provides you with an opportunity to learn. School is not just a tool that you can use to learn; it is a tool that you should use to grow. The only way you will grow is by making sure you are challenging yourself each and every day, each and every class, each and every assignment. Educators typically remember two types of students: those that do the bare minimum to get a passing grade (or not) and those that always go above and beyond in everything they do. You want to be a student on that second list.
A lot of professions have certification exams that are meant to be tough. They are intended to separate the two types of students mentioned above. Simply going to class and passing all your classes with A’s may not be enough to guarantee success on these certification exams. To give yourself the best shot, you want to go above and beyond in all your classes. Do more than what is asked of you, get tutoring with your instructors, be the first to volunteer for the project presentation, be the one to answer questions in class. Making these habits will be the best thing to stand out in a positive context.
Why do you want to stand out? Have you ever applied for a job before? Are you planning to continue your education and need to submit an application? Are they asking for references or letters of recommendation? You will want to be able to provide professional and educational letters of recommendation. To ensure you can get outstanding letters, you need to have stood out as an outstanding student. Every little bit of extra that you do in class can be that bit of extra that helps you land that dream job.
Focus on Your Overall Goal Not the Minor Obstacles
- There will be bumps in the road but don’t let those make you forget what you are doing
- Brush them off and keep your eyes on the prize
Let’s envision a scenario which you may have found yourself in, or at least one very similar:
You are a little tired from the day and are watching TV on your couch, having kicked off your shoes and socks. Maybe you drank too much water earlier or had too much fiber during the day and find yourself needing to go to the restroom. Let’s call this the big picture, your overall goal: use the bathroom. You get up off the couch and face your first minor obstacle, “Where did I leave that damn remote?” You search around for a while, find it, and pause the show you are watching. You’ve overcome your first obstacle and proceed to your overall goal. You start walking down the hall and flip on the hall light, except it doesn’t turn on; your second minor obstacle. You know the hallway well enough and decide to walk down it in the dark, the second obstacle resolved. As you turn into the bathroom, you find out you turned a little too early when your big toe gets stubbed against the door frame, the following minor obstacle. You stomp your foot and curse a little, but proceed with what you need to do as you overcome this obstacle and make it to the restroom and complete your overall goal.
In this case, you kept the overall goal in mind, despite all the minor obstacles that presented themselves, making it to the bathroom. It may not be the best comparison, the bathroom and school, though they are both places where you likely get your best thinking done, and you feel much better after you’ve finished with them. This means it is not a stretch to apply this type of thinking to school; keep your overall goal in mind. Think about why you are in school, it may be for a better job, a better pay rate, a better life. Keep this overall goal in mind as you come up against each of those minor obstacles that will indeed present themselves. As they come up, just think, “This is just a toe stub, I can stomp and curse, but I will move past it.”
Avoid Getting Overwhelmed and Take It Piece by Piece
- Don’t get overwhelmed by the big picture
- Get organized and don’t procrastinate
- Knock out one small thing at a time then move onto the next
- One thing at a time adds up to accomplishing your overall goal
We’ve already touched on all the stuff that is going on in your life. Throwing school in the mix can be enough to overwhelm any person. So how do you avoid getting overwhelmed? Don’t look at all the things you need to do; find one thing you know you can do and finish that one first. Once that one is completed, then move onto the next task. Take it piece by piece, day by day, study early and often.
Your best friend in helping you achieve this is organization. By getting everything organized, you give yourself the ability to break up all your priorities into small pieces and plan them out. When you look at everything you need to do in smaller bits and pieces, it becomes more manageable, and you won’t feel as overwhelmed. It will still be a lot to do, and regardless of how organized you are, it won’t make a difference if you don’t do the things you have outlined for yourself. More specifically, do not procrastinate. Procrastination is the surest way to limit your potential for success. Get organized, avoid procrastination, and you will surely be on your way to succeeding as a student.
Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help
- You are in school to learn, a major part of that is asking questions
- No one can read your mind, they can’t help you if you don’t let them know what you need help with
Everyone has those people in their life who, knowingly or unknowingly, drop down bits of life knowledge every once in a while. I was given one of these by my father once. He said something along the lines of, “A self-made person, regardless of how successful they are, never reaches their full potential. They could have been so much more if they asked for help.” Whoa.
This sentiment applies to nearly all aspects of your life but is especially doubly applicable to school. You are in school to learn, to figure out the things that you don’t know. Your professors, administrators, TA’s, whoever it may be, are all there to teach you and help you learn. It would be a safe bet to say that none of those people are mind readers. How can you expect anyone of them to teach you the things you do not know if you do not ask them to? How can you expect them to help you if you do not ask for help? In most instances, a school’s success is measured by the success of their students, so almost everyone there will do whatever they can to help you. You are the one investing your time, money, and sanity to finish your education. It is your responsibility to make sure you receive the most out of your school that you can, and that all starts with asking questions, asking for help.
Know That You Can Do It
- Ignore all the reasons that you tell yourself why you won’t be able to succeed
- So many people have done it before you, there is no reason why you cant
Take a minute to think of some of the people you know who have completed a higher education degree. Maybe it is one of your idiot siblings. Or that absent-minded friend you have that sliced the tip of their finger off when cutting a banana. Oh, or maybe it’s your uncle that lost his life savings in Vegas that one time. You’re smarter than all of them, right? If they can finish college, then there is no reason that you can’t.
There will be so many reasons that you will come up with to convince yourself why you won’t succeed in college. I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough time. I’m too old. I’m too young. I’m don’t understand this new technology. I can’t read fast enough. My vision is too bad. I’m too sickly. My joints hurt too much. I don’t like waking up early. It’s too far. I overate yesterday. I spilled a soda on my books, and now they are sticky. They aren’t all good reasons, but you may find yourself coming up with whatever you can so you don’t have to get out of bed in the morning. There is one thing you should know: You Can Do It.
There have been countless people before you that have succeeded in college. There will be innumerable people after you that will thrive in college. If all of them can do it, there is no reason why you can’t also do it. If you don’t feel confident when in school, then pretend that you are. It sounds clichéd, but fake it till you make it. Soon enough, you will find that you are not pretending anymore, and you genuinely are succeeding. Then you will know that you will do it.
Persevere
- Make sure you are not penalized for answering a question wrong
- A guess can give you a better chance of getting points than a blank answer
- Partial credit may be awarded for parts of questions answered correctly
When someone drops out of school, it’s usually not because they weren’t smart enough or could not do it. When you look at those situations, it usually boils down to a few general reasons. Maybe they didn’t realize the importance of school and did not make it a priority. They could have gotten too overwhelmed with everything. It is possible that they focused too much on minor obstacles and could not overcome those to reach the overall goal. Likely, they did not reach out to anyone for help. Most surely though, they reached a point where they thought that they could not do it. All of these things will eventually lead to one of the main reasons students do not find success in school. They gave up.
Don’t let that be you. Use the resources made available to you to succeed. Make school a priority. Take it one day at a time to avoid getting overwhelmed. Focus on the overall goal, not those pesky obstacles. Ask for help. Find support, do whatever you need to to make sure you continue. Find someone in your life, your children, your spouse, a friend, a mentor, whoever it is, and ask them to help make sure you don’t give up. Think of the reason you are returning to school. Maybe you want to make a better life for your children. Perhaps you want to have a more significant impact at work. Maybe you know you are worth more than what you are doing right now.
There may be a point in school when you feel like giving up, when you just want to quit. Remember, no one can do it alone, so ask your children to watch for this point and ask them to tell you a simple sentence, “You are doing it for me.” That can give you the kick in the pants you need to continue. Ask your significant other to watch for that moment when you might be giving up and have them tell you a simple sentence, “You’re worth more than this.” You bet you are worth more, and you will prove it to them. Use the resources around you. Find your support. Don’t give up. Persevere.
The driving force towards success is perseverance. Often, those who find success are not the smartest, strongest, or best equipped for the job. They are the ones that don’t give up, the ones that stare failure in the face and say, “Not today,” then continue on. There is absolutely no reason why that can’t be you.