Until2022’s Comprehensive Guide to Getting Those A’s
I. Weekdays
Wake up early, finish any leftover homework, review any difficult flashcards, drink some water and do some sort of exercise, finish packing your bag.
Get to class 20 minutes early. You’ll have time to set up, read over some old notes, drink some coffee, review your to do list, catch up with friends in your lecture, or just get the seat that you want.
Sit in the first or second row and leave your phone in your bag. Try and turn your notes into mind maps or flow charts as the lecture goes on. Note down case studies or examples, handy acronyms, or hints from the professor. You might get distracted and end up doodling, but it’s better than ending up on Instagram.
If you have gaps in between lectures, use them to do assignments or finish up notes. I always use the first part of my lunch break to finish my online quizzes so I don’t have to worry about them when I get home. You’ll thank yourself when you get home that evening!
Find a good group of friends that you study well with, and try to teach a concept to them as if you were the professor. Use a whiteboard, or a piece of paper. Do your best impression of their voice. Then swap over. One of the best ways to learn is by teaching someone else.
If you have some free time and you’re by yourself, take the last topic you learnt and scribble out a quick outline. Then use your phone to record yourself explaining it, as if you were teaching a person who has never heard of it. Like I said, teaching someone else is an excellent way to learn - and you’ll also have a bite-sized summary video to review before the test!
When you get home, note down any assignments or homework you were given that day. If it’s going to take less than 45 minutes to do it, then do it straight away. If it’s going to take longer, then make a start on it immediately. Then you can decide whether to keep working or whether you should finish it off the next day.
Take your lecture content for the day and turn it into flashcards - I use Anki, but Quizlet is also pretty good.
File away any notes or handouts appropriately, and do any ten-minute tasks, like quickly emailing your professor or reading a short chapter.
Go through your flashcards for the day and the previous days (order them based on how hard they were, so you know how often you should repeat them. Anki does this automatically.)
Pack your bag for the next day. Don’t forget any assignments that have to be handed in, get your meals and outfit ready, put your water bottle in the fridge and make sure your room is tidy.
II. Weekends When Nothing is Due
On Friday evenings, do all of your homework or small assignments. If your friends are going out, tell them you’ll be there once you’re finished. Smash out anything and everything that’s due that coming week, and if there’s nothing, then whip out your list of assessments and pick the closest one. Smash one out that evening, even if it’s just a bad draft.
Allocate half a day to your readings. Make notes and diagrams, fill in the gaps in your notes, make flashcards out of the definitions or important bits.
Allocate another half day to your flashcards from that week. Make sure you interleave the subjects and use spaced repetition so you’re studying the hardest ones most frequently.
III. Weekends When You Actually Have Assessments Coming Up
You’ve been working ahead, regularly reviewing your notes via active recall using flashcards, and keeping on top of your homework and assignments - so you shouldn’t be panicking too much.
Get out your revision notes, your textbook notes and your flashcards. Now put them all aside, and try to write down as much as you can remember from memory. If you have past exam questions, try to answer those. Get a friend (see I5) to test you on the content. Make sure you know your formulae, key concepts and definitions by heart.
If there’s an assignment coming up, you should already have a draft ready, so just print that out, bring up the marking schedule if you have it and edit it to high heaven. Then type the edits out. Run it through Grammarly or a similar app. Send it to the friend I just mentioned, and ask them to read over it. Compare it to someone else’s in your class. Make sure it’s backed up to iCloud or Google Drive. Once you’re happy (and don’t overthink it!) then send it in and forget about it.
IV. Handy Hints
Always start your creative projects as soon as you get them. You can pull an essay out of your arse with six hours to spare, but you do not want to be designing a poster at 3am, trust me.
If you don’t know it, it will be on the test. This is Sod’s Law. Google it, make your friends explain it to you, watch a Khan Academy video on it, send your professor a panicked email and ask them for a tutorial on it. Do every single question pertaining to it in your entire syllabus. Become An Expert (TM) on it.
Group projects are usually shit, but you will survive with the following steps:
Read up on Belbin team roles and work out which you are, and which the people in your team are likely to be. Then work out how you can best lever everyone’s personality for the best possible result with minimal arguing, slacking, tears or last-minute panicking.
Determine the intended outcome: is the grade important, or is it intended to bring you together and build rapport and team communication skills?
If the point of the project is to work well as a team, then you need to focus on communicating well and kindly, supporting each other, thinking outside the box and having fun. Don’t get too hung up on whether the final product is perfect. Instead, think about how well you would do if the professor threw away your assignment and graded you on what other people said about you, and act accordingly.
If it’s the output which matters - like a big final project - then you are going to have to be frank with each other about what you’re capable of. The person who has the best English skills will have to review and edit the entire project, even though it’s a lot of work. The person who has a maths background will need to do the statistical analysis because that’s a technical job and the correct results are essential. The division of labour often won’t be equal, and if you want a good grade you’ll just have to accept that and find tasks that can be delegated to those who are less capable.
Dali said “Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” When I’m demotivated, it’s usually because I’ve gotten bogged down in the details and lost sight of why I’m working so hard and where I’m going. Make a hot drink, pull out a couple of sheets of paper and a pen, and write down the date 5 years from today. Then just close your eyes and imagine what life would be like at that date if everything went exactly how you wanted it to, and start writing - put down every single minute detail. I can often spend ten straight minutes writing like this. Then have a read through and pick out exactly how the work you’re doing right now is steering you towards this vision of the ideal future. If it isn’t, then you should probably rethink what you’re doing, and that’s ok too.
