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You are here: Student Success Skills » Ensuring You Receive The Grade You Want » Making School a Job

Student Success Skills

Making School a Job

by jennifer
July 13, 2012

It’s surprising that students who are outstanding employees can be terrible students. The same person who always reports for work on time just can’t seem to get up in time to go to class. What is even stranger about this is that a student will work hard at a job that pays minimum wage and then will toss away something that costs them $25/hour at a minimum.

If the above situation describes you, try making school a job. What you’re doing is taking something that you are good at doing and translating it to something that you don’t have the discipline to do well. Here’s how you can make school a job.

  1. Start each day at 8 AM. That doesn’t mean wake up at 8 AM. It means be working at 8 AM. If you don’t have a class, go to a place where you can study. You will find that the time you study early in the morning is your most productive time. That’s just how our brains work.
  2. During breaks between classes, do your homework, prepare for exams, read or study with friends. The important thing is that you don’t return to your living space during the day.
  3. After your class is over, stay on campus until 5 PM. Again do the work you need to do. If you have finished all of your work, use this time to do extra work, prepare in advance for tests, or even tutor your friends. The end of the day activities can be the difference of at least a letter grade.

Now that you know what to do, how do you force yourself to do it. Start by making a two-week commitment. In this span of time, you’ll be able to prove to yourself how effective this strategy is. Once the two weeks are done, treat the continuation of your discipline as an alcoholic would treat a drink of alcohol or a diabetic would treat a dessert. You don’t want to ever relapse into your former bad habits. Often one day away from your routine can lead to false rationalization and, before you know it, you are back into your destructive habits of the past..

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Testimonials

  • I have changed and adopted some things. First is my time management. I learned how to manage my time by using simple things like the what to-do-list. I never thought about using time between classes in doing useful things. I used to either go back to my apartment if that break is long or just use my phone in texting. However, I do realize how can I use that time, I usually spend my time in the engineering lab even if I have everything done, I just go and figure out what to do because in anyway its better than going back to the apartment. Additionally, I learned a very useful thing like the cheat sheet. I have never heard of this until I took this class. I think even if it’s not permitted to be used in some classes, it benefits me in reviewing before a test and quizzes since most of what is going to be covered is in there. What I like here is that everything we learn can be used in real situations or study cases. For instance, I learn some tips for studying such as flash cards and when I try it, it works quite perfectly..

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