A Procrastinator's Guide to College Success

A new semester has begun. You are busy setting up stuff in your new room which will be inhabited by you for some time. Quite the feeling of a fresh start, not unlike that when you entered your dorm room for the first time as a freshman. It is a great chance to throw away past baggage, a whole pandora box of ups and downs that happened in the previous semester when your weaknesses got the best of you. You are full of hope and determination to ace all of aims and dreams this semester, whether it be to achieve a 4.0 GPA or make it in the Dean’s Honor List or making the President of a society or founding a team, company or group. At the same time, you are skeptical. “I couldn’t do it the previous semester. What will change this time?” You think to yourself. Then you change tone: “I am a believer in the ‘it’s never late’ ideal. Plus, a new semester is a fresh start.” Your optimism trumps your skepticism. You just cannot abandon your sky-high aims. You have always been an idealist. Fore mentioned theme sounds familiar? Well. You might find some clarity in the following lines.

Let’s talk a little about tools. It is said that when Steve Jobs was convincing then CEO of Pepsi, John Sculley to join Apple, he, explaining to Sculley what tools are, said something on the lines of: “In terms of locomotion, humans are the most inefficient animals on the planet. But a human riding a bicycle is the most efficient animal on earth. A well designed, human-friendly computer is just like a bicycle to the mind”.
It is exactly true in university context. In order to be successful in GIK, a ‘bicycle for mind’, that is, tools are all you need. You need tools like smart study, time management, network building, exercise and good diet to optimize the use of your skills and intellect and to effectively achieve your objectives and aims.

Following are the summary points of psychologist Marty Lobdell’s lecture titled: “Study Less Study Smart” and some of my own additions to it.

1. Plan time in your schedule to study. Make studying an important part of each day. It is also equally important to attend class, attend on time and be prepared for class when you arrive.
2. Break your studying down into chucked sessions of 25-30 minutes. Your ability to study diminishes after this time period. Take 5-minute breaks after each 30-minute interval to do something you enjoy. After you have completed your entire study session for the day, reward yourself with a big treat. This will be positive reinforcement for yourself on meeting your daily study objectives. If you have gotten the chance to study Sociology from Dr. Cedric, you will know that things that are reinforced we tend to do more of. The things that are punished or ignored, we tend to do less of.
3. Create a dedicated study area and design it. Either study in library or if you are studying in room, make sure that you use your study table to only study and not do anything else like checking WhatsApp or Facebook or watching a movie. Try to do leisure activities away from your study area. Also, set up a simple convention like turning on a table lamp that you only use for your study sessions. This conditions your mind such that whenever you sit on your study area, you are instantly good to go rather than wasting a whole lot of time before it and giving up to distractions during it.
4. Study actively. There is a difference between actual recollection and simple recognition. Recognition requires a cue or trigger and you don’t get that in a test. So, study by quizzing yourself, instead of just looking over highlighted sections of your books or notes.
5. Take smart notes in class. Expand on them as soon as possible (ASAP) after class to boost your initial learning.
6. Summarize or teach what you learn. It will help you pen point gaps in your understanding because you’re unable to gloss over things.
7. Use your textbook effectively. Use the SQ3R method. Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review.
8. Use mnemonics, acronyms, coined sayings, and image associations to study facts. These strategies can help you remember information easier than note-taking.
9. This one seems cliché but most people totally ignore it. Exercise and balanced diet are key to physical and mental health. Exercise boosts productivity manifold and keeps your mood swinging hormones in check, something absolutely essential for a rigorous place like college.
10. Find places where you get motivation. It can be a good movie, a bright bunch of friends whom you hang out with or an accomplished senior whom you can talk to. Although very importantly, when you are unmotivated and cannot find motivation even after looking, do not wait for it to come. Follow Mel Robbins’ famous “Five Second Rule” which essentially says that whatever you got to do to meet your aims, do not wait for motivation or let second thoughts about doing it dive in. Count backwards 5…4…3…2…1…GO! Jump off that couch or bed or Facebook session and get to the task at hand. It is based on research that when you allow yourself more than 5 seconds to decide whether to do something that you know you have to do, especially if that thing involves a little risk, like asking a question in a full class from a stern professor, your brain will stop you from doing it. So, ‘Just do it’!
    Also important is that you keep on experimenting with different tools and are always in the quest of becoming the best version of yourself.

Making and using of tools is what sets humans intellectually apart from other species and it is also what sets humans apart from each other. Your friend who has 1 point higher GPA than you or who has extensive extracurricular accomplishments does not necessarily works longer hours than you but they surely work more efficiently. So, if you have got stuck and your to do list of accomplishments isn’t getting checked even after putting in the work, it will definitely be worth your time learn some of these tools and apply them.
Happy practicing the differentiating characteristic of being human, “using tools”!