High School and College are two completely different things. You learn that fairly quickly after you sit through your first lecture freshman year. There’s no more neat little handouts and organized notes given to you. All you get is a syllabus. Even the textbooks don’t come with the class anymore; you have to get that yourself. It’s at this point when you realize how difficult of a road you have in front of you.
If you’re like me, then in high school you dragged yourself along. I was always good at my classes, but I never did a real good job of being proactive about them. Procrastination was the name of the game I played, and I was one of the best. Late nights were common and caffeine was a necessity. It was a great system that let me crawl through senior year and onto graduation. Then I got to college; specifically Chem 101. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I was going to have to change if I wanted to succeed at Alabama.
Procrastination is something we all struggle with at some point. However it’s something that is essential we avoid if we want to succeed at school and life in general. Now I’ll be the first to admit, it isn’t something you can change overnight. It takes serious motivation in order to be proactive about schoolwork, especially when the class doesn’t interest you. To be honest, I don’t think there’s a “one size fits all” answer to motivating yourself. However I think there’s a general process that can set you on the right path.
First, decide what is really important to you. There’s a saying: You can’t get where you’re going if you don’t have a place in mind. That applies to your studies. You need to set a goal for your classes; whether it is to get an “A” or just to pass the class, you have to know what you’re aiming for.
Second, determine what you need to do in order to reach that goal. This encompasses several things. One, figure out how you study best. Two, set a schedule for doing your work (repetitive actions make habits). Three, decide what other things you must do in order to reach your goal: visit profs during office hours, ask questions in class, get together with other people to study. All this develops a mental attitude of doing “whatever it takes” to achieve your goals (side note: this mentality will probably carry over into other aspects of your life as well).
Third, I don’t know how else to say this; Just Do It (that’s right, like Nike). It sounds so simple but it’s hard to put into practice. At some point though, you have to make a conscious decision about your priorities. Christ comes first naturally, but you are at college to get an education and that means it comes in second place (yep, it comes before Alabama football too).
I struggled with motivation and procrastination for months before I made the mental decision to place priority on my studies. It’s hard to overcome, but it’s easier to walk a pathway when you know where it’s heading and what it looks like. Avoiding procrastination and being proactive in your classes becomes easier when you know how to get to where you want to go.
To incoming freshman: I hope you read this blog post and that it becomes of some use to you. There are many pathways to success in college, but even more paths to failure. I don’t say that to scare you, but to inspire you. You have four years (or more for you engineering majors) ahead of you that should be some of the greatest years of your life. To all of you I wish you the best of luck.
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