{"id":706,"date":"2014-07-16T09:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T14:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/?p=706"},"modified":"2019-07-12T12:15:30","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T17:15:30","slug":"starting-out-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/?p=706","title":{"rendered":"Starting Out Well"},"content":{"rendered":"
            High School and College are two completely different things. You learn that fairly quickly after you sit through your first lecture freshman year. There\u2019s no more neat little handouts and organized notes given to you. All you get is a syllabus. Even the textbooks don\u2019t come with the class anymore; you have to get that yourself. It\u2019s at this point when you realize how difficult of a road you have in front of you. <\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
            If you\u2019re 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\u2019t take long for me to figure out that I was going to have to change if I wanted to succeed at Alabama.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
            Procrastination is something we all struggle with at some point. However it\u2019s something that is essential we avoid if we want to succeed at school and life in general. Now I\u2019ll be the first to admit, it isn\u2019t something you can change overnight. It takes serious motivation in order to be proactive about schoolwork, especially when the class doesn\u2019t interest you. To be honest, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a \u201cone size fits all\u201d answer to motivating yourself. However I think there\u2019s a general process that can set you on the right path.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
            First, decide what is really important to you. <\/b>There\u2019s a saying: You can\u2019t get where you\u2019re going if you don\u2019t 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 \u201cA\u201d or just to pass the class, you have to know what you\u2019re aiming for.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
            Second, determine what you need to do in order to reach that goal. <\/b>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 \u201cwhatever it takes\u201d to achieve your goals (side note: this mentality will probably carry over into other aspects of your life as well).<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
            Third, I don\u2019t know how else to say this; Just Do It (that\u2019s right, like Nike). <\/b>It sounds so simple but it\u2019s 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).<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
            I struggled with motivation and procrastination for months before I made the mental decision to place priority on my studies. It\u2019s hard to overcome, but it\u2019s easier to walk a pathway when you know where it\u2019s 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.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
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            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\u2019t 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.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

            And as always, Roll Tide.<\/span><\/o:p><\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
Jacob Davis<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
www.tide4christ.ua.edu<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            High School and College are two completely different things. You learn that fairly quickly after you sit through your first lecture freshman year. There\u2019s no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-blogs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8LSHf-bo","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1239,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/1239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tide4christ.ua.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}