How to Succeed in School and College

Being successful in school and college is up to you. Don't rely on luck, an easy class, or a lazy teacher to give you good grades.

If you find a subject difficult, don't use that as an excuse to give up. See it as an opportunity to try harder, to stretch yourself, to see what you are capable of.

Doing well in school requires hard work. Be prepared to work hard if you want to succeed.

Don't blame your teacher if you don't do well in a particular class. A good student will do well no matter how bad the teacher is. But a poor student will do poorly no matter how good the teacher is.

Teachers don't give you grades -- you earn them.

Decide in advance how you will use your time. Use your planner to schedule when you will do your homework, when you will watch TV or play on your computer, and when you will hang out with your friends.

If you have a long-term project that is due sometime in the future, break it down into smaller, simple steps. Plan to work on some of the project every day.

Although it might seem easier to put off doing your homework, in the long run it is much better to do it as soon as you possibly can. The sooner you do it, the less time you will have to worry about it.

You are not your work. If you get an A on a project, that does not make you an A person. Similarly, if you get a D on a project, that does not make you a D person.

You are a complex individual. Every day you carry out a large number of tasks: getting ready for school, participating in classroom activities, being with your friends and family. Sometimes you will do things well, and other times not so well. Don't base your self-worth on how well you do the things that you do.

Learn to accept yourself whether or not you do well on an assignment or a test. Don't put yourself down if you don't do as well as you had expected or hoped.

When you learn to accept yourself no matter how well you do on a given task, you will take much of the stress out of your education.

Trying new and challenging tasks is a necessary part of living. Expect that along the way, you will make mistakes and not do your work perfectly.

It is a day to be less than perfect. In fact, if you think about it, you will see that perfection is impossible. For something to be perfect there must be no way that it can be improved. Everything, no matter how great, can be improved in some way.

By all means, give yourself the best opportunity to succeed at new tasks, but don't expect to be able to do them perfectly the first time you attempt them.

In other words, shoot for the stars but don't expect to land on them.

Don't worry too much about what other people think of you. Learn to separate your self-worth from the judgment of others.

While it is better to be popular than to be unpopular, if you spend too much of your time trying to impress others, you will have less time to do the things that you truly want to do.

Believe it or not, you can survive and be successful no matter what other people think of you. Even more surprising is that you can be happy no matter what other people think of you.

You can't please all the people all the time. Even the most popular celebrities have people who don't like them. If not everybody likes these rich and famous people, then what chance do lesser mortals like you and I have to be popular with everyone?

If you change yourself merely to be popular, then you are not being yourself. And if people like you because you have changed, it's not you that they like: it's the person you are pretending to be.

Expect to succeed. If you give up too soon, you have created your own failure.

Undoubtedly you will run into difficulties throughout your education, and will sometimes do less well than you had hoped. Don't allow these setbacks to deter you from persisting. One failure does not mean that you will fail forever. The past is not always a reliable predictor of the future.

If you find a particular subject difficult, don't allow your difficulties in that subject to undermine your confidence and other subjects.

Don't dwell on your difficulties. Build on the things you are good at and make the most of them.

Not everything you do in school will be fun, nor will it be easy. School is not Disneyland; you are there to learn not to be entertained.

School is tough; it's not meant to be easy. Be prepared to be tested, challenged, and stretched. If it were easy, you would not learn anything; going to school would be a waste of time, and little more than a babysitting service for your parents.

From time to time you will have to do things that are frustrating, hard, and boring. You will frequently need to postpone having fun and hanging out with friends until your work is done.

If you expect to do well in school whether or not you do the work, you are doomed to disappointment and failure.

Not all of life is fair. This applies in school as much as anywhere else. You will, from time to time, undoubtedly be the victim of unfairness. If you believe that you have been treated unfairly, say so. But don't turn the unfairness into a hanging offense. Learn to live with it because you will undoubtedly be faced with unfairness again and again throughout your life. The sooner you learn to live with it the better.

Setting goals for yourself will help you do well on your schoolwork. Make a list of all the things you would like to achieve. Keep the list somewhere where you can see it everyday. Ideally your goals will include:

* big long-term goals;

* realistic short term;

* daily specific goals; and

* a timetable for achieving them.

Goal setting is an important part of making the most of your education. However, it is not enough. You must be committed to following through on each of your goals, and doing what is necessary to achieve them.

Make sure that the goals you set are your own goals. By all means, take advice from others, but don't allow them to set the agenda for your life.

Make sure that the goals you see at a not too easy and not too hard. If they are too easy, you will gain no satisfaction from achieving them. If they are too hard, you will become discouraged and will frequently quit without having achieved what you seek out to do.

Having a network of friends will make your schooling easier and more fun. While it is unlikely that you will get along with everyone, there are steps you can take to ensure that you have a circle of close friends.

The best way to make friends is to be a friend. When you meet someone new, take the time to find out what their interests are. Ask them about their hobbies, their family, and how they like to spend their spare time. Show them that you care.

The sweetest sound that anyone can hear is the sound of their own name. When talking to someone, use their name frequently.

From time to time, inevitably, your friends will let you down. Unfortunately, we are all incurably fallible; we all make mistakes; we all do things we regret. Because we are all fallible, it does not make sense to judge people's overall worth based on the mistakes that they make. If one mistake, or even a series of mistakes, made us worthless then every human being who has ever lived would be worthless.

You will find that as you learn to accept people despite their mistakes and their unfairness, that you own life gets easier and more relaxed.

Problems are a natural part of life. Having a strategy to deal with problems when they arise will give you an advantage that most other people don't have.

Following these steps whenever you are faced with a problem:

* Make a list of possible solutions to the problem

* Consider the possible advantages and disadvantages of each solution

* Pick the solution that you think is best

* Try the solution

* See whether or not it solves the problem

* If it hasn't solved the problem try the next best solution.

Use this system whenever you have a problem and you will quickly solve 99% of the problems you face. Unless you have a system to deal with problems, you weren't so very many of them, and you will find that your problems mount up one on top of the other.

Schools and colleges have a lot of rules. Many of the rules seem dumb, so you may be tempted to ignore some of the "dumb" rules. But breaking the rules, no matter how dumb they, can get you into serious trouble.

The rules are designed to make school a better place to live and to succeed. The more you learn to live by the rules -- play the game -- the more successful you will be in school.

Although some of the rules may seem to inconvenience you, following them will not kill you.

Many students hate deadlines. But deadlines are one of the rules you must follow to succeed at school. Get into the habit of completing your work before the deadline.