Acing your courses... requires early planning
January 14th, 2019
by Brian Pilcher, Zoology Instructor and Learning Strategist
Most of us start the term with good intentions, don’t we? Success can seem so logical and relatively easy: attend class and study for the exams. There’s certainly a correlation between grades and class attendance, so maybe some students can make that simple plan work for them. However, having worked with a lot of undergraduate, medical and veterinary school students over the years, I’ve learned that most of us need a better formula than the simple ‘attend class and study for exams’ approach if we’re going to ace our courses.
Good news! You attend Weber State, and we have people who can work with you to develop a personalized plan to help you succeed!
Now, if you are here to check off the courses and simply walk away with a diploma, you’ve missed the point of college. Many people look back on their university time as some of the best years of their lives, often because of the relationships they’ve created. Embrace your time as a student with your fellow students. Form study groups, connect with your professors and seek help from academic advisors and learning strategists. Developing relationships with these people will open doors for greater understanding, better support, exciting opportunities and new friendships that will last long past graduation. They may be what helps you get the career of your dreams! This is true for ALL Weber State students. Yes, even non-traditional students should recognize they are not alone. Indeed, the vast majority of WSU students are classified as ‘non-traditional’. Your classmates are likely in the same boat as you are!
In addition to developing relationships with your professors and fellow students, it’s important to your success that you start to design a study routine early, work out distractions early, find a work-study-family balance early, and use study techniques that harness the way your mind works -- early. Do you see the pattern in the formula? One of the things that students who earn lesser grades than they want have in common is that they start doing these things too late. As evidence of this, appointments with me to discuss learning and test-taking skills ratchet way up in the last two weeks of the semester. This semester is just getting started, so you have the opportunity to activate this formula NOW. If doing all of these things is overwhelming to you, still come see me! We can talk about strategies to improve procrastination, too.
Speaking of procrastination, DON’T DO IT! Start your schoolwork early, even before the first lecture. You can locate resources such as references and textbooks, fill out your calendar with exam dates and assignment due dates, negotiate your work hours with your boss, and do a quick preview of the first lectures if they are available—all before the semester even begins! You can also maintain the car so it’s dependable and get those doctor appointments out of the way. By the time you read this, the spring term has already started, so it’s too late for some of these things. Still, it’s only 1 week in, so do these things now! The semester only gets busier as the term proceeds.
All aspects of the early planning formula above are important, including the word “design.” Designing your study routine keeps your schedule balanced. In your appointment with me, we’ll talk about working with your course material in ways that will help your efficiency. We can also talk about how to develop a study schedule that works best with your calendar, is consistent, and avoids the need to cram for exams. In developing YOUR schedule, we can talk about how “life” gets in the way, and we can explore strategies for smoothing things out when those bumpy parts of the semester occur (as they inevitably will).
As helpful as the early planning formula is, there are still other important factors for success that you’ll want to work on: self-image and self-confidence, the people you spend time with, emotional maturity, metacognition, belief in the truth that you can expand your mental capacity (growth mindset rather than fixed mindset), curiosity, motivation, test-taking strategies, and…well, you get the point. While there are a number of factors that contribute to any student’s success, there is power in knowing what we can work on to plan for YOURS. So let the semester begin, and I hope to see you in my office very soon!
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