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1. Your grades have nothing to do with who you are. On the level of identity it doesn’t matter what grades you get. You are not clever, you are not dumb. All that stuff is conceptual. So relax.
2. Study smarter, not harder.
3. Have breaks. Relax. Have a social life. None of those things are going to get in your way. You are giving your brain extremely valuable time to have a break and consolidate information. More importantly you are going to enjoy yourself a bit. This is your life after all.
4. There’s a Paul McKenna book “I can make you smarter”, take a look at that for some ideas on how to study smarter. There are lots of study methods you’re not using and you can find them in that book. Taking notes and looking at them is probably too passive. Using your brain actively will help.
5. Put some activities in your schedule. Get some physical exercise. Go on runs etc. This will help you focus, give you more energy and give you something to do other than sitting around staring at notes.
6. There’s a difference between putting time in and “trying really hard”. When you start tensing up and really “trying” to learn things, you can get in your own way. Sometimes it’s better to relax and soak in the information without all the exertion. Stressing out and “trying” aren’t the same thing as putting the time in to learn and getting effective results.
7. What do you think achieving straight As will offer you? Being “clever”? Being “happy”? Well, “clever” is just a judgement, just a thought, it’s not actually who you are, so that won’t happen. And “happy” isn’t obtained through telling yourself you need to achieve this and that to be happy, it’s achieved by accepting whatever is happening in each moment. So I would seriously question why you want these As. If it’s to, say, get into a good uni or something then that’s fine, but why do you want to get into the uni? And can you handle the thought of not getting into the uni? If not you might want to explore the fear of failure that suggests.
Good luck. Take it easy. Well done for putting the time in – now do that with the broader focus I’m suggesting here. The above 7 points are only SUGGESTIONS but why not see what it’s like to try them on and give them a go.
hi Marki,
I’m going to write a long post and hence read it with some patience, I hope you will find something very meaningful.
I think that there are three kinds of people. There are people who have good hardware i.e. these are the people who are naturally gifted with good brain , and hence they have very sharp memory and grasping skills by default. Then there are those who don’t have good hardware, but they have really fine tuned software i.e. Mind. (Yes I believe in the duality of mind and brain i.e mind and brain are different). These people who have good ‘mind’, somehow make very best use of the capacity of their physical brain.
Now there are third kind of people, who don’t have good hardware and software both, i.e. they don’t have sharp brain and fine tuned mind, and these people face many problems.I think that we can’t make much changes in physical hardware i.e brain, but it is almost “possible for every person to fine tune his mind”. I believe that ‘mind’ of every person has similar potential, irrespective of their physical hardware. And I think that by fine tuning our mind, we can also bring changes in brain (Scientists call this phenomenon as Brain Plasticity) , which in turn can improve our performance substantially.
Now the thing is how to fine tune our software i.e. Mind? And it’s answer is meditation. Actually there are thousands of variety of meditation techniques which can sharpen our mind. But I’ve experience in Aanapan and Vipassana Meditation. Hence I’ll write about these two only. As you are student, I’ll recommend you Aanapan meditation, because it’s foundation of Vipassana meditation and normally students prefer it all over the world.
Once you’ll become mature in Aanapan meditation, your performance will certainly improve, and you’ll certainly experience it on your own after practicing it for one month atleast. But don’t try this on your own. First you’ll have to attend either 1-day or 3-day Aanapan course, whrere you will be taught this meditation under qualified teacher. These courses are held all over the world. Just find out suitable course location from site “http://www.dhamma.org/en-US/index”. And these courses are taught free of cost completely.
This meditation will increase your mindfullness and awareness and in the process will increase your concentration. With proper fine tuned mind, one can have very well organised thought pattern, which is must for anyone who wants to succeed in their respective field. Some people have these well organised thought pattern by default, while some peole develope these with the help of good schools and teachers, and there are some who develope organised thoughts with the help of meditation.
Many time we hear words such as “Hard Work” and “Smart Work”, what exactly is meant by “Smart Work”? Actually smart work means tuning our mind and then doing our work, so that we won’t have to put unnecessary extra labour doing the same thing.
There is no doubt that hard work is required and essential for every success, but without proper ‘mind’, one might not get desired result even after putting every bit of their strength.Therefore I think you should give Aanapan meditation a try. If practiced properly, it can be a big asset for rest of your life.
Once you will have clear and calm mind, your decision making power will increase and you will devise best study plan for yourself as per your needs.I hope you will take proper decision after reading above information.
All the best!!PS: Take a look at small documentary on Aanapan meditation, which is also available free of cost for either download or streaming: “http://store.pariyatti.org/Seeds-of-Awareness–DVD_p_2574.html”
Hi, Marki.
That’s a very interesting question, and I understand why you feel concerned about not getting straight As.
So the question is why, consider that you used to?Because you feel like you are trying really hard, I’m wondering if you may have some aspect of a learning deficiency?
There’s a couple of causes: high stress and burn out usually makes it harder to get good grades because it is harder focus and remember concepts well enough to build a foundation to understand instead of route memorization.The other one is just the way you were born, as we get older, the academic work can get harder.
I highly recommend to see if you can somehow figure out if you do have a learning problem. If there is, there are definitely ways to work around it. But you have to be specific what learning problem it is.
I was in the same situation you were in. It didn’t matter how hard I try, I kept on getting bad grades in the upper high school grades and completely lost it in university. I was diagnosed with a learning problem, specifically, with anxiety and symbol conversion (math was my toughest subject) and short term memory deficit. What I will tell is that even if the test results come back and there is something in deficit, there are ways to work around it. I recommend seeing if you can see a psychologist that will run a test for you. I was tested for 3 hours, they used laptops to check for ADHD and reading and numerical skills. They will give you a series of tasks for you to perform, and the materials they used are only be able to be purchased by licensed psychologists.
The other tip I’d suggest is to look at your track record of marks in high school and figure out which subjects you were weaker at and which subjects you were stronger at, it might give you an indication of your weaknesses. Like, if you weren’t strong in English, maybe it’s because there’s a certain deficit in your literacy skills due to your eyes not being able to track lines.
It might require money but will make your life easier if you get a diagnosis.
You might find that certain career prospects just can’t be for you due to the competitiveness of needing high grades, but it doesn’t mean you won’t be able to find a career you love. I was crushed and relieved when I found out that I had some problems with learning.Other suggestions:
1) this could be a problem due to stress and pressure
2) study in a group
3) Get a blood test done to see how your health is? Are you suffering from fatigue and while you’re spending time studying, you’re also spending a lot of time sleeping due to hormonal problems?
4) How is your vision? Do you need glasses?
5) You’re not actively engaging in the learning process, but learning passively.
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