seydaman said:
Im having trouble keeping my grades up in school.Im somewhat lazy and need some help?
There are a couple of different skills you might need to develop based on what sort of school you're in - grade school or post-secondary, I mean - but here are some tips that have always worked for me (might be biased toward university stuff but should be generally applicable):
-Have a wall calendar. Not the type with one page per day and you tear it off, the type that shows a whole month at once. Separate it out so that you have all of the months of your semester, and put them on the wall behind your working space so that you can see the entire semester at once. Once you get your course outlines, write down every major event on those calendars - exams, assignment due dates, anything else important. You will be able to see when you'll have lots of time and when you're going to need to get to work. If any of the dates change, update the calendar immediately. It's one of your most valuable planning tools.
-Speak to your teaching staff about your assignments. Especially if you're in university/college, because those profs are lonely and nobody ever comes to their office hours and they really want to talk to you. I went to a prof to ask about an essay topic, and he handed me three books, pointed to chapters to read, and asked me to get the books back to him at the next lecture. These people are there to help, and especially in a university setting, doing so is one of the most rewarding parts of their jobs, so they're sure to do it.
-Use study groups. Do the assignment on your own, and then meet up with other people and look over each others' work. Never hand in an essay that hasn't been proofread by at least one other person.
-Teachers always tell you what you need to know; you just need to figure out how they're doing it. Only some of what they're saying in lecture is important; the most important thing is to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
-When doing readings, don't use a highligher or underline the important bits. Take notes. Rephrase them into your own words. It's really easy to read a paragraph and absent-mindedly highlight the sentence with a lot of big words; if you're taking notes, you need to take the ideas, understand them, and rephrase them. By taking notes, you're forcing yourself to actually process the information.
-Get enough sleep, especially before exams. Never pull all-nighters; use your calendar to plan ahead and do your assignments while there's still plenty of time.
