I just finished my 3rd semester in college. My college is one of the the top 30 colleges in the world so obviously the competition is very tough. And my results are not good to say the least. My CGPA is 2.72 and I think I am performing very badly. I have already failed 1 course (in my second sem) and I have realized that part of my problem is that I probably don’t know how to study in college. I don’t think I waste a lot of time or chill a lot, atleast not after the first sem. I had no clue what I was doing in the first semester and eventually I messed up. In my second sem I promised myself to study very hard and took a lot of pressure on myself. I got really scared and failed a course which I shouldn’t have taken in the first place. For my third semester, my performance have improved from my first semester but only minutely.I think that my biggest problem is that I don’t have the confidence now to score good. I have become very scared and the prospects of me getting a job after graduation look very bleak. I am not that great into the extra curricular stuff and essentially I have nothing to show for in college. I can feel that my parents are very scared for me and I constantly feel guilty everyday as to how much pain and struggle I put them through. Can anyone give me any sort of advice that can be useful to me given my situation?
I don’t know how hard are you studyin or how hard do u think ur supposed to study but when i was in your situation i almost quit college but decided to go really extreme w/ my studies (a lot of overnights and 24/7 studyin) and did well.
What are you study habits? Do you study for hours on end without breaks? Are you doing all your homework or are you skipping out on it (this can hurt your grade since hw is usually anywhere from 10-30% of a course grade)? Do you do well on homeworks and quizzes but just get nervous on exam day?
Generally speaking, I’d say don’t try to study for hours straight. That leads to burnout, which just makes you preform worse than you’re capable of. Study 20-30 minutes, take a 10 minute break, rinse and repeat. Also, your study approach varies from class to class: a math/physics based class should be studied by doing alot of problems. A biology based class relies alot of memorization, so using mnemonic techniques to ease the process helps greatly. Also, if you didn’t get the core idea of a lecture, there are countless resources online (i.e. lectures on youtube, Cornell videonote) that have lectures on the topic: when I find myself lost or unable to make class, I go to MIT opencourseware for example and watch the lecture there.
Your schools should have a tutoring center.
Are you using it?
And they also have acedemic supports. Ask your acedemic advisor where you can go to get some help in figuring out how to best study. Lots of kids have this problem. One of many reasons college is expensive is all the extras they offer. In this case, try to take advantage of it.
Which schools is it? At some schools, your GPA would be average.
@PurpleTitan U of T has a GPA average of about 2.8, according to S who calculated the average for his classes last term. DS is in humanities. Engineering or computer science would probably be worse. 2.72 is not that bad (at least for Canadian schools), unless you want to go to grad school. Many employers won’t ask.
@pg1000 If you are at U of T STEM, the U of T subreddit is full of STEM students.
When I was struggling in school, the one thing that helped me tremendously was to take time off. I was trapped in a loop of being stressed with performance anxiety, which caused me to procrastinate, which stressed me even more. Working a full-time job for a year gave me a new perspective on school and a lot more self-confidence than I had before. I returned to school and did much better than before the break, with more motivation and less anxiety.