<p>Always stay on top of your work, don’t procrastinate, and play the teacher’s game. If your English teacher is a flaming liberal, then guess what? You’d better be too.</p>
<p>Hard Work. Big secret. Don’t let it out!</p>
<p>How about studying?</p>
<p>Let’s see, before doing homework submit about ten posts on CC. After finishing homework, read/reply to posts on CC.</p>
<p>Massive procrasinator. If i don’t finish it at the usual 2-3 AM i go to sleep, I often do work at lunch a period before its due. It’s good to have smart friends that will help you out too. I do not condone this type of lifestyle, as my sleep pattern was seriously ****ed up this past year, but it’s gotten me through 3 years of high school so far perfectly.</p>
<p>Self-awareness. Sounds absurd, but it’s true. Know what you can do, and what you must do to succeed. Know what rules apply to you, and which you can ignore.</p>
<p>People like to say hard work it what you need. It is true that you often need to work hard, but hard work is not an end to itself, and I think it is a trap many students fall into to believe that just because they are working hard, they will succeed, and they keep on truckin’ without realizing they are going no where. It is a question of mindset. One’s goal must be to understand the material, and one must be willing to work as hard as necessary to achieve that goal. Too many people, I think, set their goal as simply working hard. These people will ultimately fail. In school, and in the real world.</p>
<p>Also, it helps a lot to enjoy what you are doing. It’s cliche, but true. If studying is torture, you won’t remember a damn thing, so you might as well not study at all. Thus one must find ways to keep fresh, and keep interested. Sometimes for me this meant coming up with little tangents to whatever the teacher is talking about and exploring them in my mind, and running drills like mentally reciting all the developments that have led up to something just mentioned. Sometimes it means ignoring the teacher and playing Tetris, or just skipping class. There is nothing noble about forcing yourself to do something displeasurable, because you’re only going to be able to force yourself for so long.</p>
<p>very well put feuler!..succint and very insightful! i completely agree with you…</p>
<p>Listen carefully in class
And then cram in all projects/hw/test studying the night before or the morning of. There’s less you have to go over if you listen in class. </p>
<p>Maybe I’m weird but often when I DON’T cram and do essays or study well beforehand, I get worse grades. Seems like the more I cram, the more I remember and soak up…hence the better grades I get. Makes me all stressed out though ;)</p>
<p>Sleep. Getting enough is the most important thing, IMO. If you’re awake during class, you pay attention better (and therefore have to study a little less) and are able to do more quality work in a smaller amount of time which translates into good grades.</p>
<p>I like listening to music while I do any kind of homework…it helps me concentrate. If I don’t play music while I work, I start to think about other things, lose focus, and consequently end up working 10x slower than I would have with music.</p>
<p>:D</p>
<p>Some people become distracted by music…just don’t put the volume on MAX. :)</p>
<p>Here’s why I DON’T do as well as I’d like to in school. (I’m a B+ student, generally)…</p>
<p>I can’t really function properly unless my room is completely clean…but I never want to completely clean my room.</p>
<p>I can’t start something and do a half-assed effort on it…so I’ve conditioned myself to do something perfectly or not at all.</p>
<p>I end up having to do things at the last minute, rushed, and not as well as I’d like them to have been done…I end up taking shortcuts and relying on others…and it sucks.</p>
<p>I’ll make these grandiose plans to get back into the swing of things, these amazing study schedules which any teacher would admire…but can’t seem to start them, much less complete them.</p>
<p>I read all the time, every day…but only if it’s a book someone’s not forcing me to read. (I’ve never read a book for school, but that doesn’t mean I’m not well-read. Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Salinger, Heller, Faulkner, Joyce, Vonnegut, Chekhov, Forrester, Hawthorne, Shelley…you name it, just not on any teacher’s bidding.)</p>
<p>I’m hoping I can turn things around in college and succeed, and go on to graduate school and do the same, else I be forever damned to a life of mediocrity.</p>
<p>I pay attention in class</p>
<p>Second semester junior year (i’m a rising senior) was the only time I had gotten straight A’s. I mean, I’ve gotten all A’s and one B a lot, but straight A’s (solid, no A-'s either) only once. My mindset was that everytime grades started fresh I had 100% and I shouldn’t lose one single point. That whole mindset came because first semester junior year I had a lot of A-'s and I hate that grade. A-. Blech. It’s so borderline that it doesn’t seem really like an ‘A’ to me. Anyway. I studied hard and got 100% on pretty much any and all quizzes, all homework assignments, and quite a few tests. Awesome strategy for me, because when things became really busy for me I could honestly not study at all, fail a quiz (or get a C on a test), and still have a solid A in the class. Wonderful.</p>
<p>Also, the library during any huge tests or assignments (ACT, SAT, finals, AP, or even when I have writer’s block for an essay). The desk in my room was ideal for homework, quizzes, or unit tests, but when I had to sit around studying for hours I could not be at home. The library was great. Very quiet study area and tons of room to get up and walk around when I was losing concentration…</p>
<p>Oh, and being incredibly organized helps. I typed up all of my notes to study for tests. And for reading chapters… I’d read it through one time and then the second time I’d make an outline of it. Took forever, but so helpful. I don’t think I’ve ever understood anything as clearly as I did my junior year from typing outlines of chapters. And supplement texts helped me a lot for subjects I had trouble with. Science is my worst class. It doesn’t matter if it’s physics or chemistry, I have the worst time comprehending any science concepts. So I bought Chemistry for Dummies. Wonderful tool. And I also bought a cheap Human Geography textbook in addition to my class text and it helped in numerous ways (plusit’skindofinteresting). Haha.</p>
<p>Getting on the good side of your teacher never hurts, either. I don’t mean being a suck-up, but being mature and showing respect. Asking questions. Talking to them when you don’t understand something. Maturity can surprisingly go a very long way. Be hard-working when you can, and then when you’re really really busy your teachers will understand and let you slide. It’s terrific.</p>
<p>Oh! Almost forgot - water. Maybe that’s just me. I love coffee, smoothies, soda, etc… but water is the only thing that I can have when studying. Water and some healthy food - apples, pretzels, etc. If I am studying through dinner - soup. I dunno, what I eat is important when studying lol. And light, healthy foods seem to help, weirdly enough.</p>
<p>It’s kind of weird, but I find that during my sports seasons, I get stuff done faster and I can concentrate better in class. When I’m not playing sports, I get kind of sluggish and start to procrastinate. I guess the fact that I have to get things done and go to practice motivates me to work faster and I don’t procrastinate as much.</p>
<p>know your teacher. if he teaches right out of the book and his test is right from the book, sleep in class and just read the book at home. if your teacher teaches from outside the book, listen.</p>
<p>oh yeah, and have really good relationships with your teachers. . .not in that sense, what are you thinking??
Yeah. . .anyways, if you establish a good relationship, you will have a substantially higher chance of getting the grade you want. . .you might have to beg for it, and do extra work, but it still helps a lot.</p>
<p>I totally agree with snerry about cramming. One time I had a HUGE APEURO test worth like 80 pts, and I woke up at 3am to study it… haha. So I studied till 5:30… and I set the curve !!woot! However, there was this one time where I studied for like 6 hrs for this euro test two nights before, I got a C. GO figure</p>
<p>I think going to the library or a coffee shop helps a lot. Go to one of those large study rooms in the library where it’s dead silent and it’s embarrassing to walk out to use the bathroom… There is this one study room where it’s so silent… and since nobody wanted to distrub teh silence by walking around, I was forced to sit for five hours and finish my homework. HAHA. Stay away from phone, internet and TV> MUST!!!</p>
<p>And plan which hw u are going to do first. Never do math homework at 2am at night. I did that this year, and there was nobody to call when I didn’t understand the concepts… hehe i got my first B+ in that class.</p>
<p>For some reason, I get really panicked at 7pm, but I cool down and start feeling relaxed at about 9… maybe something to do with alpha waves or something? If I were to do homework at 7, i’d feel overstressed and i’d be a perfectionist doing all my homework that I wouldn’t want to do i tanyway… so at 7 is my “relax and chill time” when I go for a jog, go out to starbucks, etc…</p>
<p>Oh, BTW, studying with friends for history, bio, anything that needs memorization! talk about it! My friends would leave my house at 11pm, and when I went to sleep, the conversations would go through my head while I was sleeping… plus it makes studying less dull.</p>
<p>Also, make friends who really understand the material and can help u… and help others when they are struggling.</p>
<p>Ok, long post.</p>
<p>"wow, time is really what I need the most at this point, and 5 hrs a day + 23 min/4 hrs sleep method seems really great (that is, if that works). I should give that a try =)</p>
<p>jc2lapcae, do you like feel tired all day or anything? or do you just feel normal with that sleep routine of yours?"</p>
<p>The first week you do it you may feel a little tired, as it needs some adjusting, but after 7-10 days you should be completely normal. I do sports all three seasons, so I find the nap right before them actually giving me more energy then if I had 8-9 hours of sleep before. I wouldn’t do just 23/4 without getting a normal 3-5 hour sleep, because a lot of people who only use 23/4 (6 naps a day) have reported they have more time, but they aren’t as productive. </p>
<p>Its called Polyphasic Sleep, or the uberman sleep schedule. Theres competing theories, and a lot of people have made online journals showing how it effected them. Just google it.</p>
<p>People on CC are incredibly smart so you might not get some of the answers you want. For me personally, I’m tired when I get home, so I take about 5-6 hour nap, wake up and do homework for about an hour at around 1 AM and I’m on AIM at the same time talking to friends right before they go to sleep. I take the same approach as a lot of people have mentioned on this thread, I study the grading habits of teachers. A lot of teachers don’t check homework, so I do a third or half of my homework then write random stuff down for the rest. Just listen in class and ask smart questions, and most of the time that makes up for not studying. I found that this year the only class I needed to study for was AP US History, and that wasn’t until the night before the test. I’m just hoping that our bad study habits don’t come back to bite our arses in college.</p>
<p>Wow you take a 5-6 hour nap??? Thats more then my sleep time!!! You must be lucky to have only 1 hour of homework during 11th grade, the toughest year</p>