College Success Tips – How to Succeed at School
Before my college tips, a quip:
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” ~ Henry David Thoreau.
It’s fine to set lofty college goals…just make sure the steps to achieving your goals are down-to-earth (smart, specific, and realistic!). For more college help than I can give here, read Your Guide to College Success: Strategies for Achieving Your Goals.
And, here are five tips for college success to help you succeed …
College Success Tips – How to Succeed at School
1. Figure out what you want out of college. I wanted it all when I was a student: good grades, lots of friends, challenging yet fun extracurricular activities, a committed relationship, a college degree, an easy but profitable part-time job, volunteer work, and to pay my student loans before I graduated! That’s a big pile of goals for one college student…and it’s not possible to achieve them all. To succeed at school, you need to figure out what you want out of college. Create a master list of goals.
2. Set two or three main goals for each semester. After you’ve created your master list of college goals, you need to narrow it down into two or three smart, achievable goals for each semester. For example, your goals for your first semester could include brushing up on your study skills, finding an extracurricular club, and achieving a healthy work/school/social life balance. This college success tip applies to achieving all goals in life: set a few small specific goals that won’t overwhelm you. After a predetermined amount of time, re-evaluate your goals. Make changes if necessary.
3. Surround yourself with like-minded college students (find your tribe!). If getting good grades is your measure of success, then spend time with students who get good grades. If joining an athletic team or drama club is what you want out of school, then find those athletes and actors! Don’t create obstacles to your goals by spending time with people who can’t help you succeed at school.
4. Put your strengths to work. Marcus Buckingham is a career coach who advises not focusing your weaknesses. Instead, figure out what your strengths are, and keep working on them. “It’s ironic that your strengths can be so easy to overlook, because they’re clamoring for your attention in the most basic way,” says Buckingham, who wrote Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance. “Using them makes you feel strong. All you have to do is teach yourself to pay attention. Try to be conscious of yourself and how you feel as you’re completing your day-to-day tasks.” For example, if you’ve set a goal of getting good grades, and you study better alone than in a group, then say no to those requests for group study!
5. Find healthy ways to deal with the stress that accompanies setting and achieving goals! Let’s face it: it’s scary to set goals because we might fail, or we might succeed, or people might think we’re stupid, or we might have to change our opinion of ourselves. Even just reading college success tips can make us feel uncomfortable because it can seem like there’s so much work involved! Stress and anxiety is part of life as a college student. You need to find healthy, fun ways to cope with stress and stay as physically and emotionally healthy as possible.
