We all start the school year thinking “This is going to be the best one yet!” If you have a plan to succeed, you will be ready to go.
But then the weather gets gross and you’d rather stay inside. Or you’re overwhelmed and can’t bear to face another class, so you skip which might be great for doing homework, or taking a nap.
It’s important to hold yourself accountable so you don’t fall behind in class while the semester is still young.
- write a to-do list
-
Writing a to-do list is a great way to plan out your week and make sure you don’t skip anything. If you’re a visual person, it gives you something to see so you can visualize how you need to spread out your work for the week.
Often, people (myself included) think that if the assignment is on your Canvas calendar you won’t miss it. Unfortunately, this isn’t true.
I have only missed an assignment once or twice, but let me tell you from personal experience, once it happens you will never let it happen again.
It feels so simple to think you can just wait as assignments show up on your calendar to complete them, but that is not always the case.
When writing your list, my tip is to make sure you put it in order from most important to least important. I’d much rather put more energy into an important assignment than a 10-point discussion post.
- DO NOT PROCRASTINATE
-
I am a procrastinator at heart.
I like to tell myself that putting assignments off until the last minute will give me the energy I need to get it done. We’ve all been there, and we all know that’s a lie.
How many of us have been sitting in bed at 11 p.m. rushing to get an assignment done that is due at midnight that we’ve known about for a week? I know I’m not the only one.
Now, I try to get all of my assignments done at least two days before they are due so that I have buffer time incase something were to come up and I don’t have time to sit and do homework.
It’s also just nice to plan ahead and try to give yourself a day or two off from having to do anything.
Procrastinating really gets you nowhere, it only puts you in a stressful position.
- GO TO CLASS
-
Trust me, I know how easy it is to skip a class. But it’s true when they say once you skip a class, you’ll never go back.
When you skip a class you are truly thrown out of the loop about what is going on that week. Often, it can lead to a downward spiral of not knowing what is going on in the whole unit.
In college, each class is its own subject that you can’t find information about elsewhere. So, once a professor covers a certain subject or unit, that information is gone and there’s no going back if you happen to miss that lecture.
It’s up to you to make up the lost time and get notes from a classmate, or if you’re lucky enough the professor records the class or uploads the PowerPoint slides.
Going to class helps keep you stay on top of what you are learning about, and for me just hearing a professor talk about the information makes it stick more than if I were to read about it alone.
No matter what you get up to this semester, don’t let your grades slip through your hands!