I recently finished college and am currently working to get into medical school (still a work in progress, but I’m grinding away). I wish I had someone teach me these lessons that I am going to share as they would have greatly help me.
Just a note as I assume that a lot of you are coming from reddit, this is going to be a long read... Please go back, save the reddit post and come back here so you have time to revisit this in the future if need be. I spent a lot of time learning these lessons and a lot of time writing this so I hope you can use it to it's full benefit, being efficient in college and enjoying your college experience.
As a little background about me I was a pre-med in College who studied Physiology and was highly involved (I was pretty much everywhere and met a LOT of people in different disciplines, ages, etc.) in University. I stayed at home as my university was fairly close with a drive, and I didn’t want to live at the residences and I could save my money. When I started University I was a study-holic — spending all my time studying, with a little socialization to stay sane. What I realized is that the way I was studying not only wasn’t productive or fun, but it didn’t even give me results! I got sick in my first semester (pretty badly — take my word for it) and had to drop the semester which didn’t seem to be going the right direction (grade-wise, personal wise-etc). In the following years I realized that this was one of the greatest things that could’ve happened for me, as I learned how to better study and spend my time. I spent my free time in College watching youtube videos, reading articles and getting my hands dirty in any information that could aid in improvements in productivity, academics, social psychology; I hope that when this knowledge is explained through my experiences it can help you excel in your upper education journey and beyond. In the rest of post I’m going to be detailing my life experiences through college and how you can benefit from it.
The rest of the post will be divided to as such:
Academics: How to study, get good grades, balance studying with other obligations, make the most of your time
Social Life: How to maintain, improve or cultivate a Social-life
Life-advice I’ve learned through college.
Academics: How to study, get good grades, balance studying with other obligations, make the most of your time
Misconception #1 College is hard, everyone fails.
Did you ever hear that, or some variation of that in your first semester at College or before you got in? I sure did, and so did all of my friends. It created a worrying environment for me and because of it led to some poor mid-term grades in my first semester of college (that I withdrew from half-way through as explained above, thankfully).
When I withdrew from college, I had the opportunity to spend some time to reflect on what I was doing for studying. This included: what my beliefs were in my first semester, how I approached studying, what I could do differently and of course obtaining new information on various aspects of college and how to improve in that regard.
The first thing that I learned was on my college mind-set. What do I mean by this? Well it’s the outlook on you have on your ability and circumstances.
If you TRULY BELIEVE that everyone fails in college or there’s no way to get a good grade, then why would you have motivation to learn anything? Why would your brain store the information properly? it wouldn’t. To excel academically we have to believe that we are able to succeed, if we don’t there’s absolutely no way to move forward.
“Those who think they can and those who think they can’t are both usually right.” — Confucius
Now I’m going to dive-into fixed v.s., growth mind-set. A fixed mind-set describes the paradigm that many college students have when they first enter, some examples include: “I got a bad grade, because this class is just BS, not fair,” “Everyone fails at college, there’s nothing that I can do about it.” You get the idea, maybe you’ve said those things, but you’ve definitely heard it around. What can we do about this? We can go and employ a Growth Mind-Set. “I did poorly on this exam, what can I do to improve.” “I messed up this question, how can I avoid this next-time,” “Is there anything I can do to study better?” With a growth mind-set you will dissolve stress from thoughts of inescapable circumstances (that impairs your studying and retention of information, as well).
In addition you feel better about yourself and once you realize that this mind-set leads to further results, it improves your self-esteem, you ability to feel you’re able to conquer other tasks and at least in my opinion your mental health (this has no source and is anecdotal evidence from my experience.)
GOOD mis-conception-1 done. The above points were a saving grace for me and it has led to exponential gains since applying them.
Mis-conception #2: I don’t have time.
This is a Fixed Mindset statement. You do have time, how you distribute it is up to you.
*MAKE A CALENDAR for a DAY YOU WANT! a day that you’d be happy with!*
Here’s an example for a productive day I had for myself a little earlier, note: don’t start this intense, but this is what it can lead up too. Reward yourself with a break every single day and plan for something fun (like seeing a friend or going out). By doing this you stay more motivated and rather than taking a meaningless break on Instagram Facebook or Youtube you have a great activity for fun (usually at the end of the day)!:
— Example of productive day on Google Calendar —
Misconception #3: To learn more I just need to study more:
When I first started university, I thought the same thing. I studied…. EVERYWHERE. In the library, at home, on the bus, in the dining hall, everywhere. period. I read the textbook, EVERY PAGE. Yet, I was getting mediocre results (c’s on tests, and assignments). I missed out on parties, friends and a lot of fun to do this. As you can imagine, no bueno, at all. I knew I had to change and I’m going to make a list in progress of what I learned:
1.The textbook is not absolutely necessary for the majority of the class unless other-wise stated, read your lecture notes. Less cumbersome and more in-line with what the professor is going to remember to put on the test. Saves time and improves results as you’re focussing on the things you need to study.
2. Re-write your lecture notes. I didn’t understand microbiology at all. Felt like a new language. re-wrote my lecture notes 1–2 times before the exam, and I aced it finishing with 97% in the class.
3.Get help. Go to office hours to ask your profs a question, if there are classrooms that have ta’s USE THEM! I would not have passed calculus without this and I finished with an A+, I firmly believe that 80% of that was due to the fact that I utilized my resources.
4.Form a dedicated study group in your classes. Ideally it would be with people in the class as you’re all working on the same information, but a group of hard-working friends make the difference.
5. Exercise. light running specifically increases hippocampal neurogenesis, the place that helps you learn information initially. Feel good, look better, de-stress, meet people and of course learn more, easily! A really fascinating book written about this is called Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. It talks about exercises benefits (primarily cardiovascular) from mental health such as anxiety and learning to how to lose the stubborn last bit fat on your stomach. A very digestable & easy read.
6.Put the cell-phone away. Distractions limit the quality of study you have, it’s the difference from being in the zone and mowing through the material at commendable rate to “ughhh this is so boring and slow.” If you’re interested in more information about this, I’d recommend Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.
7. Pomo-doro: 25 minutes on and a 5 minute break to follow. This one was fantastic. You’re brain CANNOT study for long stretches of time without zoning out, leading to no retention of information.
8. Practice tests: This is the number one way to get good grades in college, if there are previous exams, take them. I can’t find the source I used when doing this but, this was at the top way to score highest on the exam. General practice problems followed behind it.
9.Sleep well. 8 hours for most, yours might differ, make a sleep schedule and don’t go away from it.
10.Spend time with friends + family doing something you enjoy. Without seeing people your grades, mental health and well-being will suffer.
11.Flash cards. Retrieval practice is amazing. Learn about it, use it and thrive. Don’t like making your own flash cards and want an easier way to do it scientifically and on your phone + computer? Use ANKI. Anki is a free software available to everyone and it’s used heavily in medical schools to learn information effectively and efficiently. To learn about the principles of retrieval practice and other things that are involved in Anki (primarily to understand why and how to incorporate it's lessons to the rest of your college experience) I recommend you. check out: Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.
12. Say that you love whatever subject you are doing. Hate math? Too bad you’re going to say thank god I’m doing math whenever you do it. Not sure why, but you end up loving the subject after a while and your grades excel. 11th grade Chemistry I got 73%, used this technique and I got 97% in it’s grade 12 equivalent. Maybe someone can link a article but this one I kind of just tried myself and as weird as it sounds, it works!
13.Have a dedicated study spot that you don’t do anything else but pomo-doro studying. Environment plays a huge part in priming us for either relaxation, studying or whatever else you do in that place. With this spot you choose whether a coffee shop or at home in a room, don’t waste time watching youtube, playing games etc. By only studying, you prime yourself in the long run so it becomes a habit. This is classical conditioning at play for relevance in studying. For those that don't know Classical Conditioning was a concept made by Pavlov and I guess with the support of his dog. What ended up happening is that Pavlov noticed that his dog would start salivating when he rang the bell for him to come over to get his food. So he found that interesting. The next time he did it, he just rang the bell and didn't give his dog. the food. To his surprise, the dog still salivated! The dog associated the bell with food. and the physiological responses that accompanied food now accompanied just the bell alone as well! Now to take things away form Pavlov and relate it back to the study spot. By keeping just. one spot for studying you are essentially creating the trigger of that spot to be a cue for deep work and studying. Saves a lot of mental battles of "Whether or not you're going to study today."
14.Study music. This is one of the most UNDER-RATED things to improve your studying motivation, retention and really to ease studying and make it more bearable and fun. How did I find out about this and it’s importance? I was watching ted-talks and ran into this one by Will Henshall. I was intrigued at the portion of the talk where they were describing information on the benefits of music and it clicked with me. I decided to give Focus@will’s free trial a try and I was hooked ever-since second year. Their music is backed by research and is an easy platform that I used on my computer, phone and iPad, wherever I studied. It had different options for study music ranging for specific music that targeted ADHD to calming spa music. When I started I used the ADHD setting and I was blown away how much I improved. Although I’ve never taken medication, I believe I have minor ADHD as it was very hard for me to focus, using the ADHD setting helped me immensely. I recommended focus@will to all of my friends and it has really helped them. Even my sister who was taking 7 courses with volunteering told me that before she tried this, she was super stressed and behind, but when she used Focus@will, she was a lot more productive. She was initially worrying about failing 2 courses and wasting money and time to re-take the courses, to finishing with a 3.9 that semester and she put a lot of emphasis on the incorporation of Focus@will into her study routine.
Before we move-on, I’d just like to say that it’s much more easier to maintain a high-GPA, than have to climb up-hill from a low one, so if you’re relatively new to college, try not to compromise more than 2 years of it as it’s tough after. If this is too late, it's an uphill battle but you can do it. Grind hard and keep your priorities straight!
Social Life: How to maintain, improve or cultivate a Social-life
Before I list every-way you can gain friends I just wanted to mention that your approach to this should be viewed with a growth mind-set mentioned above, i.e., if something doesn’t work, think about how you can make it work in the future to fit you and your need.
1.Live on campus: You meet a lot of people, are surrounded by friends and don’t have to commute to campus, only negative is cost and smaller living spaces, usually. I’m recommending this as I personally lived off campus, but in my final year of college hung out with a lot more people who lived in the residences on campus. Their whole impression of the school was different and I believe the fact that their social life was improved due to their living situation played a big role.
2.Join a club and become an executive member to go to each meeting and not just wait for the executive team to make events for them to invite you to.
3.First day of class sit beside someone and say hi. Does this always work? No. Some people are weird, you don’t want to be friends with them anyways. Some of my best friends I met like this and I wouldn’t have had the opportunity if I didn’t step out of my comfort zone.
4.Set a dedicated time 1x or more a week to meet with a group of your core friends. You have time, make it. E.g., every Friday 5 ppl come to your place for a movie, pong, video games, board games (p.s., the resistance is fire and it’s one of my favourites! Get’s everyone involved).
5.Set time aside every-day to meet with friends (probably best for evenings.Go to parties. No brainer. Don’t feel pressured to do things you’re not comfortable with.
6.Go to events on campus. Like rock-climbing? there’s events! Hiking? Yup! There’s something for everyone and you can find a great fit for you too.
7.Go to workshops on things your interested
8.Volunteer for organizations your interestedMeet peers at office hours, they’re probably hard-working so that’s a friend and study partner, 2 for 1!
Life-advice I’ve learned through college.
Life isn’t fair and it never will be. Understanding this allows us to avoid the fixed-mind set and doesn’t waste time of things that we’re unable to change ourselves and moves us forward in a positive direction.
Don’t talk s*** about your profs or Ta’s with friends. They will find out and trust me, not all of them are the morally just people. It will hurt you in the long-run.To add to this, just don’t do this for anyone. People will trust you more and won’t think you’re talking about them behind their backs, feeling more comfortable with you.
People are only thinking about themselves.This one was a very hard concept for me to grasp as I usually think about others first, but when you realize that 99.9% of people are thinking about themselves 99% of the time you start to relax. No one is judging your presentation, they care if Brittaney is gonna reply to their text, if the class is gonna end soon so they can get chipotle or if the party is still on. More seriously their are more intimate parts of their life that they care about. You, or your presentation are NOT important to them as much as you think. Extrapolating this, when a TA gives you an unfair mark, don’t take it personally, they just wanted to go have fun or focus on a family emergency. When giving a presentation, don’t be afraid of what others are gonna think, because it most-likely won’t be about you.
Be yourself. Cliché? Hell ya! True? Yup. College flies by. Don’t fake yourself into something you’re not. Stand by your values and that will draw the types of people in your life that you need.
Some-people won’t agree, approve or like you.That’s just life. Smile at them, wish them well and move-on. Life’s short, don’t get stressed out about these kinds of people or things.
Your health is more important than your grades, money, or anything else. Don’t compromise your health for your studies. This could be a lack of nutrition, exercise, mental well being due to stressful environments. Minimize anything that’s poor for your health, it’s not worth it.
That’s it! I hope it Helped :) Again, If you know any communities that may benefit from this information, please share this message across
TL;DR: For academics: Have a growth-mindset, make a schedule that you would be happy about using, use pomo-doro, run, sleep well, have breaks in-between studying, read the lecture notes, go to office hours, have a dedicated study space and try Focus@will's free trial for study music
For social life: Put yourself out there, say hi to people in lecture, go join clubs as an exec and go to different events that interest you
For life tips: easier to just read above but, be yourself, don’t worry yourself too much, and never compromise your health!
If there are any specific things you would like me to add, please let me know, I’ll try to update with a new story when I get the chance :)
Thank you for reading!
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I have partnered with some of the resources shared in this post where signing up or utilizing their services will give me a commission for referring individuals to their site. I still to this day utilize all of these services and hope to update this article with more tips once I enter medical school... Still a work in progress but I'm confident that it will happen eventually!
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