Success in school is the definition of short term. Don't develop the habit of having a short-term focus. In fact, as a general rule in life, the further ahead you're thinking, the better your decision is going to be.
SMART student
Study for life, not to succeed in school
Study to learn for life, not just to succeed in school.
Studying to learn requires the ability to focus, concentrate, problem solve, and think creatively. These are all life skills that are in decline as we accept a short-term focus for short-term results. Learning is not looking up factoids, skimming reading, or memorizing information for the next test.
Last time I checked, there were no job listings for a professional Google searcher. Short-term exposure to ever-shorter amounts of information is not learning.
Study for life, not for school.
Tip: it's not possible to be interested in everything. Pick your perspective to make more subjects interesting and increase what you learn.
Measure your progress
Measure your progress. Acknowledge your pace. The most important word in that phrase is your.
School is a great time of life to find out who you are. Don't follow the traditional, typical or normal path through school if it's not right for you.
If you don't acknowledge your own pace, it leads to comparison, to unhealthy performance-based thinking, and to abusing yourself mentally, physically and emotionally — ultimately destroying the real you. It's a time to discover and develop, not to self-destruct.
Arrive at a destination
Allow yourself to arrive at a destination.
Don't live continually feeling like you've never arrived or aren't making progress. Accept what you can do and move on.
Accept what you can do in real life, on any given day, with any given set of variables. Don't live comparing what you could do on your best day — full strength, full energy, full focus, nothing else happening — with today. Today is today, with its own unique set of factors and limitations.
Do the best you can today, accept the limitations, allow yourself to arrive, and stick a pin in the map. Don't miss the moment in real life by living in "could have" in your mind.
Review, repeat, rehearse
Lots of academic and behavioral research supports the idea that learning — not information gathering — is iterative, progressive, and happens in layers. You can intentionally layer your learning by setting aside time to review as part of your plan.
Review, repeat, rehearse. It's not redundant, it's review.
You can't accomplish in one night through stress and strain what is far easier to achieve in layers by developing the habit of reviewing smaller amounts of information over time. The goal is to learn, not just to gather.
Thankfulness for opportunities
Be thankful for opportunities. Do what you can, and take the opportunities in front of you.
It's easier to steer a moving car. And if you're a learner rather than a professional student, you'll find some value in the experience.
There is nothing good on the other side of ingratitude, despair and disappointment. Trust me, I've been there.
DUMB ways to finish school
Graduating from school in debt, uneducated for real life, immature and broke is without a doubt the dumbest way to enter adult life. Don't settle for any of these outcomes. None of them are inevitable. The difference between smart and dumb is your choice.
Debt load
This may be unexpected, but debt is not the same as borrowing money.
Borrowing money or using credit with no forethought or plan is always dumb, period. Using debt to finance a plan is second best, but not dumb, if you have a reasonable plan for how to escape it. Just remember that it's always more expensive to include debt in your plan than to pay as you go.
Mindlessly accumulating debt and assuming it will all work out someday is dumb. You can do better.
Uneducated for life
It's a shock for some to go to school for 12 years, 14 years, 20 years — then step off campus and discover you have no idea how to live in the real world.
[I]Mmaturity as an excuse
Okay - this one is a cheat, skipping the [I] to get to maturity. But it was worth it to get to the point: Maturity has nothing to do with age. It has everything to do with responsibility, and in particular with accepting responsibility.
It's natural to reject responsibility for negative things. The more negative the environment you've experienced, the more likely you've developed the skill of deflecting responsibility. How common is it for you to think or say "I'm not responsible for that"? In most cases it's probably true.
I'm not talking about taking responsibility in a way that makes you a doormat or a scapegoat. But you also can't live in a permanent state of deflecting every life experience, or you won't grow in maturity.
There's a big difference between being responsible for what someone else has done — that's their choice — and accepting responsibility for your response.
You can't control what other people do, and I don't recommend trying. You may have learned that lesson painfully. Spending your time trying to control others is exhausting; you have no idea what may or may not happen, so you're ever vigilant for any possibility. You're living in defense. Don't live reacting. Choose your response.
It's more important how you respond to what happens than what actually happens. Taking responsibility for your response is the path toward maturity. Accept the responsibility to take charge at whatever your starting point is, and make progress from there.
Your life is your responsibility. Don't let anyone take that away or tell you differently.
Broke living
Going through school and graduating broke — financially and psychologically, without having accumulated knowledge, developed skills, gained meaningful relationships or grown more mature — leaves you broke for life after school.
Don't accept this outcome. Invest in yourself.