10 Tips for Student Sucess

Ten Tips for Student Success

St. John’s University

1.  Attend your classes. Remember in the words of Woody Allen ‘Seventy percent of success in life is showing up’.

2. Know your faculty. Make sure you know who your teachers are when their office hours are and how to contact them.

3. Make sure the faculty knows you. Sit down in front of the classroom. Participate in class discussions. Consult with your teachers during office hours.

4. Use a daily planner. Note the date exams, assignments, term papers, etc.

5. Be organized. Prioritize your responsibilities. Manage your time. Remember everyone has the same 168 hours a week, only some of us use them better than others.

6. Know your campus resources. Visit you academic’s dean Office regularly. Become familiar with the services and programs offered by the Counseling Center, The Freshman Center, the Career Canter, the Campus Ministry Office and the Student Life Office.

7. Take care of your health. Get enough sleep. Eat well-balanced means. Exercise regularly. Make informed and mature decisions about alcohol, sex and drugs. Visit the Health Office as needed.

8. Work only ass necessary. Try not to exceed 20 hours during a school week. If possible, work on campus. Apply for financial aid and loans if you need them. Manage your expenses very carefully.

9. Get involved in campus activities. It will help you learn valuable skills, expand your social network and enhance your self-confidence. Seek out support opportunities to apply what you learn in the classroom.

10. Keep your eyes on the prize. Clarify your goals. Know why you are in (Highschool or) College in the first place. Visualize your success on a daily basis.

 

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7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens

7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens

By Sean Covey

Foe teens, life is not a playground, it’s a jungle. And the parent of a teenager isn’t any walk in the park either. In his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teen, author Sean Covey attempts to provide “a compass to help teens and their parents navigate the problem they encounter daily.”

How will they deal with peer pressure? Motivation?  Success or lack thereof? The life of a teenager is full of tough issues and life changing decisions. As a parent, you are responsible to help them learn the principles and ethics that will help them to reach their goals and live a successful life.

While it is well and good to tell kids how to live their lives, “teens watch what you do more than they listen to what you say,” Covet says. So practice what you preach. Your example can be very influential.

 Covey himself has done well by following a parent’s example. His dad Stephen Covey, wrote the book The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People which sold over 15 million copies. Sean’s a chip off the old block, and no slacker. His own book has rung in a more that respectable 2 million copies sold. Here are his own seven habits, and some ideas for helping your teen understand and apply them:

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Successful Students Part 2

Successful Students

Part 2

Work Together. There are a number of ways that you can ensure you get the most out of your educational experience. First, participate fully. Engage regularly in the discussions and be willing to share your personal, professional and educational experiences. You can get to know your classmates through dialogue that is created in a course environment—sometimes even better than in a face-to-face class. And the same goes for your instructor. Be sure to contact your professor—especially if you are having problems. He/She is still your instructor and will be there to guide and assist you as needed.

 

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Successful Students 9

Successful Students

9… don’t cram for exams. Successful students know that divided periods of study are more effective than cram sessions, and they practice it.

                If there is one thing that study skills specialists agree on, it is that distributed study is better than massed, late night, last-ditch efforts known as cramming. You’ll learn better, remember more, and earn a higher grade by studying for one hour a night, sessions for Friday’s exam. Short concentrated preparatory efforts are more efficient and rewarding than wasteful, inattentive, last moment marathons. Yet, so many students fail to learn this lesson and end up repeating it over and over until it becomes a wasteful habit. Not too clever, huh?

 When you cram, you can take a short cut, and shortcuts never produce any real worthwhile results. Also, when you take shortcuts, you feel rotten for not knowing that you could have done better but didn’t Short cuts cut you short. You don’t plant a watermelon seeds and harvest fresh watermelons the next day. It takes time. Cramming for a test or project doesn’t help you academically, so why even do it? Plan ahead, prepare yourself. Give yourself plenty of day and weeks to prepare for upcoming accountability opportunities.

Successful Students 7-8

Successful Students 7-8

7… Understand that actions affect learning. Successful students know their personal behavior affects their learning and emotions which can affect learning.

 

                If you act a certain way that normally that produces particular feelings, you will begin to experience those feelings. Act like you’re bored, and you’ll become bored. Act like you’re disinterested and you’ll be disinterested. So the next time you have trouble concentrating in the classroom, “act” like an interested person: lean forward, place your feet flat on the floor, maintain eye contact with the professor, nod occasionally, take notes, and ask questions. Not only will you benefit directly fromyou actions, your classmates and professor may also gat more excited and enthusiastic.

 

8… talk about what they’re learning. Successful students get to know something well enough that they can put it into words. Talking about something, with friends or classmates, is not only good for checking whether or not you know something, it’s a proven learning tool. Transferring ideas into your own words provide the most direct path for learning path for knowledge from short-term to long term memory. You really don’t “know” material until you can put it into your own words. So, next time you study , don’t do it silently. Talk about notes, problems, readings, etc. with friends, recite to a chair, organize an oral study group, pretend your teaching your peers. “Talk-Learning” produces a whole host of memory traces that result in more learning.

 

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Successful Students 5-6

Successful Students 5-6

5. Don’t sit in the back of the room. Successful students minimize classroom distractions that interfere with learning. Students want the best seat available for their entertainment dollars, but willingly seek the worst seat for their educational dollars. Students who sit in the back cannot possibly be their professor’s teammate (see no. 4). Why do they expose themselves to the temptations of inactive classroom experiences and distractions of all the people between them and their instructor? Of course, we know they close the back of the classroom because they seek invisibility or anonymity, both of which are antithetical to efficient and effective learning. If you are trying not to be part of the class, why, then, are you wasting your time? Push your hot buttons, is there something else you should be doing with your time?

6 . . . take good notes. Successful students take notes that are understandable and organized, and review them often.

Why put something into your notes you don’t understand? Ask the questions now that are necessary to make your notes meaningful at some later time. A short review of your notes while the material is still fresh on your mind helps your learn more. The more you learn then, the less you’ll have to learn later and less time it will take because you won’t have to include some decipliering time, also. The whole purpose of taking notes is to use them, and use them often. The more you use them, the more they improve.

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