Succesful 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 for their entertainment 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 chose the back of the classroom because they seek invisibility and anonymity; both 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 that are necessary to make your notes meaningful at some time later. A short review of your notes while the material is still fresh on your mind helps you to learn more. The more you learn, the less you’ll have to learn later and the less time it will take because you won’t have to include some deciphering time, also. The whole point of taking notes is to use the, and use them often. The more you us them, the more they improve.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT!!!

Succesful Students: 1-2

Successful Students
1-2

Successful students exhibit a combination of successful attitudes and behaviors as well as intellectual capacity. Successful students…

1. …are responsible and active. Successful students get involved in their studies, accept responsibility for their own education, and are active participants in it! Responsibility means control. It’s the difference leading and being led. Your own efforts control your grade, you earn the glory or deserve the blame, you make the choice. Active classroom participation improves grades without increasing study time. You can sit there, act bored, daydream, or sleep. Or, you can actively listen, think, question, and take notes like someone in charge of their learning experience. Either option costs one class period. However, the former method will require a large degree of additional work outside of class to achieve the same degree of learning the latter provides at one sitting. The choice is yours.

 2. …have educational goals. Successful students have legitimate goals and are motivated by what they represent in terms of career aspirations and life’s deserves.

Ask yourself these questions: What am I doing here? Why have I chosen to be sitting here now? Is there some better place I could be? What does my presence here mean to me? Answer to these questions represents your “Hot Buttons” and are, without a doubt, the most important factors in your success as a college student. If your educational goals are truly yours, not someone else’s, they will motivate a vital and positive academic attitude. If you are familiar with what these hot buttons represent and refer to them often, especially when you tire of being a good student, nothing can stop you; if you aren’t then don’t, everything can and will!

CHOOSE THE RIGHT!!