Hello! Long-time not seeing! Hope you guys had a really great time! Now, enough with the blurbs! So, how’s your study going? It is hard enough to be woman pilot right? LOL! I know your feelings. How about I give some advice to be a great student to pursue your dreams? Okay! These are the list of how can you become a great student!
Make the first week of school count!
First impressions are everything with teachers so make sure they have a positive reason for knowing who you are.
Always answer questions that the teacher(s) ask you.
You will have to learn the art of faking intelligence. It's always easier to appear smart than to actually be so. The easiest way to explain how to do this is to recall something that you think has some relevance to the topic at hand. Usually the teacher will say something about how good your point was and then give you clues to the answer s/he was looking for. This method has two benefits. First, the teacher thinks you are paying attention in class, and second, they will think you are capable of independent thought and will be more likely to grade your papers easier.
Recognize busy work.
In order to truly understand, you have to think in terms of the teacher. Teachers are people too. They are just as busy outside of school as you are if not more so. Also remember that for every homework page you do, the teacher must grade, and since s/he might have over 100 students, that's a lot of papers. There's no way to grade all of them in depth. If you follow the above two steps, your teacher will probably think pretty highly of you and won't be checking your work too closely. You can be pretty sure an assignment is busy work if:
- The assignment is a worksheet,
- You see the teacher grading the exact same papers and spending less than a minute on each before entering a grade.
Tackle busy work efficiently.
Busy work should take as much time to do as your teacher will spend grading it! If there is an article with questions, often the questions will be in order of the article. Read each question then skim the article for the answer. In opinion questions, you don't need to put thought into your answer. Just make something up that sounds good. Many students already have a knack for how to handle busywork, but for others it takes practice. It's a huge time saver once you get the hang of it.
Revamp your handwriting.
This step is optional, although it will dramatically reduce your workload. Try for a style that is legible, but quick. Your teacher isn't grading you on your penmanship, and neat handwriting takes valuable time, especially when doing busy work.
Know how to write papers. If your paper flows well, your teacher will be less attracted to what you're actually writing about.
Use a thesaurus to avoid redundancy and vary your sentence structure. Don't spend too much time thinking about what you are going to write and just start writing. Do any pre-writing work you have to turn in after you write the paper to save time. If you make your paper long enough chances are your teacher will only half-read it, so you have two options you could either make a really short and good, or really long with several mistakes. After the first few times you try, you'll realize how easy and quick it is to write perfect papers with half of the rewriting you used to do.
Pay attention in class.
Even though it's tempting to text or sleep during class, especially when there's a lecture, don't do it. There are two benefits to this: first, if you want a way to reduce the work you have to do at home, you have to eliminate most of your studying time, but you still have to do well on tests if you want straight A's. Most people think you can't have both, but you can! Paying attention is the key. Actively take notes. As you're writing, actually think about what your teacher is saying and put your notes in your own words. If you can, think of something funny to remember them (called a mnemonic). Secondly, teachers love students who participate, and will sometimes boost their grades by whole letters. Grades aren't rigid, teachers can manipulate an F to an A or the other way around, although their changes are rarely that drastic, everything helps.
Do your homework every night.
Homework will be the easiest points you will earn all year. That doesn't mean you need to spend hours every night, try utilizing the time at the end of classes. Organize your work in your mind into sections, and then tackle one section at a time. Your first section should be worksheets as they take the least amount of time. Then you should do any homework that is broken down into independent parts, such as math. That way you can work for a few minutes at the end of various classes without wasting time finding your place. Prioritize the remainder of your work based on how hard your teacher grades. Do the work that you know will be read in depth first and do a good job so you can build trust with that teacher. Then do all of the work that might not be checked so closely and don't worry so much about the quality, just make sure your writing is on topic and looks lengthy and detailed. Fill up the page with small writing to make it less likely to be read. If you begin to run out of time with just a few unimportant assignments to do, work quickly through them all making sure to complete them all. Teachers value effort greatly and will appreciate it if you do your homework and the easiest way to an A is to make your teacher happy.
Don't study until your homework is done.
As stressed as you may be about the test, think about the differences between studying and doing homework; when your teacher assigns homework, s/he also assigns a certain point value to the assignment. If you do the work, you get the points, if you don't those points are lost. Your teacher doesn't give you points for studying, just for the test. If the test is hard, no matter how much studying you do, you might still get a bad grade. Then you'll want the cushion homework points will give you. Also, studying in one subject then doing homework in the next will make you forget some of what you just studied requiring more work to learn the same amount of material.
Learn the material during class so your studying is more of a review.
You have nothing better to do during class, so rather than staring at the ceiling or texting, listen to what the teacher has to say. That way, your studying can be a brief review/cram session right before bed the night before the test. Also, if you have a final exam, any material you learned for the first time during a cram session will likely have to be learned again before the exam.
Relax before tests.
Even if you haven't studied at all, if you paid attention in class, chances are you will do fine. If you stress too much, you will blank out and end up with a worse grade.
Come in before school for help.
If your teacher offers to give help outside of school, accept. Even if you are struggling with the material in the class, if you show your teacher you are dedicated, s/he will be more likely to give you a good grade.
Understand your school's grading policies.
Find out how your school calculates GPA's, if there are weighted grades for honors classes, which grades actually show up on your transcript, the cut-off percentages for each letter grade etc. Grades are a game that all students play and the more you familiarize yourself with the rules, the better you'll do.
Make a strategy.
One strategy is to get a solid foundation in all classes during the first week and not spend too much time in one class, keeping your grades around the B+ or A- range. Then begin working hard on the classes with the lowest grades, bringing all of them to a comfortable position at around 95%. Continue to take part in all extra credit activities where possible and increase your scores to the A+ range so the last few weeks you can focus mainly on projects and maybe even skip a few homework assignments if your scores are really high.
That’s all for this day! Hope you can be a great student! Aja Aja Fighting! (Words that I love to use to keep up my spirit!)
Love,
Skyline Izz
