School has been a part of my life since I was 4 years old and my mother had to endure my everyday crying each time she dropped me off at pre-school. Nearly 20 years later, I now have to face an imminent new reality: that of becoming the worker instead of the student. The thought that I will soon have to face a world relatively unknown to me is frightening, perhaps even more frightening than my first day of pre-school. Because let’s face it, being a student is easy, the real challenge begins when you can no longer depend on the comforts of the academic system. Having said that, getting your way through school can often seem like an ordeal to many students. The papers, the exams, the oral presentations, they all can be hard to handle and create a lot of stress. For that reason (and at the risk of committing premature professional suicide as a result of my unorthodox methods), I have decided to give students, particularly those who are or will be attending university, some useful tips that helped me deal with school with less stress while still getting good grades:

1. Go to class

Going to class is probably one of the most important keys to academic success. Whether your teacher is good or bad, fun or boring, nice or mean, young or old, or hot or not, there is always something to gain from going to class. Does your teacher simply repeat what’s on the book? Does he or she post all the notes on the course website? It doesn’t matter. I can assure you that attending class and listening – or half listening- to your teacher while you go on Facebook, text your boyfriend or girlfriend, or fall asleep, will dramatically increase the chance of that information getting in your head. “Should I then not skip class?” you may ask. Not quite. Skipping class is essential to staying sane during the term, but do not skip more than two classes on any given course and you’ll do fine.

2. Learn how to write properly

There is nothing teachers hate more then than bad writing. Please, please do yourself a favour and learn how to wright write properly. Watch out for spelling and grammar mistakes, especially very obvious ones. You might want to start by learning how to use Word’s spellcheck function properly, but that’s not all their there is to it. Buy or download a dictionary and get yourself a copy of a writing style handbook (The Elements of Style is highly recommended). But most of all, familiarize yourself with the basic rules of grammar, and identify your common mistakes in order to avoid making them again. On this note, the most common mistakes include the use of their/there/they’re, its/it’s then/than, etc. Learning how to write properly doesn’t mean you can’t make mistakes at all, there are probably a few mistakes in this blog entry itself, but reducing the amount of grammatical and spelling errors will definitely increase your chances of academic success. Trust me, teachers tend to prefer well-written papers that may lack some depth to badly-written papers with a lot of substance.

3. Learn how to cite your sources

It is really not that hard. You can find many online resources that will tell  you how to cite your sources in any given style. Proper citation not only guarantees a better grade, it also spares you from potential plagiarism accusations.

4. Procrastinate, procrastinate, procrastinate

Relax, take it easy. It’s not worth it to stress out about a paper that’s due in two or three weeks. Procrastination has been my motto all throughout my school years, particularly in university. Why would you start writing a paper two weeks before it’s due and go through all the stress and work that it entails when you can do it the day before the due date? In other words, it’s better to have a full day -and more often than not a full night- of stress than a full two weeks. Trust me, one or two nights is all you need to write that paper. Once you learn to write properly you won’t even need to write first, second, or third drafts anyway. Your first draft is good. Just give it a quick read before printing it and you’re good to go. Don’t obsess over it but remember to check for spelling and grammar mistakes as well as typos. As a side note, the only negative aspect I have found about procrastinating is the lack of books at the library. I have often faced the problem of searching for books on whatever topic I need to write about only to find that they all have been already checked out by other students in my class. Two simple solutions: first,  even though you won’t start writing your paper until the due date is fairly close, gather your research materials in advance, and second, turn to other sources of information such as your local library or the internet (use only scholarly sources and whatever you do avoid Wikipedia because teachers look down on it).

5. Don’t waste your time reading all those pages

Every term I end up with a couple hundred dollars of unread books and course-packs that only create more clutter in my room. The fact that I don’t read all those books does not mean you shouldn’t buy them. It is always good to have them around. Also, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do the required readings at all but you need to adopt reading techniques that will help you avoid all that bullshit unnecessary information in academic writings. After all these years of reading scholarly articles, I have noticed a thing or two about the way academics write. They usually begin with two or three pages telling you what they will be talking about, followed by ten pages of rambling, french, german, and latin words and phrases, and English words you’ve never heard of and will probably never use, to finally end with  one or two pages telling you what they just wrote about. My advice? read the first two or three pages and the last page or two (also known as the introduction and the conclusion, which in shorter pieces of writing might simply be the first and last paragraphs) and make sure you understand them well enough. Then proceed to reading the middle pages in the following way: read the first two and last sentences of every paragraph, read any sentence that has something in bold or italics, and avoid all the foreign-language and unknown English words (these are just meant for the author to show off how smart he/she is or at least thinks he/she is). Whatever you didn’t grasp by skimming through the readings will probably come up in class, hence the importance of going to class.

6. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit

In your papers and exams (the ones with essay-type questions) make sure you give a general understanding of the topic (whatever you got from skimming through the readings and half-listening to your teacher) followed by a bunch of bullshit additional insight. In other words, do what those scholars do in their academic writings but without sounding as pretentious as them. But above all, and I can’t stress this enough, write well!

7. Hand everything in on time.

I already mentioned the importance of procrastination in order to live a less stressful academic experience, but this doesn’t mean you don’t have to meet the deadlines. Handing stuff in on time is highly important because it gives your teachers the impression that you’re a responsible student, and you won’t suffer from lateness penalties. However, if for some reason you can’t meet the deadline, I have found that simply contacting the teacher and telling him/her you’re aware your work is late and that you’ll be penalized works more in your favour than coming up with far-fetched excuses.

8. Sleep, don’t study

Where as it is totally fine (and in my case, imperative) to pull an all-nighter while writing that paper you postponed until the last minute, it is not OK to spend the night before an exam studying. Nights before exams are meant to get proper sleep. Make sure you get a full 8-hour sleep (at least) so that you will be  well-rested when it’s time to take that test. Trust me, all that studying will be worthless if by the time you get to the exam you’re half asleep or under the influence of five energy drinks. If you want to study -and I’m not a big fan of it- do it during the day. Personally, I don’t study per se. Rather, if I feel the need, I skim through the readings (even more quickly than the first time around) and through whatever notes I have just to refresh my memory. I also find it highly effective to get to the exam room at least 15 minutes in advance and just stand or sit near the inevitable group of people discussing frantically the course material.

9. Focus on what the teacher is saying, not on taking notes

I do take notes sometimes but I find it’s better just to sit back, relax, and enjoy the lecture. I might write some key concepts down from time to time, wonder off to Facebook, check my email, and send a few text messages along the way but I don’t take huge amounts of notes. I find it distracting and useless for I seldom read my notes afterwards. The bottom line is, if you’re focused on writing down everything the teacher says, you’re probably not paying attention to the meaning of what you’re writing. My suggestion: first listen, if you hear something worth writing down do it, but don’t simply write everything down as if you were a freaking stenographer.

10. Have fun

Your school years might be stressful and tiresome at times, but just think it might be worse. You might be an employee with an actual full-time job, a parent, or even worse, a recent unemployed graduate lost in the immensity of the professional world.