Tips for Success

Hello all

It's me, Henry, back with some more exciting college life stories...

In this post, I would like to share some tips for success, well, at least, it worked for me :)

I. Study your Syllabi

The syllabus is A-MUST-READ kinda document.
Back in high school I did not care about the syllabus. I looked at the syllabus to know my teacher's email address and I was done. However, there are way more important in college. You might have like 20 little assignments thorough the semester, but they might only take about 5% of your grades so why bother putting up with 3 hours for each assignment?

I guess what I mean is that study the syllabus and highlight what's important for you. Highlight due dates, important projects, and assignments/test that gives you a lot of points.

II. Organize your Calendar

I strongly recommend you to use some sort of calendar app to keep track of everything you do.
You might think that you don't need one but TRUST ME, you do.

Go over your syllabus one more time and PUT ALL THE DUE DATES TO YOUR CALENDAR. That way, you will know what's coming up next without looking at every single syllabus throughout the semester.

Some professor might change the due dates for some of the assignments throughout the semester, it's better for you to just go to your calendar and change it up there than go through the whole mess of looking up stuff in your binder.

If you are a PLU student, I strongly recommend the Google Calendar that is linked to your PLU email. Especially if you are involved with any club or if you work on campus, other people can see when you're free to make an appointment with you. You can also utilize this calendar to see when is a good time to meet up with your adviser.

III. Study group

You might not want to join a study group because you don't know a lot of people your first year but once you declare your major, you will take the same class with pretty much a lot of familiar faces.

It doesn't have to be anything formal. It can be just between you and another classmate.
Study group is awesome because you can quiz each others and help each other with ways to understand difficult concepts.

I always thought that I studied everything for the test so that's it, there's nothing else I can do. However, when I study with other people I usually find out tons of things I've never thought about. My friends usually come up with tons of creative ways to memorize some nursing definitions, or signs and symptoms of a certain disease that I would never thought of.

IV. Book or No Books?

This might sound weird but for some classes, I just don't need to read the book.

Of course you won't know which class you need to read for and which class you don't at first. I usually start the semester with reading everything and compare it to the powerpoint that my professors put on Sakai (sakai is a system we use at PLU). If they are exactly the same, I don't need to read the book because the book usually has way more information that my tiny brain can't handle.

You might wonder why do I waste my money on textbook then? Well, textbooks for sure will help since we don't know everything. For me as a nursing major, I need my book to provide evidence-based research. Although I don't need it everyday for the test, I might need it to learn other concepts.

V. Relax

You might say, oh man, I can't do anything fun. I can't go out. I can't watch a movie...I can't... i can't....I can't because I am a *insert major* and my life sucks.

Trust me, you life doesn't suck. Everyone feels the same when they are stressed out and overwhelmed.

But you can't study and be your best if you don't take some times off for yourself to relax and to do things you enjoy to do.

In order to do this right, you might need a well-organized calendar to see when is a good time to study and when is a good time to just put down the books and wish you would never have to see it again :) .

VI. My gift for you

Last but not least, here's something I've found in one of my nursing textbook and I hope you will remember this whenever you're stressed out.

Best regards,
Henry