How I went from lazy student to a success. Tips, Tricks, and strategies inside. Willing to answer questions as well.

A little background about myself:

I used to be the one of the laziest kids around in High School. I didn’t find High School particularly challenging, so I never needed to put forth the effort to study to get A’s and B’s. Head into college my lazy ways continued, and well as many of you know that doesn’t usually have a good ending. Fortunately for me I told myself now is the time to change my life around. Fast Forward to now I am nearing graduation and will be graduating among the top of my class in Accounting. Not an engineering or mathematics degree, but still something I can hold my head high about. I give to you Reddit some tips to be successful and stay motivated.

1. Finding Motivation – It doesn’t matter if you know all the correct ways and strategies to study if you do not have motivation. I don’t care what your motivation is, but you need to find something that that gets you fired up. For me it was beating that smart-ass kid in class, people telling me that I was lazy, people telling me I was never going to be successful. Wherever you find you your motivation never forget and always reminding yourself of it.

2. Proper Learning Habits – I give you an example of two kids that I know. One kid that I knew in college was always spending ungodly amount of hours studying. Hours upon hours of studying, yet he never did that well in class. He managed to squeak out with B’s and C’s. Another kid I knew studied hard, but never put in un godly number of hours studying and had a high gpa and always tested well.. The difference between the two kids, and they were similar when it came to smarts, is the way they went about learning. One kid sat there and just memorized and memorized and memorized. I would see him just staring at his notes reading over and over. The other kid I knew always had his book out, notes out, and was always writing things down. One kid was memorizing while the kid was learning. You need to be able to teach the material to someone else not just spit out random facts.

3. Study Strategies – Now that you know its about learning here are some strategies I have. What worked best for me when learning material was taking it slow and trying to nail down a topic before I moved onto another topic. You need to be active when study. I would rather spend and hour trying hard and studying then wasting five hours of my time memorizing. You need to test yourself write out questions and then answers. Go over your notes and be able to lecture them to somebody or the wall. For technical based classes you just need to practice problems there are thousands of problems you can find online for numerous classes. I want to add sometimes you can get a different perspective on things googling your topic and watching YouTube videos.

4. Time Management – You know time management is crucial, so use your time wisely. I went through periods in college and still do where I will have a ton of work and not so much. If you are constantly doing work to stay ahead you never quite feel so overwhelmed. One example is when a teacher tells you you have an exam coming up in a week. Why are you waiting until the last night night studying 6 hours when they had 7 days where they could put in an hour a day of studying and have more time for other stuff an less stress. Don’t do it!

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6. Embrace the Suck – One thing I always hear from people when they are giving out advice is that you have to try and find enjoyment in what you are doing. I am sorry, but for myself I can’t always find enjoyment in something like tax accounting or whatever it may be. Sometimes you just have to make embrace the fact that cracking open the books isn’t going to be fun, but it will be worth the while in the end. Although it does help to try and study something that you are passionate about sometimes you have to bite the bullet and realize the cracking open the books will be beneficial in the end.

7. Get a shitty Job – Now this one is more geared towards students rather than people who have graduated and gotten a degree, but some principles still apply. One of the things that really motivated me when I was starting to do poorly was my job. I had a job that was basic grunt work for a construction company. Not the worst job in the world, but something I did not want to find myself doing for the rest of my life. Having a shitty job like this gave me motivation to do well in school, so I could get a good paying job and do something that I enjoy. It also forced me to schedule my time better. I didn’t always have a ton free times between work and school, so I didn’t get distracted with other useless tasks.

8. Self – Improvement – One of the best things here about r/getmotivated is that sometimes we create a chain reaction when start picking up good habits. There are simple things you can do which will build your self-confidence, and help you in other aspects of life. There are many things that will help you feel more confident. I think one of the best things is exercise and you see visbible improvements. I never even stepped foot in a gym just did a lot of body-weight type exercises. You have no excuse if you want to get fit. Improving other areas in your life will help you GET MOTIVATED to do other things.

tl;dr: Get pissed off and motivated, try to learn rather than memorize, schedule wisely, it’s going to suck, get a shitty job, always improve yourself.

Loved to hear your questions guys thanks for the feedback, so far. Always remember the hardest part to changing yourself is the starting.

I’ll be back for more if you guys are interested just wanted to help some people out at reddit. Love to answer some questions if have some.

EDIT#2 Wow, guys can’t believe this has hit the front page truly remarkable. I have loved hearing all the success stories and those that are on the road to success. I have giving this a little thought but would guys be interested in me writing out some sort of an EBook? It would be free of course, and I have so much more that I would like to write about. If there is any interets please let me know.