10 Academic Steps to Achieve Successful Learning

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Learning is undoubtedly a process each human being goes through all of his life. Going to school and getting educated starts from an early age and can never end if you choose it that way. However, at least a few years of school are mandatory to many of us in developed countries, where children have educational opportunities and conditions to access that education. Being successful or not is a matter of choice, discipline, and methods. In this article, we explore ten tips to help you achieve successful learning and the best results out of it.

1. Don’t do tomorrow what can be done today

Reducing stress by putting some tasks off is the key to instead increasing your stress level as the term progresses. Accumulating tasks and having an infinite pile of work to do won’t make it any easy. It is never a good idea to deal with workload snowballs and deadlines almost exploding on you all the time. Tasks don’t need to be done all at once but finding a method to finish work and giving continuity to other tasks is important to keep a track on what needs to be done. Getting started is the first step to fight laziness and procrastination. Break the job into manageable steps, create a solid schedule to complete the task and follow it strictly.

2. Peer pressure on yourself

Surround yourself with people that are work-oriented and have goals towards their studies and academic life. By spending time with successful people, it is easier to get motivated to complete your path. Challenge each other, learn from each other and encourage one another. Develop some study groups, help each other before the exams with quizzes and explore strategies to reach the goals. Sharing fears and working together to overcome it is a good way to progress towards a bigger step in your academic life.

3. Rethinking approaches to the exams

Exams can be scary, stressful and decisive. Try to face them as an opportunity to test your learning quality skills and give you feedback on what you have to improve. Instead of studying on the last minute of the exam, set up a studying schedule where you accomplish daily goals. This method will keep the contents fresh in your mind and give you the ability to test yourself prior to the exam. Your learning will be enhanced, you will be more confident and easily succeed by not falling into some stress patterns.

4. Trusting yourself

Success is always about doing the best you can do about something. Success is not an easy path, you will ups and downs, lots of challenges and tough times. What makes the difference between succeeding and failing is your attitude towards adversities. Choose to rise instead of giving up, lean with mistakes and continue your journey with a smile. Stay oriented towards your goals.

5. Know your goals

Question what you want to achieve, set up your goals, change them if necessary. Figure out where you have to spend more time and develop supportive routines. Set deadlines, use planers and look into future tasks. Balance your schools work, your personal life and your work. Resist the procrastination and be active.

6. Courses outlines

Once you know what is advised by the teacher to read to your courses you will have better insights to succeed the course. Analyze the course outline, the goals of the learning and the methods of the teacher. If you are aware of what is important to learn as major guidelines for each course, it will be easier to achieve a good grade and make the difference.

7. Listen and be active in classes

Takin notes, making schemes and asking questions while the classes are happening is half of the way to a good absorption of the course contents. Effective listening involves paying attention and asking questions allow you to clear some blurred thoughts you might have about the information you are learning.

8. Switch on your brain

If it happens that you are reading and your mind is somewhere else it means that you are studying with your brain switched off. Switch it on and absorb what is on the paper. Reading more actively and frequently can make it more effective and efficient. Read with the aim to understand and relate the ideas to your previous knowledge. Summarize ideas, highlight key points and write notes. Extract the relevant information in the texts and focus not on memorizing but understanding it.

9. Leave the stress out

While having an active academic life it is important to also have activities that make your stress go out. Take a walk, do some sports you like, hang out with friends or use meditation to relax. Have a healthy diet and sleep enough hours a night to be totally focused on the next day. Find the sources of stress within your mind and body and learn how to repel it. Knowing where our stress comes from can help you to concentrate your stress management where it matters the most. Stress is part of our lives, knowing how to deal with it makes it easier to cope.

10. Learn, grow, get up

Learn through the mistakes, collect feedback from the educators, friends and study groups. Improve by working hard, changing methods, approaches, and ways of studying. Working on the several feedback sources you receive while studying will make you grow and improve yourself as a student but also as a person. Don’t be afraid to fail. Actually, it is important you do fail. By it, you learn and you reach more steps of your climb in the future.