20 Essential Lessons EVERY Student NEEDS To Know To Succeed
The ultimate guide to being a highly successful student
Our academic career is one of the most important periods of a student’s life. As students, sometimes we feel like there are many essential life-changing lessons that we never get taught in school.
Therefore, I made a list of some of the lessons that resonated with me and I wanted to share them with all the students around the world. In this article, I am not going to point out the traditional tips like “study hard, pay attention to your teacher, or manage your time...”, instead I will share with you 20 essential lessons successful students apply to their life not just to succeed academically, but to enjoy a social life.
👀Failure is your friend
Failure is something we all experience, and the degree of failure can vary. Regardless of the circumstances and the setbacks, we must not lose faith and keep moving forward.
When you feel like you've done everything that you possibly can and still performed poorly in the exam, don't kick yourself, instead, you should realize that somewhere along the line you must have gone wrong. What you should do is to reflect on how you studied and what it is that you did and why it didn't work. Subsequently, put what you've learned into practice by not committing the same mistake again.
It’s ok to fall behind in your studying assignments, but don't beat yourself up saying "oh my god, I am such a waste man, everyone around me is keeping up whereas I am falling behind”. In fact, more than 90 % of your classmates are also falling behind pretending that they aren't. Forgive yourself for procrastinating. Everyone procrastinates. It’s part of human nature
All I need you to do is to focus on putting yourself in the best possible position you possibly can because that is the thing that you can control, but whatever happens after is not in your control, therefore you should not think about it because it's going to cause you stress and anxiety. In order to recover from procrastination, you should forget yourself.
Keep in mind that Failure is not a life-ending scenario and your mistakes provide you with valuable learning opportunities. Seeing failure this way matters because it’s the difference between giving up and getting back up and trying something new. You should avoid using the same approach over and over. Instead, use failure as an opportunity to look at new approaches and try new things. Remember, not to allow the brokenness to eat your progress.
We learn more from our failures than our successes. 1
🤷♂️Are you happy with the game you’re playing❓
Never think about the short-term results, focus on things that are going to compound over time. You should learn and discover as much as you can and not let inexperienced decisions that you made in the past shape your entire future.
Stay true to yourself. As students, we all have big dreams about what we want to do in life. However, those dreams begin to change as we grow older and experience different things.
You lose yourself and follow down a path that wasn’t your decision or something you are curious about. You don’t want to be falling into this trap but if you have, you want to work to get out of it. These days, it’s so important to your success and well-being that you are doing the things that make you happy and fulfilled whenever you achieve your goals.
Always ask yourslef: Am I happy with what I am doing?
✍📸Be a documentarian
I encourage you to be more of a documentarian during your studying career because these years never come back. Take as many photos as you can along the journey. You might think it's awkward or inconvenient at the moment, but in the future, you will appreciate all the memories that you recorded.
Furthermore, I want you to document the things you're consuming and the things you're creating as well as your successes before your failures. When you read a book, an article, watch a video or listen to a podcast, write down your thoughts, feelings, what you've learned and how's your behavior changed as a result of these things. It would be even better to document the things you have learned along the way online or on your website because many people are going through the same journey as you, and your documents might be a game-changer to them.
👬Build a strong group of friends
Sitting down with a group of people who are going through the same process as you is a great way to go over confusing class material or prepare for a big test, plus it’s a fun, and comfortable way of learning. Your study buddies hold you accountable when you are procrastinating or feeling unmotivated. Additionally, studying with a friend can consolidate your knowledge and introduce you to different ways of analyzing information. Sharing knowledge and solving problems together helps to improve your understanding. After all, in teaching others, we teach ourselves.
Even make friends with the students who are in the years above. These students are an invaluable source of information when it comes to your studying, to your exams, and how to make the most out of your year because they've been through the things you're going through right now just one or two years ago, so they can probably be the best people to ask for advice and to seek help from.
🙏Do not study to pass the exam; study to learn
I know many students who are learning to pass the exam rather than genuine curiosity and interest in what they are studying. The problem is that after they pass the exam, all the knowledge they absorbed entirely vanishes. Perhaps the root cause of this is our current education system which focuses pretty much on memorizing a syllabus and testing memory instead of intelligence.
Successful students have a long-lasting student mentality, even after they have passed the test. They recall what they have learned and apply it in real-life situations as they need to. So please try to take advantage of the stuff you are learning outside the class.
You’re not studying to pass the exam. You’re studying for the day when you are the only thing between the patient and the grave.
🥇Work throughout the entire year; Consistency is the key
When you do a little bit of studying every day over a long period, the information is far more likely to end up in your long-term memory, whereas you do a bust of work that is not going to stick in the long term.
Remember that a little bit of work every single day is going to save you the biggest headache and stress when it comes to exam season and the night before your deadlines, that would lead you to always feel prepared for your test and not feeling any kinds of stress, worry or uncertainty because you give yourself enough time to generate all the notes and then give yourself to study all the new information well enough and cover all the materials, so that when that exam comes there's nothing more you can do rather than just sitting down and doing the exam.
Take some steps daily is what will build your future. A good or a bad future depends on the quality of steps you are taking every single day.
👨💻Study independently, Be a self-learner
Do not just follow what your teacher wants you to learn, learn skills on your own by taking advantage of all the wonderful resources that you have. Do the extra bit of reading, the reading that you are obsessed about and interested in. Note that you do have to buy any extra textbooks as there are tons of great online resources.
Therefore, it’s fine to skip a lecture or to not understand your teacher because you can afterward go through the lecture on your own time. Successful students are self-learners and they have the discipline to commit to learning anything they want on their own. Believe it or not, if you are disciplined and accountable enough, there is no need to go to school because in our modern world you can learn everything; everything is figureoutable.
Self-study, in a sense of learning by yourslef without anybody teaching you anything, has an enormous value - Robert Kraft
Seek forgiveness✅, not permission❌
At some point, you get an idea of something you want to do, don't feel like you need to ask your school, your teacher, or even your parents for permission; instead, do the things that matter to you, and if it turned out they have a problem with what you have done, you can still seek forgiveness from them.
In fact, other people often tell you what is right in their eyes and from their own experiences, and that has nothing to do with you and what you desire, so they laugh at new ideas or tell you it can’t be done because they look only at where you are right now or they think that it’s unlike you. So, never let permissions from these people stop you from doing what feels fulfilling to you.
Stop waiting for “someone else” to give you permissioin to bloom.
🖐Stop worrying about what others think of you
One of the best pieces of advice is to stop thinking about what other people think of you. In reality, no one cares about you, people are concerned with their own life and problems and most people are not paying much attention as you think they are.
Don’t make other people’s opinions pivotal to your success and don’t allow their impression to become how you perceived, because then and only then do you lose out on who you really are. For that reason, I want you to focus on what matters and to concentrate on what’s important for you to be accepted.
Do not let the vocice of your fears to be louder than the voices in your head.
💰Have a passive income on the side; School does not prepare you for real life
Successful students deliberately move towards adulthood, they don't let adulthood sneak upon them. If they have an idea of writing a website, shooting youtube videos, or doing any project, even if that requires a long time to get them something in return, they start doing the thing and investing in it without a second thought.
Don't obsess over it as if it’s a real business, but also don't treat it as something evil because the art of trying to monetize something will itself teach you so many lessons. It is not about the money you make; it’s about the experiences and the skills you gain during the process that will make it easier in your professional career down the line. You will achieve financial security in the future where your passive income makes you work when you feel like it and go on vacation while still having that passive income.
Successful students work for themselves to achieve their dreams, not anyone else's.
😎Enjoy the journey; Journey before Destination
Enjoy the journey and do not be so concerned about the destination because your studying career is only going to happen once, and it would be a shame if you were not enjoying it and if you were just trying to get to slightly higher grades that you forgot to enjoy it. I am not saying that you shouldn't set high goals and aim to rank one, all I am saying is that don’t let that avoid you from enjoying the journey.
Remember, if you enjoy your studying, it won't feel like work or something you have to do, but it will be more of something you get to do. Tell yourself that you get to go to school, you get you to learn, you get to do your exams, you get to do your tasks, rather than you have to.
👎No competition between you and your friends
This is properly the one piece of advice that I want you to get out of this article; we are all on our own path, there's no space or time for competition because we are all different. Everyone has different situations at home, different commitments outside the school, different backgrounds and upbringings, different circumstances, different goals, different needs, different abilities, different hours of studying. So how in the world would it be fair to compete or compare yourself with anyone.
Work together with your friends, don’t be afraid to share your thoughts, your resources, your studying techniques and to explain to each other because it is much more enjoyable and you learn more by teaching. Think of it as a collaborative endeavor and treat the exam as your collective enemy rather than competing with each other. Instead, bring each other up and wish the best for all and keep in your mind other student's grade has ZERO effect on you. All you should care about is looking at your own performance compared to your previous exams.
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today - Jordan B. Peterson
🤞🎮Make time for yourself; take days off
This is a non-negotiable thing because you have to have fun, do the things that you enjoy, socialize, exercise, play video games, hang out with your friends and keep up with your hobbies.
You can't be just sitting at your desk the whole day doing nothing but studying for endless hours, you're going to go crazy, and your mental and physical health is going to suffer. You need to have a balance of both.
Personally, going to the gym plays a tremendously huge role in my balance between studying and just being sane. Exercising help me study and sleep better and overall achieve more. Stay tuned for an entire article about how sticking to a healthy lifestyle and working out changed my life.
💡 Please pay attention to your posture when you're sitting down at a desk or when you are standing up. I recommend investing in comfortable shoes, office chairs, and your desk setup. You should keep an eye out for neck pain and back pain and tackle them early on before they get gradually worse over time.
🙋♂️Ask for help
You're in school to learn, not to show that you know by not asking. Asking for help from a teacher, a tutor, or your friends - is a surefire way to make sure you truly understand the material.
I admit I’m usually not the first one to raise my hand when it comes to asking questions because I still have a bit of the "Soloist" mindest who feel they have to accomplish tasks independently and figure things out on their own. In fact, it’s the most efficient and clear way to get solutions to your problem and thoughts.
If you are feeling depressed, talk to your personal tutors, talk to your TAs or your dorm representatives. It is literally these people's jobs to make sure you're ok and to help you if you are in a difficult situation.
Ask for help. Not because you are weak. But because you want to remain strong - Les Brown
👨🎓Learn how to study effectively
Learning how to learn and what are the right studying techniques is essential to boost your studying efficiency. Throughout your studying journey, you are going to discover the magical power of active recall and spaced repetition, which are by far the best studying techniques studies have shown.
I recommend you to watch the course “learn how to learn” on Coursera. Wait for an entire more detailed article about the best studies-based studying techniques and how to study smarter not harder. Stay tuned!
Learning how to learn is life’s most inmportnat skill - Tony Buzan
❌Learn to say NO
Many of us are reluctant to say no to others when they ask us to do something we don't want to do and we feel obligated to say “Yes”, so we drag ourselves into the pit of pleasing everyone at the cost of our happiness.
You have to work on considering the best ways to say “No”. When saying “No,” do so in a polite manner that makes your boundaries clear. Say no to the request, not the person. Understand that you always have the right to turn down an invitation to go to parties from a friend or to refuse a favor if that doesn't serve you in any way. I am not saying that you should not serve other people, on the contrary, serve them as much as you can but not at the cost of your time and health. Your mental health has to be your priority.
Remember, just because you can do something does not mean it is required.
🛑Take risks, try new things, it's ok with unknowing your passion
Try things before you think you're ready because you are often more qualified than you think you are. Many students suffer from the thing I wrote about in the previous article "imposter syndrome" thinking that they don't have the qualifications or the skills, in most cases, you don't need qualifications, all you need is courage.
If something grasps your interest and attention but feels scary to you, just try it anyway, who knows maybe it will change your life. That’s not to say you should be jumping in headfirst with no plan. However, you don’t want to be planning too much.
It’s ok not to know your passion or what you what to be in the future because by trying new things and having enough rate of experience you will discover your passion later on.
💯Build good habits from now
Habits can be the best support for you to achieve your success, and it can also be the biggest struggle that holds you back from achieving anything. Practicing habits like reading, exercising, eating healthy, and journaling are going to shape your personality and success in the long term. If possible try to track these habits every single day.
Harnessing the power of habits is a great way to pursue success. Committing to good habits allows you to free up your brain capacity to make better decisions as you're repeating these habits unconsciously, do your best work when you are in a prime mental state, and stay on track even when things go the wrong way
I highly recommend reading the book atomic habits (review on it coming soon) or the seven habits o highly affect teenagers.
Successful people are simply those with successful habits. - Brain Tracy.
👨🏭Think like a professor
Instructors have reasons for why they craft their courses as they do. As you move through your courses, spend some time considering these reasons. Ask yourself, for example, why you’re reading this text and this point in the semester or what this writing assignment is designed to help you to do. Always look at the big picture and set a clear destination so as to understand where you are now, where you're going and what you value most.
Make connections between everything you learn, between all of your subjects. Everything you learn goes in the same cycle, all the different subjects that you study are like branches of the same tree. Looking at this cycle or the tree as a whole is so beneficial for you and for understanding how can you benefit from what you learn in real life.
🏹Think and ask big
Goals are important cornerstones of our success. They are your compass, and they provide you with directions to pursue in life. However, these goals are often small. While those goals are important, you want to make sure that you are dreaming big or are seeing the big picture.
One of the things that many students lack is a vision and asking big. Successful students are uncomfortable with average, they want to come to the end of themselves, so they ask big in everything they want.
The bigger the aim, the more concentrated will be your effort; the more will be your motivation. Big goals and dreams provide reasons and whys for you to eat healthily, curb cravings, take on endurance exercises, and study the extra hour because you feel allergic to average.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
My picks of the week 🙌
🎧Podcast: 9 Ways To Get Comfortable Doing Uncomfortable Things and Growing Through it - Jay Shetty
📺Videos: The Easy Way to Achieve Your Goals - Ali Abdaal
📚Book: The power of habits by Charles Duhigg
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Amazing
Great article, great work keep it up