Going through college is hard and takes a lot of hard work and dedication. To make things easier, every student needs to have a way to efficiently complete their assignments. This can look different for every student, and I feel like I’m starting to find my different tricks to keep myself focused and accomplish my goals. A big thing for me has been holding myself accountable. This was difficult for me the first couple of weeks. For example, I would have scheduled time out to do homework and then when it was that time, I sometimes didn’t do it because I didn’t feel like it. Now I have been getting a lot better and staying disciplined, and when I have time available to get assignments done, I have used it wisely. Balancing my schoolwork and my free time has also been very helpful. I know that I am at my best mentally when I include time to enjoy myself and have fun every day.
Staying disciplined and having fun are both very important in finding success, but when it comes time to approaching those assignments, I have now found a system that has worked well. One thing that I’ve noticed with myself, is that I cannot stay focused on a task for a long period of time. After about an hour of working on homework, my brain is cashed out and I start to get off task. Because of this, I have sort of changed my approach to studying. Instead of expecting myself to complete the full assignment at once, which would take me well over two hours, I have found it’s easier to break it into sections. This has worked great for me in my chemistry assignments. The first thing I do is go through and do all the problems that I know how to do, and if I don’t know it after five or so minutes, I just skip it. Normally I can do about half of the assignment by doing this. Then I try and learn the other questions later one at a time. Doing this, I have significantly reduced my stress from difficult assignments. Also, I have been able to understand the content a lot better. I would recommend for everyone to try these different ways that I have found to be successful.