Soo usually I come up with new strategies upon going into new stuff, and then work on revising and learning from any mistakes I make before. So my college have improved in my 2nd semester over my first, but I've gotta work on some more revision of it for next semester. I'm a 3.5 gpa student usually so I'm pretty good, but I have a nasty procrastination habit. Like this semester it was nowhere near as bad, I had a planner and such, but eventually I fell out of using it, and my study habits were great at first but they declined as my stress level rose. Also, school really in reality does not take much effort for me.....like maybe 25% of my energy goes towards it and the rest has other places it gets sent to (GID, depression coping, family bullcrap, etc etc). And yet I get As and Bs on a regular basis. So if I managed to put even 50-60% of my efforts to school, I'd probably nail a 4.0gpa next semester. Also many people read text over and over, note cards, highlighting etc etc....I almost never do it. Like, I have a wicked memory, and one reading of the stuff equals an A or B on an exam. But, I feel I can do better, so any advice I could get would be awesome . There's this girl I like that we may get together, and her grades are amazing, and so I don't want this to be an inferiority complex, cause as my other friend said academics and achievements shouldn't have anything to do with your love for each other and such. I want to improve, yet I don't want to let this turn into a "follow everything they do cause I feel I am not good enough" ordeal like it has in the past, which in the end gets me nowhere and worse off then when I started. I'm also gonna talk to my counselor too about new strategies and figuring this out, cause here's my main problems:

1. Depression, and all the fun going in with it, it disrupts my life a lot, though not as badly as it used to, it has improved.

2. I spend WAY too much time online and IMing, yet get As and Bs lol, but yeah, I hang with people, I am in a music group, I'm involved in ways, but I tend to lurk online a ton more than many friends. (I'm sure some members here noticed I'm online a LOT)

3. My organization skills aren't horrid, but could have a lot of room for improvement. I did a good thing by starting with a planner, but it switched to the point where my brain became the organizer; with a good memory I just started remember what I had to do instead of writing it down, which ultimately degrades my performance in working. I try to avoid last minute writing and what not, cause it just is not fun X_X So, except for getting sick for 2 weeks I was almost always on top of my writing assignments.

4. My room is a nightmare. Plain and simple. It needs a major clean-up, and I know dirty adds into my depressive states as I like clean just lack motivation to clean. I know a couple guys here that used to have horrid rooms they said, but their rooms now would never even give that impression, they're spotless practically So I figure if they could make that change, then I can too .

So any ideas on things I can improve on, or just even suggestions would be appreciated! I may take some of these suggestions you guys give to my counselor too and work on figuring out what works best for me so I can best utilize my time and resources next year.

You're in college.  Of course procrastination is key! Haha

In reality though, to work on depression I'd say number one and two are related.  More time you spend out with good friends and people doing activities the less you'll be depressed is the consensus that I came to a while ago.  So right now for instance, over Christmas break, I can already feel myself going crazy after one day haha.  I just need lots of things to keep me busy so I don't just sit around and do nothing, if I do I'll become depressed.

And again probably number three and four are connected haha.  If you spend time online and stuff just take a break and clean stuff up, it's probably not that difficult and can be done fairly easily.  As for organizing with school, I use my phone for my whole life and have every date and everything in there because I tend to look at my calendar at least once a day on there.  So that's how I tend to try to keep up with school and appointments and everything. 

Good job on your grades though :] Sounds like you're doing well.  Just keep up the good attitude and maybe slowly make minor tweaks to your life so you can make it even better!

Well I have a 3.94 cum GPA through three degrees so if nothing else I did real well in school, though not as good as my son, who upon graduating from the University of Oregon with a 3.95 now feels entitled to refer to me as an academic slacker.  But he's not here to tell you how to really do it so you'll have to be content with second rate advice.

I'm a big fan of some sort of written organization, be it a planner, post-its, critical path diagrams or what have you.  I don't think there is one overall supreme method, but I do think that people who have a method that works for them do better.  I'm a fan of the notebook, can be very fancy, or just a simple Mead spiral detective notebook, but just jot it down. They are awesome in a lot of ways for giving you a feeling of accomplishment, and you have everything in one place.  But when I was in school I would lay out a calender that was one pretty wide page that ran from the beginning of the semester to the end so I could visualize exactly where I was and what had to be done.

As for writing stuff, this idea works so well you'll want to open a pay-pal account just so you can send me money for it.  Write your term papers at the beginning of the semester, not the end. There are several swell reasons for this.  First of all, the library is better organized at the beginning of the semester and has more books and stuff in it then at the end. Moreover, toward the end of the semester the library tends to get a feeling of panic as it fills with people who've never been in it before, and others who are academically desperate.  Much better to go when everyone in there is all sunshine and roses and when everything is there and in order. So I just set my mind (and its not just me, lots of people do this for these very reasons) that any paper due at the end of the semester was really due by midterms. 

That gave me two huge advantages.  One is I could study for finals without any distractions, and two I always got an A on my paper.  I later found out, when I was doing my professor time that any paper that came to me in that way almost, like 99.99% would get an A.  Here's why.  You turn the paper in early, it gets you face time with the professor, and you ask if they will read it, or grade it, and when that's done (and the professor is reading your paper in isolation, not as part of a marathon reading program over the weekend where you're going to be compared to everyone else - I can not stress enough how powerful that one aspect is) you can sit down, get a little more face time, get real criticism of your work, get ideas on how to improve it.  Now, all you have to do is go back (easy in the computer age, but we did it with typewriters too) and rewrite the paper they way they suggested.  If you do that, they are forced to give you an A.  Really.

It also marks you as a conscientious student in the professors eye, which can only be a good thing, as professors love conscientious students.

many people read text over and over, note cards, highlighting etc etc I live for that myself.  The highlighter came out right as I ended high school and I though it was the greatest idea since the bong.  But you might not want to shelve that completely, real college tends to get a bit harder as you go, but then again, you're supposed to be getting better at it as you go too.

I spend WAY too much time online and IMing, yet get As and Bs lol, but yeah, I hang with people, I am in a music group, I'm involved in ways, but I tend to lurk online a ton more than many friends.
Here's an interesting idea for a paper for sure.  I pretty firmly believe that in the very near future - because it's happening around me as I write this - that a whole lot of people are going to basically be on line all the time.  So what is going to be the best way of dealing with being on line all the time, and living in the real world too?  How does one balance that?  One good thing is that not everything on line has to be done 'right now' and it can linger there quite well.  My computer is always on at work, because I need to track email, because I get a lot of gigs that way, and they are often open call deals, he needs ten people, mails it out to 20-25 and the first ten to respond win!  Now I can keep Susan's and my email, and Fark open on the tabs, so sometimes the posts here are drawn out over hours and hours because I come and go from the computer.  But like my emails, some incoming/outgoing stuff can't be put off, and it has placed an even larger burden of 'being on top of it'. So where do you, and how do you accord manners to real flesh and blood people in front of you, and when do you start typing away? 

Some might say a clean room is evidence of a dirty mind.  Its nice to have some organization, but there are lots of kinds of organization.  I knew and know people who were equally smart and effective who had work spaces that ranged from spotless to 'hurricane just hit it' so that's kind of hard to speculate about.

 

I'm taking notes from this! ^^^

Thanks for sharing Tekla

Having your papers read in isolation is the greatest academic gift you can give yourself.  Just think about it.  One way I'm sitting at a big ass table, a big ass dining room table, and I've got a stack of these suckers.  There is one in front of me and going across the table are the D-C-B-A stacks, one of which I'm going to more or less toss it in when I've finished reading and grading and commenting on it and I'm reading that and tossing it in relation to all the other papers sitting there, and I still have a huge stack to go and its like yuck. 

Or I can be sitting at my desk, its still pretty early in the semester so the work load is still pretty light (it gets huge as you go on) and I can get a cup of coffee and sit back and read just your paper - and only your paper - and think about it for a bit. 

Come on now, the second way is so much better its almost like cheating.   

For the room situation, begin in one corner and clean it today.  Nothing else, just that corner.  Tomorrow another corner.  So on, so forth.  And then the secret... Keep it that way.

You might even find it helps with the depression.

For the organization, I will leave that to others who are organized.  I sure am not that person.  But part of that is to organize your on-line to certain blocks of time.  And be reasonable.  And then stick to it.



Hugs and Love
Janet