We Are All Dots! 6 Big Steps for Better Grades

Back during homecoming, you weren’t worried about your grades. But now, prom is around the corner and those C’s on your report card aren’t looking as good. It’s time to focus and look at better solutions to improve your grades. Here are six steps to better grades:

Learn the Personal Tics of Your Teachers

Sometimes, it’s not a matter of what you’re doing wrong, but what your teacher isn’t responding to. From personal experience, I can tell you I’ve had a correct answer that I was penalized for because they didn’t like the way I got there. So, you must learn what your teacher expects from an answer. This is most helpful in English, where teachers have specific expectations on what should be included in an essay.

Don’t Read Your Textbook. Find Alternative Learning Tools

Textbooks can only help you so much. They take an objective viewpoint on topics, which can lead to a lot of needless guck you have to wade through. Avoid this altogether and search your solutions library or the internet for alternative options. There are plenty of more entertaining free books and online lectures that will hammer in the material much easier than reading a plain boring textbook(study help page).

Spend Less Time Studying and More Time Learning

There’s a common misconception (thanks, Malcolm Gladwell) that doing something for a long time will make you good at it. For studying, that is not an effective approach. Broadly studying will lead to you reading through topics that aren’t necessary to you. Go in with a topic you want to learn and take a short but focused period of time (twenty to thirty minutes) to learn that topic intimately. Rinse and repeat.

Gamify Studying

Let’s not lie to ourselves: studying is boring. Other than the prospect of potentially getting a better grade, there isn’t much incentive to it. But, if you can incentivize studying, you can make it much more tolerable and an easier experience. For example, if you study for a half hour straight, you get a soda or ten minutes on Facebook. Give yourself a reason to focus on the studying.

Chew Gum While Taking Tests

As weird as it may seem, chewing gum helps to improve brainpower. A test at St. Lawrence University concluded that gum chewing students were more successful during a series of tests than non-gum chewing students. Chewing gum can increase your heart rate, sending more blood to the brain. This will improve your focus and performance on tests.

Compare School Topics to Aspects of Your Interests

Most of the topics you are going to have to find a connection with to learn them will be boring to you. Much like most boring things in life, you need to find your way into the material. Connect with the material based on some of your own interests. Is there a TV show you that is set in the time period in history you are studying? Do you listen to a podcast with an algebra episode? You need to find whatever you can connect with to make the studying and learning easier.