Being a great student is a lot simpler than it seems, and can be as quick as making a few changes in your routine.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Being a great student and developing good habits isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s a meticulous process that you have to commit to if you want to go to your dream college, have a great job, and be fulfilled with the work you do. Although you may not think about it often, the habits you develop as a student carry over to all kinds of different aspects of your life.
What Makes a Student Great?
Consistency and Organization
Being an effective student all centers around consistency. Even if it’s just adding an extra 15-30 minutes a day to planning your day, your week, and when you’re going to be able to make time for studying, you’ll be able to get a more consistent workflow going.
Build this into your classroom work with organizers, colorful pens and highlighters, reminders on your phone or laptop, and goals for each day on staying consistent with your organization. Remember: procrastination is a leading cause of stress for students. Keep your schedule in check with consistency in your habits and organized focus.
Entertaining Study Habits
Studying alone is excellent, but you have to find ways to get yourself motivated to study, which allows you to discover the habits that are most successful for you. For example, some students are very successful with pairing their learning with music. Find a catchy song and replace the lyrics with keywords from your studying sessions. Preferably, that song you find shouldn’t be a song you love. Then it won’t get ruined when you are trying to memorize lyrics you make yourself for class.
Even just a line or two for a couple of rules you need to learn for a class, a year something happened, or the name of someone important. On top of learning with music, there are all kinds of other strategies as well, like:
- Video learning
- Listen and repeat
- By-the-book teacher’s guide
- Partner study work
- Flashcards
- Worksheets
- Gameshow (with prizes)
Depending on which of these sticks out to you or you feel you’d be most successful with, get acclimated with adding them into your regular studying habits. Then you’ll start seeing a big difference in your retention from studying fast.
Goals
For some, getting a great grade is the only goal. But what does that mean? You don’t care about what you’re learning, just the long-term destination? Whatever the case is for why you are or aren’t focused on a letter grade goal, remember: it’s going to be weeks or even months before you see that grade. Getting to that point isn’t simply paying attention and showing up. You have to set goals. Not your teacher’s goals, or your parents’ goals for you. Your very own.
Goals are crucial because they set the standard for what you expect of yourself. In those terms, you should make them challenging, but not impossible. Schoolwork won’t get any easier if you set impossible standards for yourself, and the same goes for easy-to-hit standards. Find the middle ground.
For instance, take how many problems you solve in X amount of time. Start a worksheet, and time yourself to see how many problems you complete in the next session. Then, make a timer count down from that number, and try to finish the next set of questions quicker than the last set. Even just a small internal competition like that can be a big difference maker.
However, you don’t want the quality of your work to suffer. If you can’t improve speed without lowering the quality at the same time, you won’t see results you’re proud of in the early stages. Take strategies like these slowly and find the one that works best for you. Then, your goals will seem a lot more achievable, and progressively raise the bar for how you challenge yourself every day.
Participating and Diligent Note Taking
These are not the same thing. Participating doesn’t absolve you from taking notes, and vice versa. Make sure you are pairing both together. For example, if you struggle with speaking up, try asking just to clarify something you took a note on recently to get your feet wet with speaking in class. Then, you can get precise, detailed information about something you were already taking note of, and it’s catered towards anywhere you might be confused. You’ll also feel a bit more confident for the next time you speak up as well.
The same goes for taking notes. Outline your notes with as much detail as you can. Add any questions you might have in the margins and don’t let them go to waste. Whether it’s emailing your teacher after school, chatting with them after class, or simply raising your hand, your voice and your learning both matter. Make sure you treat them as such.
Other Habits to add to Make You a Better Student
Grabbing a Study Buddy
You never know how much you know until you try to teach someone else.
Fortunately, working together with someone is a proven route to giving yourself better retention to succeed on tests, understand the material better, and more. However, while you may enjoy hanging with friends more, sometimes their level of focus isn't going to put you in a position to succeed. Find someone your skills mesh well with, and someone that brings a lot to the table as well. Then you can enjoy their company as a friend, but also be pushed to succeed the same way you push them.
Working with someone else can do wonders for your school work. Find a time in your schedule you can set aside, and make studying with a buddy happen.
Sleeping
Sleep is tough to come by for many. You must develop whatever’s necessary to give yourself better sleep into a habit. Some good habits to try are:
- Shutting down screen time early
- Starting meditation
- Stretching and working out lightly before bed
- Finding a “wind down” playlist
- Avoiding eating at least an hour before bed
Combining these can at least push you in the right direction if you struggle consistently with getting restful sleep, or staying asleep through the night. A lack of sleep will instantly bring down your ability to focus or stay on task with your studying and hurt your performance as a student.
Nutrition
While this is more of a lifestyle change, nutrition changes your studying effectiveness a whole lot. If you’re hungry all the time, your focus is going to be extremely hard to keep up.
Make a positive change in your nutrition and start working towards developing habits you’re proud of. Starting with the basics and having a starch, a protein, and a veggie for every meal you can is huge. Then, you can start to branch off and find healthy foods and diets to try, expanding your palette. Better nutrition leaves you energized, awake, and feeling your best when you’re studying. Try adding snacks to your study sessions that promote your boosted nutrition, like:
- Fresh fruit (bananas, strawberries, blackberries, etc.)
- Mushrooms
- Nuts
- Baby carrots
- Chicken and rice
- Blended juices (fruits and veggies, yogurt, etc.)
- Yogurt
- Bagels
Additionally, there are natural supplements you can add to make studying a whole lot easier.
Supplements and Nootropics
Supplements are a strong route to elevate your study habits quickly as well. These can target any areas of your life mentioned that impact your student life, including your:
- Nutrition
- Sleep
- Memory
- Focus
- Anxiety
To jumpstart your routine and make being a student a whole lot easier, there’s a variety of ways you can go about targeting each of these needs. Gummies, capsules, powders, and all kinds of different boosters can make a big change for you fast.
To find the right fit, you should assess your needs one at a time. What’s impacting you the most today? How do you normally feel when you get up? When you study? When you’re in class? Each of these factors matters, and feeling your best without help is nearly impossible today. Luckily, we might have the perfect solution.
Getting Started With Troomy Nootropics Today!
At Troomy, we’ve developed mushroom gummy nootropics to reshape your daily routine quickly. Mushroom act as superfoods in our diet and have huge nutritional benefits you can take advantage of with our delicious fruity gummies.
For students, our blends target giving increased productivity, better memory, elevated focus, reduced anxiety, and more. With zero prep time and the freedom to take them whenever you need them, our gummies are a fast way to help yourself become a better student.
Don’t wait. Find your “True Me” today and get started with Troomy Nootropic gummies here.