College Tips for Spring Semester Success!

Wayne Terpstra Jr.

HonorSociety.Org

January 12, 2016

January Writing Challenge

Maximizing your true potential during this spring semester could lead you to achieving your best GPA yet, but to do that you must complete four essential components. We’ve all heard the familiar expression that we ‘reap what we sow’, and R-E-A-P-ing is exactly what we must do to have the best semester yet. What do I mean by R-E-A-P? Reading, exercising, appearing, and planning, those are the four keys to achieving your best spring semester yet. Each as important as the next all four keys are essential elements to maximizing your true potential this spring, and achieving your best semester yet.

READING

Every semester professors begin by providing students with their course syllabuses, which contains information about the appropriate reading materials for the course. It is imperative that students maintain and complete their reading assignments if they hope to be successful during the semester, but this is basic commonsense information and nothing you didn’t already know. In addition to ensuring that all reading assignments are complete, I suggest reading in advance! My success can be partially attributed to reading in advance of the first day of class and of each lecture. You see, reading beforehand is always best to maximize your preparation, so reading the introductory sections of assigned texts sets you up for the course by providing essential background information, while also providing an idea about the amount of time you will have to dedicate to the reading based on the difficulty of the text, so I highly recommend reading before you’ve even set foot into the lecture hall! Furthermore, ensuring that you complete readings before lectures sets you up for success because you can prepare notes in advance, which will allow you to gain clarification on information that is unclear.

Exercise

Reading is just one of the key components to achieving your best spring semester yet, and we know that a full-course load can be truly exhausting if all we do is stress over readings, assignments, and the like, so we have to keep in mind the need to exercise. If you are groaning already, fear not, exercise can be a wide-range of activities, and does not appropriate a trip to your local treadmill! When I mention exercise, I mean any physical activity that you can accomplish responsibly, as long as you get your mind off of your course load for a short period of time. How frequently? Good question! I suggest exercising twice a week for a few hours at a time. A night on the town is okay, responsibly, just as an evening at the gym or an afternoon in the forms playing board games can be. The most important aspect of exercising is taking time to enjoy the things you enjoy because, after all, college is about both learning and finding yourself too.

Appear

At this point you may be wondering how you will have time to do much of anything else considering that reading and exercising will take up much of your time during the semester, but fear not, as appearing is an extraordinarily simple task. To succeed, just show up! Lecture is important, just as eating is, so attend all of your classes. If you don’t take advantage of all your class time, then you are missing out on excellent opportunities to ask questions, schedule meetings, and learn. If you schedule something (whatever it is), the best thing you can do is show up, no matter what! Sick, injured, or otherwise, attending is important if you hope to have long-term success over the course of this semester, so just show-up and begin to take advantage of everything that you can.

Plan

Finally, planning is an obvious, but often overlooked, key to having the most successful spring semester of your academic career. The purchase of a daily planner is perhaps the single most important piece of advice that I can give, since deadlines do matter in college! Gather around your course syllabuses and your class schedule, and then begin making a plan for every single day! The importance of ensuring that you make time for every reading assignment, every homework assignment, and every quiz/test should be written down in your planner, just as every class lecture and exercise plan is. The reason for ensuring that each and everything is written in your planner is so that you will be timely, efficient, and organized beyond a topical approach. There is no worse of a felling than missing a scheduled task, so don’t let it happen to you. The best planning will lead to the ultimate success!

To be clear, we do R-E-A-P what we sow! If you complete the reading, make time for exercising, ensure you will be appearing, and complete the planning, then you will have your best spring semester yet! Don’t let a second pass you by and begin planning for your success today. Studying will maximize your scores and competing will allow you to be the best that you can be. My only hope now is that you follow these tips, and maximize your full potential this spring semester!