Pro School Grades

[op2rules]

Hey guys my entire life I've slacked to f*** in highschool but I'm actually really smart, so I can get away with 80 averages doing fairly little work. Anyways its grade 11 now and I'm going to have to start giving it my all to get super nice averages for scholarships etc. This summer I am so far jobless and loads of free time, so my question to you all is how can I spend my summer to prepare me better and be that extra step ahead of everything for grade 11? I'm talking resources etc stuff to study to make the transition from slacking off to going all out a bit easier yaknow?  

[evecolonycamander]

i slacked though out my high school career so i know how you feel. i just recently graduated my self so here is some of what i did and most of what my friends have done(a few websites mention one or two of these too)


well for starts you can assign your self with homework. you can for example have your self read something then in a hour write a paragraph on it.you can have someone write you a bunch of random math problems and do them throughout the day. programing is a VERY VALUABLE skill in today's world. you can practice it by making OP2 scripts(i only say this because it is rewarded with fun time.) you can also do what i did before i graduated,(this last school year!) READ! i find just reading on a subject can help you in school indefinitely. I at one point read SO much that i ran out of leisure reading material and then picked up a couple history textbook. the following year i had  B's in that class. it didn't help my English grade tho(C-). but that's because i hate reading out loud and hate writing(although i did start to write a book!) That's another thing, if you wright (in) a book/journal/dairy) your willingness and ability to wright will be Much better as well as the content. most of these i did not do tho. also an very easy class that you need for a credit(if you live in USA) is game design. try getting it it is a fun and very rewarding class (i thought of it as recess for the "big kids")


i know i may seem all over the place so excuse me for that err in writing
DON'T OVER DO IT! keep in touch with reality and play outside or on you computer
all work and no play... well you know what happens
edit: there is no such thing as pro school grades. if there were then teachers wouldent need "refresher courses"

[op2rules]

Thank you very much for that post! I posted the exact same content on another forum and pretty much got troll'd. Anyways the scattering is perfectly fine with me, and I appreciate the effort you put into making it. I think I will continue to program in C and PHP, thanks for the tip!

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comment..._until_now_any/

[Freeza-CII]

you want  pro grades then just do your damn work you say your slacking off so stop. you dont have to be ball to the walls in summer to really get good grades. enjoy your last bits off freedom till you have to pay off your student loans.

[evecolonycamander]

glad to see i actually was of help. if you need any thing else don't be afraid to ask here

[op2rules]

A little off subject, but I posted the exact same thing on reddit and another forum, amazing the contrast of personalities and responses I get. Shows what kind of a community your really dealing with!

[Hidiot]

Start looking up potential universities you might want to apply to and check their requirements.

Also, doing anything will help you improve in that something's area. If you slack off a lot, you'll become better at slacking off. If you do maths a lot, you'll become better at maths and so forth.

You can do a little of everything or focus more on some things. That all depends on what YOU want to do with your life.

Yes, I am subtly hinting that school isn't everything.

[Hooman]

DON'T OVER DO IT!

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!  

If you're a slacker at heart, then you may need a bit of motivation. Maybe register in a course, so you have to go, and have to do homework. Then it's no longer about doing it in your spare time... if you feel like it. Summer school is an option, and I've known brilliant people that went to summer school, not because they needed to, but just to get ahead. Plus, it gives you the option of writing certain exams twice and taking the higher grade. A certain friend of mine did that, and they graduated with something like a 98% or 99% average (over all their courses). Mind you, that was a super busy person that never seemed to waste a minute of time (and hated video games).

Mostly though, if you want to do well at something, you have to spend time on it. That's easier if you enjoy what you're doing, which is the interesting part to the problem. It's often hard to enjoy something until you've done it for a while. It's like one of those self feeding loops. If you enjoy doing something, then you do it and gain experience. By gaining experience you then become better at it, which usually leads to a feeling of accomplishment and enjoyment. Which in turns makes you want to do more of it. So really, the hardest part is getting started. If you don't enjoy something because it's hard, or seems like you're not going to get it, that should be more reason to keep at it. The harder it is, the greater the feeling of accomplishment. You just have to force yourself over that initial hump.

This all kind of reminds me of graphs of activation energy from highschool chemistry. ... I don't suppose you'd be motivated enough to look those up on your own without me providing a link?

 

[op2rules]

Already know em Shows the hump of energy needed to start a chemical reaction, ie a match burning is a reaction but you need the striking energy to start it, but the burning of the match gives off a lot more energy than that used to start it.

Anyways thanks a lot Hooman for that, makes perfect sense to me! I really don't think I will be able to go to summerschool (although I'd love to) because I'm going to be all over the place during the summer. Thats brilliant though, grades are sort of based on your knowledge on the subject. If I spend my time looking for better study habits lets say, I'm going to be good at, finding better study habits, actual studying skill won't change much. It's genius!

Edit: Congratulations on Site Administrator, whenever that happened

[Freeza-CII]

just dont be lazy. and i looked at the other forums.  What one person says is so very very true you can do so much with out that college education.  Look at me im hard at work paying all my bills and im still in one peice  didnt have one scrap of college.

My trade off tho was being away from home. But home is a place where you can always go back to and i do.

[CK9]

That all depends on your location, freeza.

I never slacked off myself, and got A's and B's throughout my grade school years.  If you really want to give it your all, don't go preparing over the summer.  If you do, you'll just get bored within the first week, then end up behind later because you feel like you're so much further ahead.

[op2rules]

Thanks that made sense, that happened to me this year, I transferred school and the school I changed to was super behind mine, but then when they started covering new stuff I just didn't care.  

[Freeza-CII]

ya just dont f*** up your gpa hehe i did and i couldnt get into a college if i wanted to.

[Hooman]

Even if you have a lousy GPA you can still get in after waiting a few years. Or you can retake courses and get a better grade. Nothing time won't fix.

As for the bored issue, I find that often depends more on the teacher than how well you know something. It's like how people will watch a good movie more than once, even though they already know how it ends. Besides, if you really do know something well, then start reading ahead on the next subject. Good teachers are usually fine with you ignoring their lesson, if you already know it, so you can study a more advanced topic. Realistically though, you'll probably have forgotten some of it and can use a refresher. Just don't let ego stand in your way. Just because you've done it before, doesn't mean you're too good to do it again. There's almost always more you pick up the second time. Think of it this way. Do you know the material well enough to teach it? There is a big difference between knowing material well enough to get an A, and knowing it well enough to teach it to someone else. Marks aren't a reflection of how well you know a subject. They're more a reflection of what you're expected to pick up on the subject the first time through. If you have deep knowledge of a subject, you don't simply know how to answer questions asked, but can predict the type of question that will be asked next. If you're bored with the current question because you know how to answer it, then try to figure out why it's being asked, and what will be asked next.

You can also go on and think about more psychological effects, like how the teacher is teaching, and how other students respond to it. That's easier to do when you already know the subject matter being taught. Not all teachers are as effective. Trying to figure out why can help you understand learning processes, and make it easier for you to learn things. It will also make you more able to benefit from whatever teacher you get stuck with, and is extremely valuable if you ever have to teach anything yourself.
 

[CK9]

I can't watch any movie more than once myself.  The second I remember how the story progresses, I just can't enjoy it anymore.

[BlackBox]

I would agree with Hooman, that is pretty sound advice.

Another common thing that I have always been told is "for every hour you spend in a class you should spend 2-3 hours outside of it studying or preparing for it." While this doesn't really apply to high school (at least where I went to high school, in the US, you probably have anywhere between 6 or 8 classes every weekday, so there is no way to spend this much time on every class), or classes where you already know the material (and I would agree with that, you don't really "know" the material unless you're capable of teaching it to someone else); for those classes where I really didn't know the material this is important. (FWIW I am a university student and I will have my bachelor's degree in about 5 weeks, so I am no real stranger to studying for classes)

You should develop good study habits. This includes setting aside specific time tp study, where you will be free of distractions (you should also try to study in the same place every time; it's proven that encoding and retrieval of information in memory is best if you do all of the encoding (learning/memorizing/comprehension) in the same setting).

If you are going to be distracted by other people, TV, cell phones, the internet, etc. do whatever you have to in order to make it extremely difficult for these things to distract you (if you have to turn your phone off, and take the battery and SIM card out and put them on opposite sides of the house then so be it. Libraries are great places for preventing you from socializing, watching TV, phones, video games etc. forcing you to actually study).

If you are a type of person who procrastinates on all the studying / completion of term papers / etc till the last minute you have to change this ASAP. While this might be passable in high school and let you scrape by with B's, in college/university this is an excellent way to start getting F's. Devote a certain amount of time each day towards completing the assignments in a timely fashion so you aren't going to be writing 10 pages of term paper the night before it's due. (That's not to say that cramming doesn't happen for exams, indeed it does but that should not be the only time you're studying for an exam).

I think the biggest thing that would help, rather than trying to just "get by" with Bs you should be trying to push yourself and get excellent grades (As and such), not only does it boost your GPA which helps when the college admissions staff are looking at your transcript but also it will prepare you to perform better after high school.

[Freeza-CII]

and dont do drugs and always wear a condom hehehe.  Dont forget to have some fun in all that hellish study and paper stuff.