Remember, grades aren’t everything. However, they certainly play a massive role in getting your Resume short-listed in the first place. So, if you’re a university student you know it can be stressful and challenging to get good grades. With so many lectures, projects, and seminars one feels drained out almost every single day. But you plan your semester in a way that helps you manage your time then you don’t have to worry much about your grades. You will not only have amazing grades but also time to relax and relish your life. Here are 5 tips to achieve that.

1. Write down your monthly activities/events: Before the beginning of each month write down what are major activities or events you will come across this month. This includes your lectures, exercises, submissions, seminar sessions, presentations, or group meetings to study. Be it curriculum-related or not, make a note of all the essential events. The reason behind doing this is to visualize whether you’re having a balance between curricular, co-curricular, and leisure activities. As crucial as it is to score well in the exams, it’s essential to have leisure time and refresh your mind for a better life.

2. Assign time to these activities/events: Once you have a calendar with all essential details, sit down and assign a rough time estimate to each one of them. A lecture is for 90 minutes, exercise sessions for an hour, a birthday event for 3 hrs, studying in a group for 2 hrs, presentations for an hour, etc. If possible try not to have any fun activities during the week, especially when you’re having a day full of lectures or any sort of study-related activities like an exercise schedule or submission. You need some time to come back home and relax as well.

3. Prioritize your curricular activities: Needless to mention that we often tend to ignore the importance of lectures, exercises, and other side projects. Underestimating the stress, time, and effort of comprehending a subject might take a toll later during the examination period. This, always be certain that you’re prioritizing studies first. Attend all your lectures unless you’re sick or have a strong reason for being unable to do so, do all submissions of your exercises even if they’re not mandatory. This helps you understand the fundamentals really well. Missing some parties can be compensated but missing lectures cannot. Remember that!

4. Don’t be a one-person army: I cannot emphasize enough having a study group and having regular meetings with them to study, solve exercises and help each other understand a subject. Group studies have their own strengths. You can get help to understand the details, you can share the knowledge with others and strengthen others in the group, you can share solutions and see that there can be more than one way to solve a specific problem, and so on. This doesn’t mean you do not study on your own, please do, as it’s crucial but do not limit it to that. Be open to helping others and let others help you.

5. Don’t be disappointed: This may sound silly but this point fits very well in here. Sometimes even after trying extremely hard, we might not get the expected grade and this can be really disappointing. I’ve been there, multiple times. This breaks your heart and it feels like why do we do all this work when it doesn’t pay off or things just don’t go well. Disappointment is okay, it is natural. Let it come but process it and move on. Do not let it break you as one or more subjects can have not-so-nice grades, you must focus on the bigger picture which is, being able to understand the fundamentals.

Good grades don’t happen in a day or a week. You need planning throughout your semester that keeps your mind calm and calendar balanced with all sorts of activities. And of course, life is much more than just grades. Keep your head high and work for it. For some subjects, it may work like charm for others it might not. It’s okay. Be happy and carry on.

Muchlove & strength 💜