I’ve compared school to learning to jump through hoops in the past. It’s not a completely fair analogy but here is the basic idea.
Succeeding in school is all about jumping through the right hoops. You don’t need to learn stuff. You need to learn specific stuff. If you fail to learn the specific stuff then you will fail (even if you did learn a lot.)
Some of the hoops you need to jump through are made obvious. Your teacher may give you a syllabus and a big list of stuff that’s going to be on the test. Those are hoops that you need to jump through to succeed. But most students try to push themselves farther than that. They have this idea that their are other implied hoops they’re supposed to jump through.
For example, their teacher tells them homework is only a tiny percentage of their grade but the student is willing to invest hour after hour working on that homework. Success in the class has been defined by the teacher as not needing the homework but the student feels weird slacking or skipping the homework. The student feels like there is some kind of an implied duty to complete all the work for their course (even if the work is meaningless.)
Until told otherwise, assume their are no implied hoops. When a teacher lays out their rules for grading you clearly, expect those rules to be followed until they make it explicitly clear they wont be following them. There virtually always are implied hoops but you should absolutely never let implied hoop jumping (like making the teacher like you) get in the way of objective hoops to jump through.
So… if your homework is valueless you probably don’t want to tell the teacher you think the homework is pointless but you can still skip most of it while being completely polite with the teacher.
Have you ever sabotaged your success doing this silly little thing?
Ever procrastinate?
You only procrastinate the stuff that sucks. You don’t say, “Ahhh… I’ll read that text from my crush later.” Nope. Now… Any pause is intentional and coordinated to respond better.
Here is the problem with academics:
You probably think most academic stuff sucks – at least a little. (Especially compared to other things you could be doing.)
And the thing is:
FORCING YOURSELF TO STUDY JUST MAKES IT WORSE!
You’re slowly hardening your association of school and being miserable.
You need to create positive associations with academics. You want your brain to be getting hyped up and positive when you’re thinking about studying and giving into this internal oligarchical instinct to force yourself to studying – ain’t helpin’.
Chill the internal dictator for a moment…
A big secret: You need to STOP forcing yourself to study so much.
But, if you’re not forcing yourself then how are you going to see those killer straight-a’s that you’re always dreaming about?
WAKE UP!
Get your copy of my book about How To Get Happier Straight A’s.
It only costs $4.99 (and if these strategies don’t work like magic like it has for thousands of other students then you can get a full refund.)
Well the best thing about the students that try to give a hundred and ten percent I that they have a very fixed mind set, that will effect them positively in the future. In the near future when they are employed in a professional job that extra mile will look like they are willing and capable of doing hard work.
This is a brilliant analogy, actually. It explains how some people pass with no problem even though they’re morons! I wish that I was better about noticing hoops than I’ve been in my past. Things would be so much easier!