So you're a vibrant student who's looking to make the most of their years in college, but you're soon realising that success is hard to find. Don't fret pet, we here at College Times have your back. Here are eleven tips for success that every student needs to know:
1) Positive Thoughts Create Positive Outcomes
So you've hit an obstacle in your fairytale imagining of college and it seems to be the be all and end all of your experience. You can't seem to take your mind off it, be it missed deadlines, repeats or outright failures. Stop. If a problem is consuming your thoughts, then it's controlling you. Positive thinking can reframe any problem in a more manageable light. Quit worrying and start thinking positive, starting right now.
2) Small Success Beats Big Wins
While one big, public victory over academics, loneliness, and lazy friends may seem appealing, smaller wins spread out over time are much better. Your confidence does not get the same boost from people thinking that you're the absolute balls for a couple of days as it does from you winning smaller more personal and achievable goals such as attendance, meeting deadlines and proving you can actually write a CV.
3) Fail Fabulously
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Virtually all people are terrified of failure and I'm pretty sure that you're no exception to this. Some time ago, failure became this stigmatised mess of hyper-public shame. In reality, failure is far more beneficial than victory ever could be. And if you're honest with yourself, there's so much to learn, and what's more, if you're willing to change then you will inevitably succeed.
4) Practice Makes Perfect
With the Leaving Cert being little less than an exercise in brute force rote learning, you may roll your eyes at the prospect of repeatedly doing the same thing again. Where this may make for a crap college entry exam, it is immensely beneficial to student life. Be it cooking, cleaning or any part of socialising that may scare you, practice will make you perfect.
5) Over Emotional-Over Quite Quickly
Emotions are often the absolute worst to bring to a delicate situation. Yes, it may be okay to ball your eyes out over the crush who apparently doesn't love you (shock). However, if you inject emotions into everything you do it's going to come to a far faster, and far less beneficial end. In student life, emotion comes with everything but doesn't need to decide everything and it doesn't need to rule you, just remember that.
6) Planning Past Procrastination
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Procrastination is the bane of every student's life and has become a totally legitimate excuse for randomly not doing work. If you've ever sat in the library and done the definition of fuck all for what was an impressive amount of time, you can beat procrastination. If you can break projects down into sizeable chunks for your goldfish focus, then you're well on your way to beating procrastination!
7) Treat Others As You Want Them To Treat You
While this may sound like a mildly obnoxious echo from your early years, time and time again you're less likely to be given shit by people that you've helped to some degree. You don't have to be Mother Theresa, but a simple kind gesture will get you far, and cut out needless competition (and assholes to boot).
8) Always Be Learning
Knowledge isn't restricted to the possibly made-up words in the text books that you've avoided buying. It's everywhere, and can easily be gained with simple changes. If you make slight changes to what you expose yourself to, you'll imprint far more and gain far more. Gaining knowledge isn't studying, it's living. Success in student life can be depressingly affected by minute issues and knowing more means you're able to deal with more. Just saying...
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9) Dreams Are Original
All the ideas you've encountered, whether fluffy philosophical shit in an arts degree, or a boring formula in science, are all someone else's. Success isn't the egotistical acquiring of all of these; it's having the dreams from which these originate. Student life is full of other people's dreams inside and outside of college. Create your own to create your own success.
10) Don't Refuse All Risks
You'll be faced with risks in just about everything you do, from trying to look fabulous, to potentially outrageous dance moves; the logic that drives running these risks exists everywhere. As a student, there's nothing more satisfying then a risk taken and reward given. If you can learn to take meaningful risks, then you will be rewarded with success.
11) Understand Success
Success is not a single choice and a corresponding outcome. It's not as simple a transaction as your caffeine addiction, but an intense series of failures and changes that piss off just about everyone to the point of giving up. You're not building on the shoulders of others as you do in the essays you submit during college, nor are you spitting out facts in forty minutes on the test you take at the end of college. Instead, you're making something personal and fresh, that you hope will be successful.
