How to Win at College PDF

Contents Cover Page Title Page Introduction 1 Don't Do All of Your Reading 2 Create a Sunday Ritual 3 Drop Classes Every Semester 4 Start Long-Term Projects the Day They Are Assigned 5 Make Your Bed 6 Apply to Ten Scholarships a Year 7 Build Study Systems 8 Befriend a Professor 9 B...

Contents Cover Page Title Page Introduction 1 Don't Do All of Your Reading 2 Create a Sunday Ritual 3 Drop Classes Every Semester 4 Start Long-Term Projects the Day They Are Assigned 5 Make Your Bed 6 Apply to Ten Scholarships a Year 7 Build Study Systems 8 Befriend a Professor 9 Become a Club President 10 Read a Newspaper Every Day 11 Do One Thing Better Than Anyone Else You Know 12 Avoid Daily To-Do Lists 13 Learn to Give Up 14 Never Nap 15 Sign Up for Something Your First Week 16 Always Be Working on a “Grand Project” 17 Take Art History and Astronomy 18 Blow the Curve Once a Term 19 Ask One Question at Every Lecture 20 Jump into Research as Soon as Possible 21 Pay Your Dues 22 Study in Fifty-Minute Chunks 23 Schedule Your Free Time 24 Dress Nicely for Class 25 Decorate Your Room 26 Start Studying Two Weeks in Advance 27 Write Outside of Class 28 Eat Alone Twice a Day 29 Find an Escape 30 Take Hard Courses Early On 31 Don't Study in Your Room 32 Don't Study in Groups 33 Join an Honors Program 34 Do Schoolwork Every Day 35 Attend Guest Lectures 36 Exercise Five Days a Week 37 Stay in Touch 38 Tack on an Extra Major or Minor 39 Meet Often with Your Adviser 40 Don't Get a Normal Job 41 Use Three Days to Write a Paper 42 Don't Undersleep, Don't Oversleep 43 Relax Before Exams 44 Make Friends Your #1 Priority 45 Don't Binge Drink 46 Ignore Your Classmates' Grades 47 Seek Out Phenomenal Achievers 48 Learn to Listen 49 Never Pull an All-Nighter 50 Laugh Every Day 51 Use High-Quality Notebooks 52 Keep a Work-Progress Journal 53 Seek Out Fun 54 Inflate Your Ambition 55 Get Involved with Your Major Department 56 Care About Your Grades, Ignore Your G.P.A. 57 Always Go to Class 58 Set Arbitrary Deadlines 59 Eat Healthy 60 Volunteer Quietly 61 Write as if Going for a Pulitzer 62 Attend Political Rallies 63 Maximize Your Summers 64 Choose Goals, Explore Routes 65 Don't Take Breaks Between Classes 66 Don't Network 67 Publish Op-Eds 68 Use a Filing Cabinet 69 Find a Secret Study Space 70 Study with the Quiz-and-Recall Method 71 Empty Your In-Box 72 Relax Before Sleep 73 Start Fast, End Slow 74 Spend a Semester Studying Abroad 75 “Don't Have No Regrets” Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Page Introduction College. You've probably been hearing about it and planning for it for years, and now, it's finally here. The SATs are over, your application's been accepted, and high school is soon to become just another fading memory. You're about to embark on a great adventure— one you'll remember your entire life. There is no question that college is a lot of fun. It's four years of freedom and excitement and growth. Staying out until two A.M. partying, and staying up until dawn talking with friends. Reveling in the chaos of cramming for midterms, and discovering how to appreciate dining hall food. Learning how to write a powerful, persuasive paper, and figuring out how to transform your bedsheet into a toga. Trust me when I say that you're in for a good time. However, there is more to four years of college than amusement. It's also the launching pad for the rest of your life. The tough truth is that getting a good job these days is hard. Getting accepted to a good law school, graduate school, or medical school is also hard. You have just four short years to prepare yourself for the world beyond your college campus. If you play your cards right, you will have the ability to engage in any pursuit that inspires you. If you don't make the most of these four years, getting started on an exciting and fulfilling life path will be much more difficult. Is it possible to be successful at college and still have fun? When I first arrived at school, I didn't think so. I thought there was no way that you could both enjoy college life and excel as a student. As I saw it, there were two choices: you could be fun and social and put all your energy into meeting people and having memorable experiences, or you could be a grind, and while away your weekend hours studying in the depths of the library. I truly didn't believe you could do both. Until, that is, I met Heidi. Everyone liked Heidi. She was fun and outgoing, she knew tons of people, and she seemed to exude energy. It was clear that she was having a good time at college. But here's the catch: she was also a Rhodes Scholar. Not to mention a published author in the field of mathematics, a winner of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and the founder of a successful community service organization for young girls. I also met Kabir. He was a fun-loving member of a fraternity I frequented, a musician in a popular campus jazz group, and an all-around sociable guy. However, when I really got to know him, I discovered that he was also the CEO of a start-up company, a co-founder of a grassroots mentoring program in Australia, and a rising star in the world of youth politics. Then there was Janos, who, in a brilliant display of social vitality, somehow managed to become a member of both a fraternity and a co-ed social house—a definite fixture on the campus party scene. But this whirlwind social life didn't stop him from serving as student body president two years in a row, nor did it stop him from planning a postgraduation run for the state assembly. Clearly, these students were proof that academic success and real-world ambitions could go hand in hand with living college life to the fullest. They seemed bounded by nothing. After they graduated, the most competitive companies would hire them, the most exclusive academic programs would admit them, and the most important people would love to meet them. They had, however, avoided the fate of those tedious students who spend their college years in a tireless pursuit of a perfect G.P.A. Instead, they were having a great time, building friendships, and all the while managing to rack up incredibly impressive achievements that would serve them well down the line. None of these students was interested in achieving solely for achieving's sake; rather, they had a natural hunger for intellectual challenge and a flair for transforming their personal interests into exciting projects. Their experiences convinced me that becoming a standout student was not only the best way to prepare for life in the real world, it was also the best way to make college memorable and fulfilling. This is what inspired me to write this book: I wanted to find out how to be like Heidi, Kabir, or Janos. In search of these answers, I frequented the “College Life” section of quite a few bookstores, but came up frustratingly empty- handed. There were plenty of campus guides, books full of practical financial-aid information, and tutorials on how to score high on the SATs, write smart application essays, and other tricks for getting into good schools. There were books that professed to help you learn to speed-read, develop a super-sharp memory, and improve your study skills. And there were plenty of titles brimming with practical advice for surviving college—from how to do your laundry to how to avoid the “freshmen fifteen.” But there were no books about how to achieve the head-turning, interesting, and rewarding college experiences boasted by students like Heidi, Kabir, and Janos. I wanted real advice on how to do the exceptional things they were doing. Because I couldn't find the answers I wanted at the bookstore, I went searching for them myself. I began to track down and interview top students across the country— not just the academic stars, but students who fully embodied this unique brand of multifaceted success. From the Ivy League—Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, and Cornell—to Stanford, Kansas State, Wake Forest, Clemson, the University of Wyoming, the University of Virginia, and the University of Arizona, I located some incredible students, and I asked them about the habits, systems, and mind-sets that had aided them in their accomplishments. I had them write to-do lists for incoming college freshmen interested in doing well at college, and I pressed them for details about specific approaches to time management, studying, and balancing a social life with working hard. Essentially, I wanted to find out everything that made these superstars tick. To be honest, when I first started these interviews, I was a little intimidated. I worried that I would discover that the key to winning at college was a genius-level I.Q., an ability to go for days without sleep, or maybe even a photographic memory. But my fears were unfounded. I discovered from my research that anyone can become a standout student! You don't have to be a genius, you are allowed to get a healthy amount of sleep, and your memory doesn't have to be anything special. All you really need is some expert guidance from those who have done it before. How should you prepare for exams and papers? What extracurricular opportunities should you look into? How should you deal with professors? What's the best way to keep your intellect stimulated and your mood upbeat? How do you balance a fun social life with an ambitious schedule? And how can you craft your pursuits to perfectly fi t your abilities, interests, and passions? These are the important questions that every student needs to ask. And How to Win at College contains the answers. In this book you'll find seventy-five rules drawn from the experiences of some of the country's most phenomenal students. Their answers cover the questions asked above, and more. Turn to any page and you will encounter a simple piece of advice to help you make the most of your four years. No one chapter will turn you into a Rhodes Scholar, and you certainly don't need to follow all seventy-five. However, if you select a group of rules that really captures your attention, and then take the time to implement them in your everyday college life, you will notice remarkable results. Half the battle in becoming a standout student—in fact, to becoming a standout individual—is making the decision to actively try to succeed. If you follow the advice in this book, you will be well on your way toward taking advantage of all that college has to offer, and ensuring yourself the strongest possible start in the real world that follows. How to Win at College will help you find that perfect balance needed to jump-start a life filled with interesting enthusiasms, impressive achievements, and wonderful acquaintances and friends. I wish you the best of luck with this exciting new phase. Hopefully, this book will help you meet and master the many opportunities that will come your way. —Cal Newport You will be assigned a lot of reading at college. Probably more reading than seems humanly possible for any one person to complete. Social science and humanities courses will taunt you with seemingly short academic articles that turn out to be riddled with Byzantine sentence structures and devilishly complicated logic. Science courses will siphon your time, and help you develop a lifelong hatred of bar charts, with a steady stream of ultradense technical material. And just to keep things sporting, professors will periodically slip entire books into the syllabus, often giving you only a week or so to finish them. Sound bleak? It doesn't have to be. All you need remember is one simple rule: Don't do all of your reading. To a hardworking student, ignoring assigned reading probably seems blasphemous. But as unusual as this may sound at first, covering every page of reading listed in a course syllabus is rarely necessary. Here is what you should do instead: For reading that covers the topic of an upcoming lecture, it's often sufficient to just skim the main points ahead of time, and then fill in the gaps during class by taking very good notes. Students are sometimes afraid of skimming, but you shouldn't be. You need to master the skill of covering hundreds of pages of text very quickly. The secret is to read chapter introductions and conclusions carefully, and then skim everything else. Make tick marks next to sentences that catch your attention—this is faster than highlighting. Don't get bogged down trying to understand the significance of every paragraph. Instead, note only the passages that seem to obviously support the thesis. You will definitely miss some key points, but your professor won't. So pay attention in class when the work is discussed, and you will pick up the arguments that you overlooked. Come exam time, your lecture notes, plus a review of the sentences you marked, will bring you up to speed on the material. If there is a particular assignment that was not covered in class, but you know that it will be part of an upcoming exam, skim over it more carefully. If you still feel shaky on the topic, go to office hours. Discuss with your professor the conclusions of the reading. Take good notes. This combination of careful skimming and a good record of the professor's thoughts on what's important is a very effective way to prepare material for testing. When multiple books are assigned as background for a paper, find out early exactly what your paper topic will be, and read only the material you need to develop your specific thesis. Skip optional readings. With all due respect to your professors, there are better uses for your limited time.  For science courses, you will typically be assigned one or two chapters of dense technical material to review for each class. These assignments almost always cover the exact same topics that the professor will detail in lecture. Skim these chapters quickly so you know what to expect, but put the bulk of your energy into concentrating in class. Sciences courses don't test you on your reading. They test you on the concepts taught in the classroom. Your goal as a science student should be to come away from each lecture understanding what was covered, and feel comfortable about applying it. If you find yourself falling behind the professor's chalkboard heroics, ramp up the amount of preparatory reading you are doing until you are able to comfortably follow along. In general, reading in science courses should consume very little of your time. Put your attention where it matters: class lectures and homework problems. This approach to completing class work is admittedly an acquired skill. At first you should err on the side of caution, doing as much reading as possible. But as you gain a feel for your professors, and the structure of your courses, you can begin to back off on your assigned reading until you find that perfect balance between being prepared and being efficient. If you have ever wondered how top students can accomplish so much work in such limited amounts of time, this rule is a large part of the answer. For an ambitious college student, Sunday is the most important day of the week. Even though it's tempting on a Sunday morning to just curl up on your couch and become intimately reacquainted with your old friend the TV, you really must resist. Why? Because Sunday sets the tone for the week that follows. This is absolutely true. If you attack the day on Sunday, you will start your week with momentum behind you. If you let the day attack you, your week will quickly devolve into one protracted game of catch-up. So how do you overcome the allure of lounging and make your Sundays count? The secret is to engage in the same focusing ritual every Sunday morning—something that wakes up your mind and gets your day moving. Read the paper with a strong cup of coffee, take a walk with a friend, go for a jog followed by a hot shower, or spend some time browsing in a nearby bookstore. Then, with your intellectual energy piqued, and your focus strong, settle into a quiet spot at the library and start working. While other students slumber, you will have a full, undisturbed day to get ahead of your work obligations. This weekend ritual will also help you make that vital mental switch from weekend debauchery to workweek focus. When you party straight through the weekend until Sunday night, Monday morning is all the more depressing. The satisfaction you'll get from starting the week in full command of your responsibilities will provide the good mood and momentum needed to get through the days that follow. If you take control of your Sunday, you take control of your week. If you are a collegiate superman, then bad courses are your kryptonite. You should never underestimate the importance of picking a winning schedule every single semester. Good courses, with engaging professors and reasonable requirements, are the key to a great educational experience. Bad courses, with incompatible professors and unreasonable requirements, are the key to developing an ulcer. You must avoid bad courses at all costs. They will make you unhappy, they will upset your academic momentum, they will sap your will to achieve, and they will hurt your grades. So how do you keep your schedule solid one hundred percent of the time? Take advantage of the fact that most colleges allow students to drop, or withdraw without penalty, from any class as long as they do so by a certain deadline each semester. You don't have to pay for dropped classes, and they are never recorded on your transcript. Use this system to your advantage. At the beginning of every term, sign up for one or two extra courses, and then after the first week drop your least favorite(s). During that first week, when you are deciding which courses to stick with, make note of the professors' teaching styles, review the syllabi carefully, and skim through the required books at the bookstore. If you are still undecided about whether to drop a specific course, stop by the professor's office hours and have a conversation about the schedule, the workload, and his or her teaching philosophy. See if you can track down other students who have taken this class with this professor. Find out what they think. This approach might lead to more work for you during the first week of each semester, but remember, one hard week is always better than sixteen. And there is nothing more painful than working like a dog for a class that fails to interest you. Dropping courses every term is like an insurance policy against academic unhappiness. Take advantage of this opportunity. College students dread long-term projects. Why? Because we are really, really bad at them. This is true. At this very moment, at college campuses across the country, students are convincing themselves that just because it's possible to complete long-term projects in one frenzied night of panicked work, they should follow such a plan. You don't have to be one of these people. The lure of procrastination is powerful, but you can conquer it by employing one very simple technique: When assigned a long-term project, finish some amount of work toward its completion that very same day. This doesn't have to be a major chunk of work. Thirty minutes is enough. Do something simple: jot down a research schedule on your calendar; sketch out an outline; check out and skim the introduction of several relevant books; write a series of potential thesis statements. This is all it takes. Once you have accomplished something, no matter how small, you realize that starting your project early is not actually all that bad. In fact, it feels good. You are a step ahead of your entire class, and it was easy to do. This sensation is powerful. Believe it or not, it actually makes you look forward to completing more and more work ahead of schedule, until, before you know it, you'll be finished— and it won't be four forty-three A.M. the morning the project is due. Of course, this approach is not a miracle cure for completing long-term projects on time. Big college assignments are still really, really hard, and you'll still need to work diligently in order to complete them (see Rule #52, “Keep a Work-Progress Journal,” for more help on this subject). However, for whatever psychological reason, doing some work the day a project is assigned seems to have a near-miraculous effect on reducing the tendency to delay. So give this rule a try. There is no reason to let long- term projects force you to scramble like a maniac at the last minute. Start small and start immediately. It turns out that mom was right; you need to make your bed every morning, preferably immediately after you wake up. Make this an unbreakable habit, like brushing your teeth. But that's not all. You should also never leave clothes lying around your room—put them in a hamper or in your drawers after you change. Put books on the shelves where they belong, and when you are done with papers and notebooks, put them away in your desk. Empty your garbage basket daily. These are the basic conditions for keeping a clean and organized dorm room, and they are essential. How could something as simple as making your bed have a dramatic impact on your college success? Because a clean room creates a focused mind; a messy room creates a distracted mind. You want a focused mind. The more focused you are, the more effectively you can handle the challenges of being a student. When you are tripping over discarded pizza boxes, sniffing random piles of clothing to find a “clean” pair of socks, and constantly searching under furniture and behind appliances to find that book you need, it's really hard to get energized. Imagine that you have a paper to write. In which instance would it be easier to get started: living in a war zone of a room where your desk is best identified as the boxlike shape under that pile of laundry and discarded Twinkie wrappers, or, alternatively, living in a clean, orderly environment with a clear desk and the resources you need readily at your disposal? Of course, there is also the possibility of getting stuck with the dreaded messy roommate. In this instance, there is probably not much you can do to change his or her behavior. Trust me, thousands before you have tried. However, this doesn't get you off the hook. Keep your side of the room clean, and take responsibility for the general actions, like emptying wastebaskets, vacuuming, and periodically dusting. This may not sound fair, but it's a small price to pay to win at college. If you cannot maintain an organized room you will never truly feel that your life is organized. By keeping your living space in order there will be fewer distractions, and you will feel in control of your environment. These traits are absolutely necessary to support ambitious achievement. It hurts, I know. But it is important to keep your room clean. And it will make your mother happy. One of the most striking elements of a standout student's résumé is typically the awards and honors section. It's hard not to be impressed when you see scholarship after scholarship piled on top of one another into an inferiority complex–inducing avalanche of accolades. Here is the secret that your neighborhood Rhodes Scholar doesn't want you to know: Any student can create an impressively large list of awards. The key is to stop thinking of scholarships and awards as gifts handed down from above to only the most deserving students. The reality is that many scholarships and awards are actually handed down from an overworked, uninterested administrator who was assigned the unfortunate task of choosing a winner from the depressingly small pool of students who actually bothered to apply correctly. Therefore, for a lot of small awards, if you take the time to apply, and demonstrate diligent effort in your application, your odds of winning are quite good. Take advantage of this situation!  Here is what you should do: Contact your dean's office, Career Services Center, and departments relating to your field of study. Ask them for information on scholarships, fellowships, and awards. Also, use Web-based services such as FastWeb (www.fastweb.com) and FinAid! (www.finaid.org) to search for additional national scholarships for which you are eligible. Talk to the companies where your parents, aunts, uncles, and siblings work; find out if they offer any student scholarships. And finally, look for scholarships from companies or organizations in any industry of interest to you. From this large hit list, choose up to ten scholarships that best fit your abilities, passions, and accomplishments. Mark the deadlines on your calendar and apply to every single one of them when the time is right. Do this every year. While this aggressive approach may force you to sacrifice some hours, by the time you graduate you will have amassed a head-turning list of honors. Think about it. For every ten well-selected scholarships and awards you apply for, you probably have a good shot at winning at least one, and maybe even two or three. And of course, the more scholarships you win, the better your odds on future applications. This means that after four years you can approach the job market (or grad school admissions committees) with quite a few honors listed on your résumé. This is unusual, this is impressive, and it is a great way to gain access to elite opportunities. How do smart students study? In every bizarre way imaginable. There is the math major who assigns point values to all of his review strategies, and then keeps a spreadsheet to make sure that he covers a certain number of points by exam day. Or there is the French student who creates elaborate quiz show–style games to learn new vocabulary. Or the political science major who creates giant knowledge maps on her wall, linking concepts visually with bright yarn. Smart students build complex study systems. The details of these approaches don't matter, as long as they are specific, regimented, and creative. Follow this example. You should never begin studying without a systemized plan for what you are going to review, in what format, and how many times. Building very specific study systems breaks a formidable task into accomplishable chunks, and it frees up your energy to focus on learning rather than worrying about your state of preparation. Without a study system, you end up wandering haphazardly through the material, staring at a tall stack of books with woe in your heart and resignation on your mind. With a study system, your task becomes tolerable. Before you even crack your first book, take ten minutes to actually write down exactly how you plan to study. Look at Rules #26 and 70 for some guidance on review techniques that work well. Then build a checklist with big boxes ready to be checked off as the corresponding tasks are completed. Once you are convinced that this study system will adequately prepare you, you can then free yourself from any worries as to whether you will be ready for the upcoming exam. Your responsibilities have been reduced to simply finding the time to plow through every item in your plan. In addition, the more unusual or creative your system, the better. This will reduce tedium, inject some novelty into the process, and lead to the establishment of stronger mental connections. This is why the aforementioned math major used a point system, the French major designed a quiz show, and the political science major taped yarn to her wall. Their study systems are comprehensive and interesting. They are studying smart, and because of this they will do well. When it comes to studying, the planning is as important as the process. Without a study system, you can end up wasting your time, energy, and potential grade. Contrary to popular student belief, professors are not evil lords of academia who swoop down from their ivory towers only to torment you with papers, convoluted syllabi, and blue-book exams. In reality, they are usually quite nice. Even more important, they are a most crucial ally in your quest to maximize your college experience. If you want to become a standout student, you must befriend a professor. Make him or her a mentor, someone who is aware of your overall academic plan, your life goals, your concerns, and your triumphs. A close relationship with a professor will help motivate you to achieve ambitious academic goals and will expose you to exciting new possibilities. Professors are the gatekeepers to student success. They provide the letters of recommendation, informal introductions, and experienced advice that are necessary to win major scholarships, get accepted into competitive programs, land dream internships, be nominated for awards, and, in general, enable you to take advantage of all the opportunities typically offered only to top students. In short, professors provide the fuel for the academic success machine. Don't worry. Making an ally of a professor is not a difficult task. Professors enjoy interacting with their students; it is often the only feedback they get on how well they are doing their job. To create a meaningful connection, you should begin with regular attendance at office hours. Some students worry that they don't have any specific problems to discuss. The secret is to be observant. There are many more opportunities to speak with a professor than you might realize at first. When you are working on a paper, you can see the professor to talk about possible topics, then again to get feedback on the idea you selected, and then again to check the structure of your argument once you begin writing. When an exam is approaching, you can ask for clarification on particularly difficult material covered in class. And if you are in a technical class, the door is always open to discuss homework problems or concepts that you can't quite grasp. If these efforts result in a strong rapport, allow your conversations to shift gradually from specific class-related issues to academic advice in general. Keep this dialogue open even after the semester ends, making sure to keep in touch with the professor on a regular basis. Swing by his or her office every once in a while to give an update on how things are going. If the professor offers other courses relevant to your interests, make a point of taking them. By demonstrating such a concentrated effort to learn from the wisdom of your target professor, over time, he or she will develop a vested interest in your success. This approach is not feckless brown-nosing, so ignore those who suggest otherwise. Befriending a professor is about fulfilling the perfectly natural desire to have a more experienced person guide you through a complicated and exciting period of your life. It's a mutually beneficial relationship that provides the professor with a sense of impact and fulfillment, and provides you with a variety of wonderful new opportunities and counsel. Leave the shiny red apple at home—a serious professorial relationship is a sign of a serious commitment to your academic career. To put it bluntly, losing students don't think they have enough time to be involved with extracurricular organizations. Average students join extracurricular organizations. And winning students run extracurricular organizations. You heard it here first: You absolutely have the ability to run a campus organization. This is not something to be afraid of. It's not nearly as complicated or completely time-consuming as you might imagine, and it's definitely within your grasp. In general, if you are a well- organized person, club leadership may be challenging, but it's far from overwhelming. Keep this in mind, because most students sell themselves short and are happy just to be involved. You, however, want to be in charge! Find a club on campus that excites you and join as soon as possible. Work hard, attend all the meetings, take positions of responsibility whenever they are available, and follow a path into a leadership position. If you have a strong idea for an organization that doesn't already exist, this is even better. Spend one year working with an existing club to gain an understanding of how student organizations operate at your college. Then petition your school for the resources necessary to start your own. Why is this a good idea? Because few collegiate experiences are more rewarding than the challenge of running a campus club. You will gain substantial amounts of confidence from leading your fellow students toward a common goal, and you'll maintain a healthy sense of perspective by finding sources of accomplishment unrelated to academic performance. You'll meet people who share your common interests and bond over your shared goals in a way you rarely do in an academic classroom. And of course, when applying for jobs, awards, or competitive programs, being a club president helps you rise above other applicants. An academic curriculum alone is not enough to keep life at college interesting. But don't waste your free time with scattered, loose commitments; instead, focus on a few concentrated goals. If you are truly interested in becoming a standout, taking control of a campus organization is an excellent start. If your brain is a muscle, then reading a newspaper is like mental calisthenics. In order to succeed in an academic environment your mind has to be constantly energized, confident, and ready to engage. With this in mind, you should read a newspaper every day. Reading a major newspaper at the same time every day is a perfect way to juice up your mental energy and prepare you to take on intellectual challenges. Make it a habit. If they're available, alternate between the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. They are both excellent, and when combined will give you a balanced world view. If you don't have access to either of these papers, try USA Today. Though perhaps not as in-depth, the reporting is timely, and it can be fully read in one sitting. As a last resort, you can access most of these newspapers online. The local paper might be interesting, but it's no substitute. Read every article on the front page, and then read two or three articles of interest from each of the interior sections. Don't just skip right to the sports page. Try to expand your intellectual horizons every day. This regular reading of a major newspaper will keep you current on the state of international and domestic affairs, politics, business, and the fine arts. This in turn will boost your mental energy and confidence, and open you to new perspectives and information that will help your coursework. Reading a daily paper provides essential food for your ambitious brain. Make sure you don't go hungry. If you want to succeed at college, you have to develop a healthy sense of self-confidence. This doesn't mean you should be arrogant—such people are often secretly insecure. Instead, you want to be self-assured, proud, and modest all at the same time. These are the traits of a well- liked, successful student. Easier said than done? Not really. One good technique for bolstering your confidence is mastering a skill. Everyone is good at something. All you need to do is to find out what this something is for you, and then practice until you are better at it than any of your friends at school. Be it playing the guitar, writing fiction, shooting hoops, or cooking, develop a skill you can be known for. Again, this is not about bragging rights. People can know you are good at something without you having to constantly remind them. This is about reinforcing your identity and sense of self- confidence. Why is this so important? Because college is an overwhelming social environment. You are thrown into a small space with thousands of other students who know nothing about you. Many students fail to maintain a strong sense of identity in this situation, and instead begin to peg their self-worth on receiving the respect and admiration of others. If you're invited to a hot party, do well on a test, or catch the eye of that cute girl (or boy) ahead of you in the lunch line, you feel good about yourself. But if you end up with no plans for Friday night, bomb a test, or realize that the cute girl was actually smiling at her bodybuilder boyfriend standing right behind you, well, then you feel pretty lousy. The state of your self-esteem is like a roller- coaster ride, differing from day to day depending on events beyond your control. You cannot win at college with this mind-set. When you are dependent on good things happening to make you feel good, your life becomes centered on preserving a good mood. This will constrain you, because if you are constantly worried about avoiding anything negative, you will never do anything out of the ordinary. Standout students, on the other hand, do very little that is ordinary. This is what makes them so phenomenal. They find better ways, uncover new approaches, and question everything. The only way to develop such an aggressive mind-set is to have a strong sense of self-confidence to back you up. Developing these traits is not easy. But doing one thing better than anyone else you know is an excellent start toward accomplishing this goal. By mastering one activity in your life, you are putting a stake into the ground, giving yourself one thing to feel sure of, and making a declaration about who you are. Don't let others dictate how you should feel about yourself; strengthen your identity—then go conquer your world. For whatever reason, it's ingrained in students at an early age that the best way to stay organized is to have a daily to-do list. You have probably tried this approach. The idea is to make a list of all the tasks you need to get done, and then cross off the items on the list as you move through your day in an orderly and, above all, predictable manner. Yeah, right! Here is the most important rule you will ever hear about student time management: Daily to-do lists do not work at college. Your schedule is too complicated and too unpredictable. Some assignments could easily take up your entire evening, while others may take just minutes. Friends will drop by unexpectedly, meals will last for hours, and interesting opportunities for fun will pop up at the last moment. A to-do list can't tame this hectic lifestyle. If you blindly move through the day, trying to accomplish tasks from a list whenever it seems like you have some free time, you will get very little done. Here is a better way to take control of your schedule: Every morning, before your first class, rip a sheet of paper out of your notebook. Go down the left-hand margin marking the waking hours of the day using every other line as a guide. Now block out the hours you will be in class. Then block out the hours you will be eating meals, and when you will be in meetings or other scheduled events. The white space that remains represents the free time that you have available to work with for the day. This is a great way to visualize your schedule. Now, start partitioning this free time into one-hour increments, and assign these blocks to specific projects and assignments. Set aside at least one block for accomplishing small chores or errands. Next to this space write a small to-do list of the little tasks you need to get done that day. This ensures that even when you have huge projects to work on, the little tasks that keep your world running—buying toothpaste or returning library books—will not be neglected. Keep this sheet with you and reference it throughout the day to guide your work habits. If you get knocked off schedule, which will happen frequently, simply take out your sheet at the next available calm moment and spend half a minute reorganizing your time for the remaining hours of the day. This approach only takes two paragraphs to explain, and just minutes a day to implement, but it is exponentially more effective than daily to-do lists. Unless you're a big fan of stress, do yourself a favor and give time-blocking a try. It's a much smarter way to manage your day. Unless you are starring in a Rocky movie, remember: Giving up is a tactical skill, not a weakness. When you are faced with a project or commitment that threatens to swallow up your entire life, give up. That's right, give up. Of course, this probably sounds a little unusual (read: insane) to the many talented students out there who strongly believe in the power of determination and willpower. But although steadfast diligence is definitely an admirable trait, it's worthless at college. In the intense environment of higher education it's not enough to just grind away at your problems until they are solved. You have to be smart about how you parcel out your precious time. When faced with a difficult problem or demanding commitment, try to handle it in a reasonable manner—keeping in mind that important tasks often require important amounts of time. However, if a problem seems unsolvable no matter how hard you try, or a commitment begins taking up a destructively large amount of your schedule no matter how much you delegate, give up. This doesn't mean you should walk away without a second thought. Instead, make an appointment with your professor or a classmate to help you solve your unsolvable problem. Or, over a reasonable period of time, reduce your involvement with your demanding commitment to free up your schedule appropriately. Let's look at a few sample scenarios to clarify when you should and should not give up. For example, let's say you are working on an economics problem set, and you have approached the problems with plenty of time and attention but you still can't get the answers. First, make arrangements to get outside help from a professor or T.A. Then move on to something else. Ignore your initial instinct to stay up all night, battling the problems until you collapse from exhaustion. On the other hand, let's say that you have a new club commitment that requires you to spend a few hours every Tuesday night organizing a campuswide meeting. And let's say that this upsets you because it really reduces the amount of other work you can get done on Tuesdays. This is not a good excuse to give up. You can compensate for the number of work hours you lose on Tuesday by adjusting your Sunday and Monday schedules accordingly. The new commitment is hard, but it's not a waste of energy. Finally, imagine that your hypothetical club commitment has now expanded greatly, and you find yourself with hours of work to complete almost every day. No matter how carefully you schedule, other parts of your life are being neglected. In this instance, you can't control the time commitment. The sheer weight of tasks has become too expansive for you to complete them in reasonable balance with your other commitments. You need to give up. Delegate a major portion of the work, or step down from your position of power. In these examples, the key word for deciding whether or not to give up was “productivity.” It's okay to spend many hours working on something as long as those hours are productive. In the first example, it's not productive to spend time on problems that you will never fully understand without outside help. Therefore you are smart to give up. In the second example, the block of time you have to spend on Tuesday nights is productive. You're getting something important accomplished, and you have more than enough advance warning to compensate for the time required. Giving up here would mean missing out on an opportunity whose rewards easily outweigh the cost of rescheduling a couple of work hours once a week. The third example is a little bit tricky. It may seem like each individual task you do is useful, but it's their sheer cumulative volume that makes your involvement unproductive. If a commitment has no time frame, and it seems like you could push everything else aside and work for days straight without ever fulfilling all that needs to be done, then that commitment is unproductive. The rewards do not outweigh the tremendous time cost. You need to give up or lose your whole schedule to an uncontrollable stream of tasks. Productive work is any work that is efficiently accomplishable in a known amount of time. If a task has no end in sight, or serious time spent on it accomplishes very little, you need to give up. To learn to give up is to learn to weed out your unproductive commitments so you can maximize what you get done. This is a trait you should develop. Remember, giving up, when done strategically, is not a weakness. It's simply smart life management. This is very painful to say, but it's just too important to be ignored. While at college, do not nap. (I'll pause to wait for the groaning to die down.) Allow me to explain. Sleeping in the afternoon or early evening takes up large amounts of your limited time, it makes you drowsy and unfocused, and it throws off your regular sleep schedule. Not to mention that this behavior can quickly become an addictive bad habit, where you're regularly losing hours to sleep every afternoon, nights pass fitfully, and staying awake during class becomes a Herculean challenge. Once a napper, always a napper. If due to unavoidable circumstances you find yourself unusually tired during the day, there are other alternatives for rejuvenating your energy that are more effective than napping. If you are feeling just slightly sluggish in the afternoon, go outside and do some light exercise. A short jog, a game of basketball, a brisk walk—anything that gets your heart pumping will usually pep you right up. If exercising doesn't help, go on the biochemical offensive and target your fatigue with food and drink. Gather up a pile of fresh fruits and a liter of ice-cold water. This is like rocket fuel for your body, and will give you a streak of energy. If, after all of this, your eyelids are still drooping, don't give in to daytime slumber just yet. Instead, deep-six your difficult studying and turn your attention to simpler tasks. Draw up a to-do list of all the little chores you have been putting off. Vacuum your room. Mail letters. Go to the grocery store. Type up your lecture notes. Organize your class materials. Check out and return library books. Then, and this is the important part, head to bed early and get a full night's rest. The key is to accomplish goals throughout the day while at the same time not throwing off your sleep schedule. One late night should not kill two full days of productivity. By keeping your energy high, and then falling immediately back into a normal sleep routine, you can alleviate the potential nap-induced damage of drowsy days. The first week of college is an awkward time to say the least. You don't really know anyone, the proper procedures for using the dining hall remain elusive, and you fear that if one more person tries to make you play a fun get- acquainted icebreaker game you might snap and stab them to death with their own name tag–marker. One reaction to this situation is to become a Freshman Fall Hermit and retreat into the comfort of dorm-room television and studying for classes. This approach is not necessarily as bleak as it may at first sound. Through random encounters you will still begin to meet people despite your best efforts. But the hermit approach denies you a lot of opportunities to get excited early on in your collegiate career. And, of course, excitement and inspiration about your pursuits are the fuel of a successful college student. So instead of hunkering down and letting your Freshman Fall pass by harmlessly, embrace it wholeheartedly by signing up for something your first week. It could be an intramural sports team, a publication, an affinity group, the campus radio station, a musical ensemble, or a club that gathers regularly to discuss world issues. There are a staggering number of activities you can potentially join; choose just one that excites you. Your first week is the best time to get involved. You will be one of many new members learning the ropes, you will instantly meet new people, and throughout your first term you will already have a sense of extracurricular purpose. The awkwardness of Freshman Fall disappears when you have a prefab group of acquaintances to say “hi” to as you pass them in the library. And having projects to work on outside of class is a great way to start revving up the ambition and inspiration that will help you win at college. The happiest students are also the most involved students. When it comes to crafting your slate of collegiate pursuits, the sooner you get involved, the better. Successful, interesting college students are definitely a varied bunch. Yet there is one thing many of them have in common: a wonderful sense of possibility. Whereas most students are content to stay the course, winning students love to get excited about big goals. They crave the thrill of pursuing opportunities that very few people have attempted before them. An average student does well in a science course; a winning student gets involved in original research. An average student sends a letter to the school newspaper; a winning student writes a regular column. An average student wants to join a club; a winning student starts a national organization. If you want to stand out at college you should foster an attitude of “anything is possible.” And one of the best ways to develop this attitude is to constantly be working on a “Grand Project.” To begin with, reflect on your most heartfelt aspirations. If you could be doing anything five years from now, what would it be? Then design and follow an ambitious Grand Project that moves you toward your answer. For example, if you get excited about the idea of writing for The New Yorker, you might create a Grand Project to first publish a series of intelligent nonfiction pieces for your school paper, then a local paper, then a second-tier national publication on your way to the big time. If you dream of screenwriting in Hollywood, you might research a list of every upcoming student-film-writing contest, tack the deadlines on your wall, and work on finishing an original screenplay in time to be submitted to all of them. Or, if you are motivated by young entrepreneur success stories, you might jot down a clever business idea, create a Web site, and launch your very own dorm-room corporation. Your Grand Project should consist of a group of achievable, nonacademic accomplishments that, when combined, move you closer to an exciting aspiration. Think big. Be ambitious. When you explain a Grand Project to someone it should elicit a response of “Wow!” Working on such a project will keep you constantly excited and energetic. It will keep the pressures of course work in perspective, and make it easy to brush aside the little bad occurrences that pop up now and then. When you work on a highly ambitious project, you feel invincible, like you are a step ahead of the rest of the world, forging unique paths to great success. It doesn't matter if you don't always succeed. The novelty and thrill of taking chances is a powerful force. This may sound like a bunch of psychobabble, but if you actually try pursuing a Grand Project, you will understand. When you finish that screenplay, see your article in print, or receive your first check as an entrepreneur, the sensation is indescribable. You just accomplished something exciting, and you did so for no other reason than you just wanted to see if it was possible. Once you accomplish one Grand Project, anything seems achievable. This sense of possibility will fuel your rise to becoming a standout. Do you know the difference between the artists Monet and Manet? Can you explain what the cosmological constant is? If you answered “no” to these two questions—or if you answered “yes” but were really just lying to impress someone reading over your shoulder—do yourself a favor a n d take art history and astronomy before you graduate. Of all the courses you could possibly take outside of your major, these two are among the most important. In the case of art history, take an introductory course that covers the Modern period. In addition to learning the difference between Manet and Monet, study Picasso's formalist innovations and become familiar with the pioneers of the Conceptual Art movement. Contrary to popular belief, art history is surprisingly difficult to learn on your own, and taking a course at college may be your last chance to become culturally literate in the fine arts. This is a skill that will serve you for a lifetime of museum visits and informed cocktail party conversation. More important, learning the central theories behind modern art will give you an overview of the general development of intellectualism in the twentieth century. This may sound snooty, but it's actually quite interesting, and it's an important topic for any student to learn. Understanding the basic tenets of modern and postmodern thinking will provide you with the intellectual ammo you need to tackle the entire medium of the modern fine arts—from paintings, to novels, to plays. And it will also give you a point of reference for understanding modern philosophy and the radical movements of the last century. This is an easy way to make sense of the world of contemporary thought and expression. Don't miss the opportunity! For astronomy, take an introductory course that covers cosmology and the universe. Current understanding of the origins of matter, the expanding cosmos, and the shape of space-time are perhaps some of the most exciting scientific discoveries of all time. Fortunately, when taught in the style of an intro course, these theories are surprisingly easy to understand and unavoidably awe-inspiring. In addition to learning about the history of our world, you will painlessly gain an easy familiarity with the scientific method, which will serve you well in an increasingly technology-oriented age. In addition to what specifics you learn in these courses, you will benefit by taking a risk and moving beyond your comfort zone when choosing classes. This will fuel your intellectual curiosity and general excitement for knowledge. When you find that you can tackle both Clement Greenberg (the great modern art critic) and Stephen Hawking (the pioneering particle physicist) in the same day, other fields of study will seem more approachable. This kind of curiosity is crucial for happiness and success in any academic environment. Take art history and astronomy, and take them early. Your collegiate experience will be greatly improved. Imagine the following scene: Your professor is handing back a major research paper to your class. The groans that begin to fill the room indicate that the professor was particularly demanding for this assignment. And rightly so, it's worth forty percent of your grade. As he gets to your name, he asks you to stay after class. Uh oh. Nervously you wait as your classmates file out, and when you are the only student remaining in the lecture hall, he walks up to you... and then shakes your hand. “Congratulations,” he exclaims, “your project was by far the best in the class!” Sound good? Well, get used to it. If you want to succeed at college, try to put yourself in this situation, in one class, for one assignment, every semester. The advantages of blowing the curve on an assignment are obvious. It will help your grade, the professor will remember and support you with great recommendations and advice, and it will just plain make you feel good about yourself. What is not so obvious is how easy it can be to blow the curve on a regular basis. The key is to pick your spots. To do an outstanding job on every assignment in every class you take would be near impossible. Most assignments are not easily dominated. And to turn heads in a class that is giving you particular trouble, or does not interest you, is difficult. However, it's not so hard to do an outstanding job in a class that you really enjoy, on a project that excites you, assigned during a time where you don't have many competing obligations. With this in mind, every semester you should choose one class that you like, and within that class choose one interesting project, and then knock it out of the ballpark. Get started very early, work diligently, go above and beyond the stated specifications, and add on extra work to show true intellectual curiosity. If you are writing an art history paper, don't just describe a work as the assignment specifies. Instead, compare it with another work and use it as support for the existence of an abstract theoretical structure you read about in a nonassigned book. If you are working on a computer science programming assignment, schedule yourself to finish a week early so you can add a host of extra bells and whistles. If you have a big economics exam coming up, double the amount of time you normally study and aim for a near-perfect score. To focus on just one project each term is not all that demanding on your time or energy, especially if you plan ahead and choose an appropriate target. The rewards for this effort can be tremendous. Keeping alert throughout a long lecture is not always easy to do. Especially if the class is early in the morning, or held right after a hearty lunch, and it begins to take all of your effort to stop your eyes from drooping... drooping... ever closer to being... closed... SNAP! And just like that, the lecture has slipped by without you learning anything other than how to clean drool off your notebook. If you want to succeed at college, you have to do whatever you can to prevent this from happening to you. Fortunately, one of the most effective ways to stay engaged and interested during a lecture is also very easy to do: Make sure that you always ask at least one question at every lecture. The night before, when you are doing the reading that will be covered in the lecture, jot down a quick list of questions that seem relevant. Then, once in class, follow the professor's material carefully, modifying and honing your questions as appropriate. Finally, when you feel you have a question that is meaningful, and will clarify an important point of the discussion, ask away. The key is to stay involved while, at the same time, not acting like the obnoxious kid in the front row who asks random questions every thirty seconds or so. This approach not only helps you clarify the material and reinforce your understanding, it also keeps your attention focused and ensures that you stay alert. It's a powerful technique for resisting the urge to drift off into a boredom- infused stupor. One or two good questions a class is enough to keep the professor happy, but not enough to solicit the annoyance of your classmates. Take the time to ask at least one question at every lecture. It's simple, and it will redefine your classroom experience for the better. Don't take this the wrong way, but college professors have a life outside of you and your classes. While most professors enjoy teaching undergraduates, their professional obligations go far beyond the classroom. The primary responsibility of a professor at any university or research institution is the vaguely defined goal of “advancing knowledge” in their field. And the bulk of this knowledge advancement takes place in the form of original research and academic publication. To put it simply: Research is where all the action is. If you really want to stand out at your college, you need to be in the middle of this action. You need to be involved with the machinery of original research that is going on all around you. You need to tap into the incredible opportunities offered to you, the undergraduate, to actually make a difference in the world of academia. Why? First of all, working on real research is like strength training for your intellect. It's challenging, enlightening, and rewarding all at the same time. Once you have worked on writing a peer-reviewed journal article, your paper for Government 101 will seem trivial. Second, it's impressive. Regardless of what you want to do after college, the fact that you did original research sends all the right messages—you're smart, you're driven, you're a cut above the rest. And third, there is no way to become closer to a professor than to spend a weekend in a biology lab with him or her. If you make yourself indispensable in a research setting, the professor will return the favor in the form of recommendations and support. Timing is important here. If you get involved too late in your collegiate career, you may not have enough time to make an impact. Spend your freshman year getting a good feel for what fields you are interested in. Toward the end of your last freshman semester, begin to inquire about research opportunities. Simply go to the relevant departmental Web sites and read about ongoing research projects. E-mail those professors whose work interests you. Tell them you are interested in getting more experience in the academic world. Mention some specifics of their particular research projects to impress them, and then ask if they are in need of an undergraduate research assistant. Even if they say no, they will probably be able to point you in the direction of someone who does need help. Also, keep your eyes open for undergraduate research grants that might be available. These make it a lot easier to find someone who is willing to bring you on to their project. It's as simple as that. A common misconception among students is that research only happens in scientific fields. This is far from true. English professors publish articles in academic journals just as regularly as biology professors. While working with the former might involve tracking down references and copying book chapters, and the latter might focus on setting up lab environments and calculating results, the benefits of working on both types of projects are the same. Regardless of your field, there is always some research with which you can assist. Another misconception is that research is only conducted at large universities. While it's true that big research institutions focus on research more than smaller liberal arts schools, this doesn't mean that the smaller schools aren't still working on projects. In fact, at a small school you have the advantage that there are fewer undergraduates to help with research, meaning that you will most likely end up with even more interesting opportunities from which to choose. Getting involved with research early is like drinking an elixir of success. It's one of the most commonly overlooked and effective secrets for winning at college. Don't let this opportunity pass you by. If getting involved with original research is one of the best things you can do as an undergraduate, then getting involved and acting as if you are somehow entitled to responsibility is one of the worst. The reason you begin research work early in your college career is so you have time to learn and time to prove yourself. During your first year assisting on a research project, you have to pay your dues. Don't expect anything. Just be as helpful as possible. Be available. Get work done on time. Make life easier for your research team. Once you have a good feel for the project, you can begin to modestly boost your involvement. Try using the phrase: “If you think I can handle this, I would be happy to help.” In this way, you can angle for more responsibility without coming across as brash. You will simply sound as if you are trying to be helpful, which you are. When you are given more important work to complete, treat each of these early assignments as if it's your doctoral dissertation. Wow those overseeing your work with your diligence and ability. If you do this, you will be a departmental star by the time you graduate. If you instead act ungrateful, demand responsibility early, and sulk when delegated boring tasks, you will upset professors and develop a negative reputation. If you pay your dues with grace and enthusiasm and are mindful of the opportunity you are receiving, you will maximize the many positive benefits of participating in original research work. According to conventional wisdom on college campuses, the most effective way to tackle a large amount of studying is to: (1) pile all of your books, notes, and review sheets in front of you; (2) study until you collapse; (3) awaken several hours later wondering where you are; (4) wipe the drool off your books with a damp, warm washcloth; (5) consume large quantities of caffeine; (6) repeat. Do not do this (except for the part about the damp, warm washcloth... that really is the best way to clean up drool). When you do schoolwork, be it reading, taking notes, working on a lab, or memorizing verbs, try to do everything in fifty-minute chunks. Take ten-minute breaks in between each fifty- minute chunk. This is key for any successful student. Why fifty minutes? For one thing, there are compelling scientific rationales. Those who study cognition can draw maps of memory retention over time, and demonstrate how periods of roughly fifty minutes, divided by short breaks, will maximize the amount of material you can successfully learn and remember in a given sitting. But just as important, breaking down all your work into distinct, known periods of time provides structure for your studying. If you have five hours of reading to do, that stack of books in front of you can seem hopeless. How can you focus on the first chapter when there are so many to follow? But if you only have to stay focused for fifty minutes at a time, then the impossible suddenly seems possible. Five work chunks doesn't seem so bad. You could do three before dinner and two after, or whatever seems easiest, and suddenly your assignment is approachable. Not to mention that you are learning the material in the most effective way possible for the human brain. In general, as discussed in Rule #7, Build Study Systems, you never want to approach any large amount of studying or reading or note-taking without some sort of structure. Using fifty-minute chunks is a great addition to any such structure. Free time is both a blessing and a curse for a successful college student. On the one hand, most of your fondest memories will come from hanging around with your friends, talking, playing video games, and watching indecipherable Japanese kids' shows on the Cartoon Network (trust me). On the other hand, it is dangerously easy to lose too much productivity to the allure of recreation. You would be surprised by how simple it can become to convince yourself to take yet another big break, even when you know that you have a lot of work waiting to be completed. You could also find yourself suffering from an even worse problem, which is feeling guilty every time you try to relax, worrying that there is probably some work you could be doing right then. You don't want to deal with either of these afflictions. Fortunately, there is an unconventional yet simple way to both avoid these problems and ensure that you get the perfect amount of rest and relaxation: Schedule your free time. Most people consider free time to be any time when they are not explicitly working. All you need to do is flip this understanding, and say that work time is any time that you are not explicitly relaxing. When you create your schedule each morning, you need to do two things. First, choose an end point for the day. For example, you might say that ten P.M. is the end of your workday, and from that point on you will just relax until you go to sleep. Second, decide exactly when you are going to relax throughout the day. For example, you might decide that you will spend a half hour after lunch watching TV, two hours in the afternoon to go to the gym and hang out with friends, and an hour or two surrounding dinner to unwind. The rest of your time you will be working. As you move through your day, there will never be any question as to whether you should be relaxing. Either you are in one of your scheduled break periods, or you are working. Not only does this cut down on impromptu breaks, but it can also increase your work ethic—everyone works harder right before a scheduled reprieve. By reversing the way you think about free time, not only will you work more, but when you do relax, you will relax better. There is no fear that you are being irresponsible, or neglecting something important. Scheduling your free time may sound a little scary at first, but it shouldn't. You are not actually reducing—or increasing—the amount of free time you have during the day, you are just labeling and consolidating it so you can maximize the benefits of kicking back. Scheduling your free time is quite simply a win-win proposition, and a great way to painlessly improve your productivity. Track pants, a slightly stained T-shirt, flip-flops, and a baseball cap do not count as “getting dressed” in the morning. Nor does it count if you are wearing any article of clothing that you slept in the night before, or frequently wear to the gym. You should always take the time to brush your teeth, shower, tame your hair, and put on a good-looking outfit every morning before heading to class. This doesn't mean you must look as if you just jetted in from Milan, but on the other hand, you shouldn't look like you just got released from a prison chain gang either. Why bother dressing nicely for class? Two reasons. One, it makes you feel better about yourself. If you look good, you can imagine that cute guy or dimpled girl in the front row shooting some glances in your direction. This will make you happy. And when you are happy, you have more energy and pay attention better in class. Two, it makes the day official. When you look like you just rolled out of bed, it's all too easy to imagine rolling back in. If you dress nicely, you are sending yourself the message that you are ready to get started and attack the day. This rule may apply more to the gentlemen than to the ladies, since, for whatever reason, college-age men tend to have a noted deficiency when it comes to personalizing their living space. Or to put it another way: I have seen WWII–era foxholes with more personality than some guys' dorm rooms. And just to be clear on definitions, the following items don't count as legitimate decoration: any poster involving the movie Animal House, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, or Will Ferrell; any photographic portrait originally published in Maxim, Stuff, or Sports Illustrated; any item that may, with a certain probability, have spent a healthy chunk of its previous existence adorning the wall of a bar or liquor store. Your room decor should create a space that is both comfortable and a healthy reflection of your personality. This doesn't necessarily mean going crazy with fancy furniture, walls of quirkily framed photographs, sheets that match a coordinated rug and curtains set, or, God forbid, Christmas lights. But it does mean moving beyond barren walls punctuated only with the occasional predictable poster. Why decorate? Because it will have a positive effect on your mood and energy. To wake up, go to sleep, and take breaks throughout the day in a personalized and comfortable room is refreshing. Going to classes, studying for tests, and writing papers is stressful, and having a comforting environment to retreat to is a great way to release tension. Not to mention that people like to hang out in comfortable places. A well-designed student pad will attract more visitors, which will also help your mood and social life. If your room is just a starkly lit white cell, you are never going to feel completely relaxed. And this means the tensions that build throughout the day will never completely be released. Over time, this will sap your energy and diminish your performance as a student. Your surroundings really do make a difference. Find something that truly interests you and incorporate it into your space. Are you a guitar player? Mount your guitars on a wall. Are you a fan of Asian art? Buy three matted black frames, put a print in each, and hang them in an aesthetically pleasing row above your desk. Are you a movie buff? Find posters for two or three movies that you think are particularly influential. Frame them in cheap poster frames of the type you can easily buy at Wal-Mart. Hang them on a wall, and mount a little light above or below each. While you are at it, find an alternative to the fluorescent lights in your room. Two good floor lamps and a solid desk lamp can fill your room with a nice incandescent glow. Put a rug on the floor, as cheap carpet or tile is depressing when left uncovered. And buy a piece of furniture that makes you happy. Maybe find a beat-up sofa, or a used armchair, or anything comfortable that you can sink down into while you watch TV or read a book. There is of course no need to attack your one-room double with a precriminal Martha Stewart–style zeal, but take the time to make your space relaxing. These little touches make a difference. For the sake of argument, let's just say that you need roughly 15 hours to prepare for a big exam. That doesn't sound too bad. If you wake up at nine A.M. the day before, it seems like you would have plenty of time to prepare. Just to be sure, let's do some quick calculations. On a typical day we might use 2 hours for meals, 3 hours for classes, 11⁄2 hours for breaks, 2 hours for the gym, 11⁄2 hours for meetings, and 21⁄2 hours for other homework. Now, with this in mind, if we start studying at nine A.M. the day before, we should be done with our 15 hours by around... noon the next day! Hmmm, maybe that doesn't work too well. If we spread our studying over two days, we can now finish our 15 hours by only having to stay up until five-thirty each of the two mornings. Again, not that great. If we spread our studying over three days, we will get to sleep by a much more reasonable two-thirty each of those three mornings. Ugh. As you can see, though 15 hours doesn't seem too bad at first, when we start to fit this allotted time into an already busy schedule, we realize just how many days we actually need to prepare for an exam without sacrificing copious amounts of sleep and sanity. Now, think what would happen if we had two exams to prepare for? Or a paper to write at the same time? This could get ugly. The point of this depressing arithmetic is to highlight the reality of preparing for big exams: You have to start studying well in advance. Your schedule is busier than you think, and if you leave a large chunk of studying until the last days before an exam, you will be forced to sacrifice. To avoid unnecessary pain, a good rule of thumb is to begin studying two weeks in advance. Now, before you accuse me of being certifiably insane, let me make this clear: I do not mean that you should start hard core all-day study sessions fourteen days before the exam (this book is about how to win at college, not how to become the world's biggest tool). Instead, I am suggesting that you conduct no hard core all-day study sessions ever again. Break up those fifteen hours of studying into many painless one- or two-hour chunks, and you'll dominate the exam without any headaches. Of course, the only way for this to work is to spread out all those harmless little chunks over a longer period of time. Hence the two weeks. For the first week, just put in an hour or so of work on most days. Build your study system to allow for many small chunks of work, make the material familiar, and get a good feel for the information. Tack on a couple extra hours of studying over the weekend, and you'll already have ten hours of review under your belt with seven days to spare without having to work more than an hour or two at a time. As you come into the week before the exam, keep studying just an hour or so a day, racking up your review hours and moving through your study system slowly but steadily. And then, during the final two days before the exam, put in longer three-hour sessions to really cement the now very familiar material into your mind. By the time your pen hits paper on the big day you will be untouchable! The exam won't stand a chance. And best of all, you got prepared with no late nights, no all-day study grinds, and no caffeine- induced hallucinations that your art history textbook is trying to poison you. Studying two weeks in advance may sound crazy at first. But once you realize that you are just spreading the necessary work out over time, not increasing the total amount of work you do, you should come to understand that this approach is a painless and highly effective method for test preparation. If you fear that you lack the willpower to get started so early, I challenge you to try this approach just once. Do it for a test early in the term when you don't feel so overwhelmed by other obligations. After you have experienced the joy of dominating a test without any hard work, I guarantee you will be converted. Your number-one most important skill as a college student is writing ability. Your second most important skill as a college student is writing ability. Your third most important skill as a college student is, you guessed it, writing ability. And so on. You probably get the point here: Writing is really, really important for a college student. You will succeed academically only if you have the ability to express your thoughts clearly and convincingly. This means that if you want to win at college, you need to be good at writing. Really good at writing. A good analogy is that writing is to a college student what shooting hoops is to a basketball player. If you want to be a standout basketball player, you stick around after practice and shoot extra baskets. If you want to be a standout college student, you have to stick around after you are done with your assignments and do some extra writing. You can accomplish this by joining the staff of a publication on campus. It could be the daily newspaper, a writing magazine, a science journal, a political paper, or a humor rag. It doesn't matter what publication you choose as long as it requires you to write well and write often. You can also write guest opinion pieces, offer to tackle proposal writing for clubs you are involved with, or send well-crafted letters to local politicians and newspapers. If you are creative, you can write short stories, tackle screenplays, or craft reviews for the arts section of a student paper. The specific format isn't important, just as long as you are writing. The more words you transfer from your head to paper, the better you will become at this vital craft. Adopt the mind-set of Larry Bird. It didn't matter if he was happy or sad, energized or tired, every day he would shoot hundreds of baskets. You should do the same. Force yourself to write as much as possible. It is an essential, irreplaceable skill for succeeding at college. Master it. At college, meals tend to be like an organizational black hole—they unexpectedly suck hours of free time out of your day. By the time you gather a group of friends, find a table at a dining hall, eat a meal, shoot the breeze, finally break away from the group, and rebuild your focus enough to get back to work, your simple meal has transformed into a major time commitment. Don't get the wrong idea, taking the time to eat a social meal with your friends is a great idea; just don't do it more than once a day. Eat breakfast in your dorm room, or grab a quick bite on the way to your first class. Mornings are painful, so you are not missing much in terms of company. If you have a busy night ahead of you, arrange to eat lunch with your friends. Then, later, you can get your dinner to go and eat it in your dorm room, barely interrupting your work cycle. If you're facing a busy afternoon and an easy night, then arrange to meet your friends for dinner. Eat a quick lunch alone in the dining hall over a newspaper between tasks on your daily schedule. Frequent, long meals are a schedule spoiler for successful students. This rule is simple, but it will keep you both efficient and social. College may be the best four years of your life. But it will probably be some of the most intense as well. Think about it. You are thrown into a close-knit world where you have no personal space, you are living with strangers, your mind is being challenged more than ever before, you have to form an entire social identity from scratch, and for the first time there is no one providing you with any direct guidance on how to live your life. And that's just the first week! Throw in the stresses of exam periods, student competition, and relationships, and some would say that the pressures of going to college become a lot like the pressures of going to war—that is, if wars were sponsored by J. Crew. But don't panic. The key to surviving this emotional roller coaster is savoring the highs (of which there are many) and avoiding the lows (which, since you're reading this book, will hopefully be few and far between). And one successful technique for keeping yourself balanced and happy during the tough times at college is to find an escape.  Preferably, your escape should be a place or activity that is far removed from your typical life as a college student. You need to journey to a place where you will be cut off from everyday student life, a place that provides you with a chance to relax and regain your sense of identity. The Student Union doesn't count. Your dorm TV lounge doesn't count. Your friend's room down the hall certainly doesn't count. To misquote a once famous line: You need to get the hell out of Dodge. Going to Barnes & Noble, grabbing a stack of books, and reading them over a cup of gourmet coffee is a good example of a great escape. So is taking a long drive in the country, or going for a long jog at an off-campus park. Schedule an escape for yourself every single week. And do it alone. Treat it like taking medicine. College only becomes overwhelming when you let it consume your entire life. If you make a point to regularly escape from the world of roommates, tests, late papers, and parties, your collegiate stresses can be kept in check. Escape well, and escape often; you'll be surprised at how easy it can be to navigate the emotional ups and downs of college life. Here is a simple rule for choosing courses early on in your collegiate career: No more than half of your scheduled courses should include the word intro in the title (and absolutely none should include the phrase for fun and profit). Introductory courses are a great way to become broadly familiar with an unfamiliar subject. This is especially true for fields like art history or political science, where there is a basic body of knowledge you need to recognize before studying any one topic in more detail. However, the problem with intro courses is that they often bear very little resemblance to what other courses in that major will actually be like. If you are interested in potentially majoring in a particular subject, you need to start taking higher-level courses as soon as possible. This is the only way to get the exposure necessary to make the right decisions about your studies. It also reduces your future course burden as you try to fulfill all the major requirements. And, in general, taking hard courses early on will help speed up your development of crucial collegiate skills—a terrific advantage for any ambitious student. Don't worry about higher-level courses being too difficult for you. The key is to seek out classes that will be challenging but don't require you to possess a vast amount of prior knowledge. Pay careful attention to any specified requirements. If there are no requirements, or only “recommended” requirements, then you should be okay taking the course even as a freshman. If you're still in doubt about the relative difficulty, e-mail the professor. Briefly explain your background, that you are very interested in the subject matter, and that you would like to get his or her opinion as to whether the workload will be manageable. Intro courses are useful in moderation, but in abundance they can stunt your growth as a student and leave you feeling bored and uninspired by an otherwise interesting subject. Take that upper-level course! The sooner you immerse yourself in serious collegiate study the more you will get out of your experience. As one successful student put it: “Why waste your time and money in the minor leagues of college courses when you have the ability to be swinging in the majors.” If there was an official ranking of the absolute worst places to study, your dorm room would probably fall somewhere between the New Jersey Turnpike and a Metallica concert. Studying in your dorm room has only one advantage going for it: convenience. Unfortunately, this doesn't count for much, as studying is not supposed to be convenient, it's supposed to be effective. And the most effective place to study is an environment that inspires you to think intelligently, an environment without any unnecessary distractions or temptations for distraction. Or, to put it more plainly, STUDY AT THE LIBRARY! In the Ten Commandments for getting good grades, Thou shall not study in thy room is commandment one through five; it's that important. Take a moment to reflect on your dorm room: it's crowded; people are coming and going; every possible distraction from TV to food to video games to AOL Instant Messenger are within easy reach; the building is noisy; you are surrounded by friends. If you want to be productive you have to escape from this environment. Set aside a large block of time every day to spend studying at the library. Make it the place where you accomplish your most demanding schoolwork. Because it's inconvenient to walk to the library and settle into a study spot, you will be less likely to leave on a whim. Because the library environment is quiet without many distractions, you will have an easier time concentrating, and thus get more quality work done faster. And because the library surrounds you with row after row of solemn academic tomes and diligently studying students, it will be easier for you to get into that high-powered, intellectual zone. Libraries were designed to maximize your academic productivity. Dorm rooms seem to be designed to minimize it. Successful students recognize that it's not enough to just get through your schoolwork, you also have to give yourself every opportunity to do the work effectively. And besides, the more efficiently you complete your assignments, the more guilt-free time you can spend adding to the entertaining chaos that is your dorm life. When it comes time to study, go where it counts. As long as we are trying to take all the fun out of studying, here is another stab to the heart: Don't study in groups. At first glance, multiperson study sessions seem to have a lot of advantages: they are social; they hold you accountable for learning material; they reduce the amount of material you have to study on your own; and they provide a safety net of people to help you understand difficult topics. Unfortunately, study groups also tend to have a rather major strike against them. They don't work! The best way to learn difficult material is to go over it by yourself, with a lot of concentration, again and again and again until the concepts become second nature. There is no substitute for this type of learning. As boring or daunting as it may seem, you really do need to sit at your quiet desk in the library and absorb the material in all its detail. A member of a study group breezily explaining the topics to you is not the same thing. In fact, “learning” a concept from a group member is the study equivalent of trying to speed- read a book. You might get the gist of it, but you won't remember or understand the specifics. Spending time with the material by yourself, until you fully understand it, will always be more effective than having someone else paraphrase it for you. And when it comes to efficiency, let's not even get started on the obscene amount of study-group time that is inevitably sacrificed to the gods of gossip. This doesn't mean that you must be completely isolated when you study. On the contrary, when you want to test your understanding of a concept, or are having trouble with a particular problem, interacting with other people is very helpful. The key, however, is to seek out someone for specific help on a specific issue, then return to your solo work. Instead of organizing a study group, arrange for some classmates to study at the library at the same time as you, so they will be available to provide focused help as issues arise. This is how top students tame difficult material. Leave group studying to elementary school kids and law students —the truth is that undergraduates learn best through a little lonely concentration. This rule is a little complicated because the definition of an “honors program” differs from school to school. At some colleges you are accepted into an honors program before you ever set foot on campus, and you spend your entire collegiate career living with and taking courses only with honors students. At other colleges the program describes a track of special courses you take in addition to your normal courses. And at still other colleges it's just a title bestowed upon you if you get good grades and attend some special seminars your senior year. Regardless of the specifics at your school, if there is any possible opportunity to join an honors program, go for it! These programs generally represent a slightly better version of your college. The classes are smaller, the professors more interested, the students more inspiring. To put it bluntly, an honors program will provide you with a better education than a regular academic program. You will be challenged more, you will learn more, and you will fulfill more of your potential as a student. In addition, having an honors designation on your diploma will go a long way when looking for postgraduation opportunities. Why would anyone not take advantage of this opportunity? The biggest flaw of honors programs is that they tend to scare students away. “I don't think I'm smart enough” is a typical excuse for not joining an advanced program. This is nonsense. Sure, the classes may require a little more work, but they also provide a better classroom environment, more attention from the professor, and smarter peers, so the extra work is not necessarily harder to complete. And even if you do have to study a little bit more than some of your friends, who cares!? As long as you are paying so much money to attend college, you might as well maximize what you get out of your investment. If you can get into an honors program, do so. No excuses. Being a college student is a lot like being a professional golfer. As anyone who follows the game will tell you, golf is all about streaks. Regardless of how good a player is, he or she will still have good streaks and bad streaks. If they are in the zone, every shot flies right where they want it. If they fall into a slump, every shot seems to have a personal vendetta against them. College is surprisingly similar. You will go days where your concentration is unbreakable. You will be getting your work done efficiently and effectively. You will be ahead of schedule, on top of your obligations, and feeling good about yourself. Then you will hit a bad streak. Days will pass when you barely crack a book. You will feel tired, bored, and uninspired. One of the keys to succeeding at college is preventing these slumps from happening. And thankfully, unlike in golf, this goal is actually easy to achieve. The key is consistency. Student slumps occur when you take a long break from work and then find yourself unable to easily pull yourself back into a working rhythm. In order to deny the opportunity for this to occur, you should do some amount of schoolwork every single day. This doesn't mean giving up your weekend social plans and becoming an interminable grind. It doesn't matter how much schoolwork you complete; just as long as you do something every day you will have a much easier time staying in the zone. Do an hour of work right after classes on Friday so you have something to feel good about. Don't stay in on Saturday night, but do try to knock off an assignment or two in the afternoon when everyone else is still only semiconscious. Sunday is a workday, you'll just have to get over it. And there are few good reasons for taking a weekday off. When you complete schoolwork, you feel motivated. When you complete schoolwork every single day, you will feel motivated every single day. By denying yourself long breaks from studying, you deny yourself the chance to fall into a nonworking slump from which it can be hard to escape. A consistent daily commitment to schoolwork will create a powerful cycle of reinforcement and productivity, a cycle which will ensure that you remain the Tiger Woods of academic achievement. Colleges attract interesting visitors. Famous academics, politicians, policymakers, and authors are always traipsing through campuses around the country. And most everywhere they stop, they take the time to give a guest lecture. You should try to attend at least two guest lectures every month. You might think these talks will be boring, and some of them are (e.g., “The diminishing radii of poplar saplings in the deciduous forests of Pennsylvania”). But a lot of guest lectures are not only not boring, they are downright inspiring. If you are an art history major and you take the time to see a smart, cutting-edge historian speak, you will feel inspired by the thought of excelling in your field. If you are interested in government and you go to watch a political candidate or policymaker hold court, you will walk away energized about the possibility of a future in politics. If you are an aspiring writer, and you hear a successful author describe her paths to success, you will be motivated to rush home and fire up your word processor. This is why you should make a concerted effort to attend guest lectures on a regular basis. You're not doing it to learn more, or to impress your professors (though it does impress them), or to overcome insomnia. You do it to ignite some passion within yourself. You attend to remind yourself of where your hard work is taking you. You attend to get so excited about a topic and your potential that you end up having a hard time falling asleep that night. Getting fired up, once or twice a month about subjects that interest you, will go a long to way to helping you succeed. Go to guest lectures and keep your intellectual fires stoked. Exercising has an almost magical effect on students. The boost in physical energy and mental motivation that results from a quick, hard workout is better than any caffeine high. And everyone feels good about themselves when they come out of the gym feeling honed and ripped. The problem here, however, is that motivating a college student to exercise regularly is about as easy as selling a “I love NY!” T-shirt to a Red Sox fan. Which is to say, it's hard. But this doesn't mean you should give up. What's the solution? Stop trying to convince yourself. Don't let the decision to exercise become a debatable question. Instead, make it a habit, like going to class or brushing your teeth. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays always hit the gym. Do it at the exact same time, for the exact same duration. If you are exercising for energy and health (as opposed to a desire to develop grapefruit- size biceps), you should create a fast routine. Use only a one-hour burst of activity in which to get to the gym, work out, and return to your dorm room. Quick routines are more time efficient and thus easier to schedule consistently. If possible, plan your routine to take place early in the afternoon or morning when you are less likely to be distracted by other commitments. Make this nonnegotiable. If you are using the gym on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, then set aside time on Tuesdays and Thursdays to do some cardio. On Saturday and Sunday, if you have the time and energy, do a supplementary light workout. However, taking these two days off is excusable; just remember to keep those school-week workouts nonnegotiable. By making your workouts fast, and doing them at the same time every day, you'll end your need to win a mental debate every time you think you should exercise. Conserve your willpower for more important battles, like unplugging your cable when the Food Network's all-day Iron Chef marathon comes on during reading period. Keep yourself active and you will keep yourself successful. College is exciting. College is busy. But most of all, college is a demanding mistress that can suck you wholeheartedly into its isolated womb, cutting you off from all that once defined your life before you crossed its ivy-covered threshold. Which is all just an adjective-rich way of saying: Stay in touch with your friends from back home. It can be surprisingly easy to lose touch with the important people in your life. College is so socially, mentally, and physically consuming that if you don't make a specific effort to keep in touch, you will lose your connection to your back-home buds. Why is it important that you keep these old friendships alive? Because your old friends know you better than your college friends. When you go through rough times, a phone call to a friend from home will pick you back up. You will never feel lonely. Your sense of personal identity will remain strong. And most important, if you lose contact with your friends, you will have nothing to do when you go home for the holidays. To successfully stay in touch with someone means that you must talk with him or her at least once a month. And, this is important, AOL Instant Messenger does not count. Nor does forwarding your friend a link to an unforgivably stupid animation you found on the Internet. You need to actually call on a phone and have voice-to-voice contact. Talking to four or five of your closest friends, just once a month, is no big deal in terms of time commitment. But the benefit in terms of strengthening your relationships is great. You never realize how important your back-home friendships are until you begin to lose them. Stay in touch. Tack on an extra major or minor!? Are you kidding me!? I don't have that sort of time! Jerk! These are common reactions to this uncommon request. Tacking on an extra major or minor is a good thing for obvious reasons. You will come away from college with in-depth knowledge of more than one field. It will help you focus during your undergraduate years. And most important, it looks damn impressive when looking for a job, applying to graduate school, or winning awards and scholarships. And although many people perceive adding an extra major or minor to be a huge time drain, the good news is: this is simply not true. Adding another area of concentration doesn't mean you have to take any more courses than you normally would. Let's say that you have one major, and in a typical term you take five courses: two for your major, and three random elective courses. If you tacked on anot