Home > Work > How to Win at College: Surprising Secrets for Success from the Country's Top Students
1 " Start small and start immediately. "
― Cal Newport , How to Win at College: Surprising Secrets for Success from the Country's Top Students
2 " Bad courses, with incompatible professors and unreasonable requirements, are the key to developing an ulcer. "
3 " Do some good in the world for no other reason than wanting to be part of the solution. "
4 " 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 "
5 " Schedule an escape for yourself every single week. And do it alone. Treat it like taking medicine. "
6 " work on contributing a clever piece of computer code to an Open Source project. "
7 " If you typically do well in a particular class, seeing a better mark on someone else's test can be like receiving a quick kick to the gut. You cannot help but feel as if your classmate is smarter than you, and this is a bad feeling. When you lose your academic confidence in a course, you also lose your energy for that subject, you do the readings with less attention, you ask fewer questions in class, and you are easily rankled in future testing situations. But here's the kicker: all of this negativity happens for no good reason. Why? Because different students' grades on any given test or paper are not directly comparable. "
8 " As a student interested in becoming a standout, you should follow the example of this latter group, and define your notion of success to be as ambitious as possible. The bigger the goals you pursue, the more exciting the accomplishments you rack up along the way, and the more interesting your life becomes. "
9 " 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. "
10 " The key to the antinetworking approach is to impress without imploring. The goal is that one day the contact, who has grown fond of you and is impressed by you and your integrity, will notify you that he or she knows of a job opening, and will be willing to recommend you if you are interested. "
11 " 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. "
12 " 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. "
