Success in schools isn’t genesis. Its got nothing to do with how your ancestors performed in school.
Students aren’t born successful. Motivation play a dramatically bigger role than intelligence when it
come to studying. I know this because ive heard plenty of times “work hard” or “study more” as if it
made any difference. So when we know this does not work, why do we try to keep doing it thinking
different outcome will yield? If you’ve struggled to improve your grades in the past know this
Successful students don’t study for extraordinary amounts of time (most study for regular amount of
time).

Successful students don’t have less fun (most have more).

If you want to be successful make these tiny adjustments.

1. Successful students know what they want.
We all have a internal barometer. A yard stick. We know what is the range of grades that we operate in and feel comfortable in – knowingly or unknowingly. We know that if we get ‘average’ grades, we will be in that zone for most of the academic tenure. We just accept this and then try and maintain these grades. Successful students just have this barometer turned up all the way high. Hence they operate in this zone come what may. That is the reason we seldom see a topper of a class flunking a test or exam and vice versa. They study in the manner that this high level is maintained. So if we can turn up this knob we are there.

2. Successful students give crap.

Are you going to remember what impact HCO2 + NO2 will have on your grades? Or the speed of light. The answer isn’t all that important. What is important is the way you feel when you answer it. Do you feel a tingling in your gut? Do you feel curious about it? Do you feel you want to know more about it? If not that you don’t give crap. Successful students care about what they are learning. Seriouly. They want to know the what and whys. Think about it. Can we ever do well in any subject without having passion for it? Alternatingly, we all have a ‘strong’ subject and a ‘weak’ subject. The ones which make us curious / inspire us are our strong ones. Hence, we need to start getting curious about the subject which we are leaning. Give crap about the topic. Try and visualize the hows and the whys and try to develop a mental model of the subject. If we can channelize our thoughts we can develop passion for it and become successful in those subjects as well.

3. Successful students play by the rules.

Have you noticed that the successful students are always portrayed as well dressed, studious and polite? That cliché is crap but it seems to work for one aspect which is get good grades.

You cant rebel your way to good grades. You need to play by the rules given in the syllabus.

The syllabus is like a cheat sheet for success in class. You need to know if and work on it. If teacher says test will make up 90% of your score, then you need to work on that aspect. When 90% of your score is something, you should spend 90% of your time on it. When 10% of your time is something, you shouldn’t spend 90% of your time on it right?

Scoring high in class is easy.

It’s just a matter of taking the right steps in the right direction.

When you see opportunity, you need to take it.