3 Guidelines I followed to become a straight-A student

I’ve been in private schools and public schools across the United States, in and out of advanced learning programs, and have also visited schools and students around the world. Over the years I developed the following guidelines that have been amazingly effective at raising my grades.

1. Maintain high expectations

Having high expectations doesn’t just mean hoping to get an A, it means preparing for graded exams or assignments despite how boring or daunting the subject may seem.

Put simply, having the expectation of scoring a 90% means you’re subconsciously telling yourself you don’t need to study the other 10%. In contrast, preparing with the expectation of a 100% means you’ll strive to fill all the gaps in your knowledge and set yourself up for the best you can achieve.

Chances are, you’ll get the grade you expected or lower so it’s imperative to aim high and work hard.

2. Work hard or don’t work

Work time means your focusing on the task at hand and all distractions including your phone or that talkative friend, are kept away. A good strategy to motivate concentration and focus during worktime is rewarding yourself with recreational time afterwards. However, this will really only work efficiently if work time itself does not include distractions.

This method of completing work in focused sprints works well as it often allows you to finish far before your peers and earn free time. Additionally, using earned free time to complete homework and classwork for the following classes leads to no work at home! This effectively saves you from procrastination and opportunities for falling behind or missing deadlines.

In theory, always working hard and earning breaks sounds great. However, some days it’s not quite possible right off the bat. It’s important to diagnose when you can’t focus and let yourself have time to reset doing something you enjoy before coming back.

Distinguish work from recreation — trying to do both is a waste of time.

3. Ask Questions

Questions are the most powerful tool of any student. The most relevant questions for an assignment or assessment will depend on how it’s scored.

For assignments that have questions with multiple “right” answers, it is vital to ask questions related to the grading criteria to understand what the teacher is looking for. Some teachers may even provide a rubric which can be used to understand what is required to attain a certain grade.

With assessments in formats like multiple choice, it’s important to understand what content will be assessed and prepare accordingly.

In addition to clearing your understanding, meaningful questions can go a long way towards receiving help and valuable advice from a teacher. Along with not being caught off-task, occasionally participating in class, and getting work done on time, nothing conveys the fact that you want to learn better than asking questions.

Being afraid to ask questions is being afraid to learn.

Everyone can be a straight-A student. It’s only a matter of setting high goals, working hard to achieve them, and asking for help along the way.