Hopefully, you think the sacrifices you are making to be in college are worth it.  Since you enrolled in classes, paid your tuition and took a study skills course, it is reasonable to assume you are committed to being in college and getting a degree.  However, many students say they are highly motivated to get a degree, yet their behavior tells a different story.  Often, students say they are worried about their economics grade, yet they never discuss their situation with the professor, they don’t attend the review sessions and they don’t curtail their social activities to make time for studying.  How committed can such students be?

This chapter will be unlike the others because it will not teach you a study skill.  Instead, it will teach you to examine your own behaviors, determine which ones are helping you be the student you want to be, and which ones are jeopardizing your chances for success.  Through this chapter, you will learn how you can assess your attitude and change unhelpful behaviors.

Passive and Active Desire

Before you read further, you need to understand the difference between passive and active desire.

Consider the following scenario: Caitlin decides in March she wants to show her horse over the summer.  She imagines how much fun it would be to win ribbons, wear her expensive show clothes and travel to compete.  However, she finds herself joining clubs and spending time with her friends when she should be working with her horse.  When the weather gets warmer and the mosquitoes and gnats come out, she decides it is too uncomfortable to ride.  When she learns that the first horse show in her area begins at 9am on a Saturday, and she would have to wake up at 5:30 in order to get there on time, she decides to forget the show.  Caitlin has a passive desire to show her horse.  She’d love to win the ribbons and participate in the more glamorous aspects of showing, but she is unwilling to put up with the bugs, lack of sleep and interruptions to her schedule.  If she were really committed to showing, she wouldn’t let obstacles or uncomfortable circumstances stop her.

Consider the second scenario: Janet is a saxophone player who wants to get a music scholarship and play in the college jazz band.  Janet establishes a practice schedule, and she sticks to it unless an emergency calls her away.  Her social and work life don’t interfere with her practice times. She imagines how rewarding it will be to play in a jazz band in college and she intentionally picks music that will stretch her current abilities. She has even contacted people who are currently in the jazz band to ask them how she can make herself more likely to do well in the auditions.  Janet has an active desire to achieve her goal—she is committing to it by practicing regularly and preparing for the audition.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, some students have a passive desire to become college graduates, while others have an active one.  Which type of desire do you have?  Anyone would love to be a straight A student if studying was fun and took only a few minutes, all professors were entertaining, and you had plenty of time for your friends, jobs and other activities.  Unfortunately, school, like anything else, is made up of more tedious, unglamorous parts than it is of wildly fun and exciting parts. It often requires sacrificing time with family and friends, and adjusting work schedules.

Steps to College Success

For many students, high school was fairly easy and they expect college to be the same. It isn’t unusual for first-year students to report spending 20 or 30 minutes each night during homework and earning A’s and B’s for their effort. But now the game has changed. Suddenly, they need much more time to complete homework than they ever have. Often, they have less guidance than they are used to and more reading to complete. Some students, by the fifth or sixth week of their first semester, find themselves reeling and wondering what they have gotten themselves into. If this is you, it might help to slow down and figure out what you want.

Step One: Ask Yourself If It Is Worth It

The first thing you need to do is decide if college is worth it.  You need to decide that getting a degree will enhance your life enough that you are willing to put up with not having much money, taking classes that don’t seem to have anything to do with you major, having to read boring books and listen to lectures about topics you don’t want to know about.  You might also have to figure out how to deal with unsupportive family members, and a job schedule that leaves you little time to relax. Just as an athlete must decide if their sport is worth the aching muscles and the busy schedule, you must decide that your sacrifices for school are worth making.

Step Two: Look at the Decisions You’ve Made

The second step is to take a careful look at the decisions you make about your daily life. What decisions are enhancing your success, and which are making you less likely to be successful?  Here are some areas to examine:

Life circumstances: Sometimes there is little we can do about our life circumstances—for example, a single parent might be too overwhelmed with child-care responsibilities to focus on school. Other times, there are many things we can do about our life circumstances that will make it easier to earn a degree. Here are questions to ask about your life in general:

• Am I spending enough time with my studies, or do I often forget them in order to socialize or pursue non-academic activities?
• Am I willing to say “no” to friends and family who want favors, or who invite me to social activities?
• Am I willing or able to limit my work hours so I can focus on studying?
• Is it possible for me to balance my family obligations so I have time to study?
• If I don’t have reliable transportation or a reliable internet connection, is there something I can do about it?

If your life circumstances aren’t the problem, ask yourself questions about how you are approaching your homework. Here are some questions to ask about study habits:

• Do I routinely wait until the last minute to do my work?
• When I have homework to do, do I procrastinate scrolling through social media, exercising, etc.?
• While in class, do I pay attention or do I spend class time texting friends, etc.?
• Do I pass up reasonable opportunities to raise my grade (such as seeing the professor about my work, attending review sessions, getting a tutor, etc.)?
• Do I get mad when I get back a poor grade on a test or on homework, but don’t change the way I am studying for the class?

Step Three: Identify Two or Three Areas You Need to Work on

Some students say disorganization or procrastination are their big problems.  Others say time spent with friends or their phone takes them away from their studies.  Think about the classes you have had so far and choose a “bad behavior”– a behavior that is preventing you from being the student you’d like to be. Take a look at other areas of your life and see if your “bad behavior” affects them as well.  For example, if you have a difficult time managing time at your job, you are likely to have the same difficulty in school.

Once you’ve identified a bad behavior, spend time imagining how your life would be better if you didn’t have it.  If you are so disorganized that you spend study time frantically looking for lost books, car keys, or your phone, imagine knowing exactly where they are.  What a relief it would be to never lose anything again.

Next, think of your “bad behavior” (your flaw) as though it were a person who has such a bad influence on you that you have decided to end your relationship. Next, imagine writing a break-up letter to your flaw.  Most of you have had the experience of breaking up with a significant other or ending a friendship, so you may draw on your personal experience as you write this letter.

Make sure your letter does the following things:

• Explains to your flaw why you are leaving
• Explains why you love your flaw
• Makes a plan
• Agrees to meet your bad behavior at a more appropriate time.

Your letters can be funny, creative or bizarre, but they must have all four parts to them and they must be about 200-250 words in length if they will be “in depth” enough to make a difference.

The following is a fictional sample letter written by a student who claims that her main flaw is laziness, which causes her to spend too much time watching videos and not enough time doing her homework.

Dear Laziness,

(1. Say why you’re saying good-bye)

I know we have hung around together for a long time, and I really will miss those afternoons we spent just sitting around, scrolling through Tik Tok videos, or waiting in the College Center cafeteria for friends to come in and visit with, or sleeping in until 10:00 am.  But this is college now, and I have to do stuff like read, go to class and take tests.  As a matter of fact, I spent so much time with you last semester that I failed two of my classes and mom and dad really got upset.  They think you are too controlling and that isn’t good for me.  They said I need to learn how to stand up for myself, and then they demanded we break up.  At first, I thought they were just being unfair, but then I decided they were right, and we need to see a lot less of each other.  Trust me, I’d rather spend time with you than worry about homework and school all the time, but it’s time for me to get my priorities set right.  I mean, I’d love to have a job being a Tik Tok video watcher, or a socializer, but how likely is that to happen?

(2. Explain why you love your flaw)

I love watching videos because I never know if the next one will be the funniest, cutest or most helpful video ever. I visiting with the friends I’ve made here, and I love sleeping in– all those lazy activities help me forget stuff like wondering what I’m going to do for job after school. It is also so much less stressful than sitting in Philosophy class being so confused. I can just block all that out when I’m being lazy.

(3. Make a plan)

From now on, I plan on going to class and getting there on time, even if it means getting up each morning by 8:00. I’m going to get up more than five minutes before class starts and I’m going to study after my nine o’clock class instead of sitting in the library watching videos. I still want to talk to my new friends, but I’m going to try to schedule lunches and coffees with them instead of just visiting with them at random times. In order to make this change possible, I’m going to leave my phone in my backpack and set it to “silent” so I don’t get disturbed.

(4. Make a concession)

Don’t give up, though. You won’t be out of my life entirely. There are times we can still hang out.  Like weekends, now and then and summers, maybe.  If I get too sick to go to class, I’ll be sure to give you a call. Don’t get me wrong, Laziness. You’ve been a really great friend, but it is just time for me to move on. I really need to make something of myself in school and I just can’t do that if we spend so much time together.  I hope you understand.

Sincerely yours

An old friend

Use this letter as a sample when you write your own.  Try to be as specific about your flaw as you can.

Take Charge

Now that you have identified a behavior that keeps you from academic success, it makes sense to develop a plan to change it.  Changing old habits requires a combination of motivation, strategy and planning.  For example, if you decide you need to get more exercise, you are much more likely to do so if you decide to go for a twenty minute walk each day than if you simply make a vague goal to exercise “more.” You may feel planning restricts you, but it helps you free yourself from the behavior that has control over you! Below are strategies for changing a bad behavior.

Write Down How Your Bad Behavior Affects Your Life

A familiar modern-day “urban legend” clearly illustrates where and how people find the motivation to change.  The story goes as follows:  a young mother went to pick up her five-year old daughter from Sunday School.  As they walked back to the car, the mother lit a cigarette and asked her daughter what she had done in class.  “We learned to pray today,” replied the daughter.  The mother said, “Oh, really? What did you pray for?” The little girl answered, “I prayed that you would quit smoking.”  The mother, as she buckled her little girl into the car, decided she was smoking her last cigarette. She wanted her daughter to have faith—and if she was able to quit smoking, her child would believe in the power of prayer.

Most students won’t have such a dramatic call to change, but the bottom line is this:  If you are going to change your behavior (and it may be a behavior you dearly love) you must have a clear sense that the change you are making will benefit you. Just as the young mother decided her daughter’s faith in prayer was more important than her nicotine addiction, you must decide being a good student is more important than watching videos, socializing endlessly, partying too much, or procrastinating. In some cases, you may need to decide it is more important to you than what your parents or other significant people in your life want you to do.

One way to gain motivation is to write down how your bad behavior affects various aspects of your life.  For most students, these areas are:

1) Academics

2) Social life

3) Emotional and physical health

4) Extra-curricular activities.

Other students might add in family obligations or jobs. Let’s use the example of laziness and see how it can affect each area of that student’s life.

Our lazy student might write the following:

1) Academics—feel behind and lost all the time, forgot to turn in two assignments, failed two classes and got low C’s in the others, missed class a lot and had to borrow notes I didn’t understand from a girl on my dorm floor.

2) Social life—Laziness has been great for my social life!  I have all kinds of time to hang out in the lounge and meet people. I have seen tons of Tik Tok videos and have shared so many of them with friends.

3) Emotional and physical health—I feel stressed while I’m in class or doing my homework because I know how behind I am.  I have a hard time following discussion in class.  I pulled three all-nighters this semester and got sick.  Finals week was terrible—no eating or sleeping. However, before things got really busy, I got plenty of sleep– I slept through my morning classes!

4) Extra-curricular activities—I did a lot of them at the beginning of the semester, but I wound up having to quit a bunch of them at the end because I got so far behind in class.  A few of the people in the clubs got mad at me when I dropped out.  I had lots of time for them at first, though.

Getting your thoughts down on paper is important because you force yourself to carefully articulate the effects your bad behavior has on your academic goals.  If you remain committed to being a successful student, seeing your list may provide the motivation you need to make lasting changes.

Take the Good with the Bad

Whether you realize it or not, you chose behaviors because they get you something you want, or help you avoid something you don’t.  Even though your bad behavior hurts you academically, it is important to realize that it benefits you somehow.  Letting go of your behavior is a bit scary when it means you will have to face something you’d rather avoid or do something that makes you uncomfortable.

Let’s take another look at our lazy student. We spent quite a lot of time finding bad things about being lazy, but let’s look at some good things.  It’s possible that she needs more “down” time than other students, or maybe when she’s being “lazy” she is actually working through issues of self-identity and doing some pretty heavy self-analysis.  Most bad behaviors likely have a bit of good in them—the student who gets distracted easily and “wastes” hours chatting may be developing friendships that will last her a lifetime, or she may be developing the people skills she will need in her future job as a school counselor. The procrastinator might be spending time helping his friends and family with everything from rides to work to childcare. Those are important things to do.

Write a paragraph about the positive aspects of your bad behavior.

Our lazy student’s paragraph might look like this:

Being lazy does have some good parts.  I’ve gotten to know a lot of people since I spend so much time hanging out in the College Cafe.  Also, I get stressed out when a big project is due or something, but other than that, I’m totally relaxed. Some people are uptight all the time and they wind up with ulcers and stuff.

Decide What You’ll Miss and What You Are Most Afraid of

Change is hard because you never know what it will bring.  You already know you like some aspects of your bad behavior or you wouldn’t continue to engage in it.  You know that if you were to change it, you’d miss it.  You also might be afraid of turning into someone you don’t want to be.  Write down what you think you will miss and what you are afraid of.

Our lazy student might have the following concerns:

I feel like I’ll miss out on the perfect Tik Tok video or movie, and I really enjoy sharing the perfect video with a friend that I know they will love, so I will miss connecting with my friends that way. I will miss all the conversations with people.  I’m really afraid I might turn out to be one of those people who are just stressed all the time. I really hate feeling like I have to rush around every moment of the day doing something really important and I won’t have time for me or my friends anymore.

Develop a Game Plan You Can Live With

Developing a plan to change your negative behavior is like developing a reasonable weight loss plan.  If you wanted to lose 25 pounds by eating nothing but celery and cottage cheese, you’d probably go crazy.  Needless to say, you wouldn’t stick to your diet and all the energy you put into losing weight would be for nothing.

Don’t try to radically alter your behavior.  It won’t work.  Effective change happens slowly, but it can’t happen without a game plan. An effective game plan should consist of four parts:

Part 1: Goal setting:  Be specific about what exactly you want to accomplish.  It is much easier to devise a strategy when you know what you want to change.  Our recovering lazy student writes:

I will study between one o’clock and four o’clock each day.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays I will study two hours before noon.

Part 2:  Identify tempters:  Even the most disciplined person can get off-track if they are tempted.  Think through what would distract you from your studies.  Running into friends?  Passing by a computer where you could play games?  Getting an invitation to go out to eat with a friend? Text messages? Our lazy student might write:

I always say I’m going to the Campus Cafe to study, but the truth is, I go there hoping to run into friends so I can talk to them. My tempter is the opportunity to socialize. My other tempter is watching videos.

Part 3: Develop a Plan:  If people act out ahead of time what they will say or do in difficult situations, it stands to reason they will be more likely to handle those situations capably when they arise.  This is why police officers, emergency medical technicians and fire fighters all engage in drills. Figure out what you will do to avoid or deal with the temptations that present themselves.

From now on, I’m going to go to the library between classes and I’ll go to the Campus Cafe only on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, instead of every day. I will keep my phone in my backpack instead of the back pocket of my jeans. I will also put it on “silent.”

Part 4: Indulge yourself:  A common saying is “All work and no play makes a child dull.”  You can’t keep your nose to the grindstone all the time.  The trick is deciding ahead of time when, where and how you will take breaks so you don’t wind up slipping back into old habits.

I will allow myself to study in the Campus Cafe right after tests or major projects are due, and on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. I will check my phone between classes and after I am done studying.

This game plan allows the student to have what she wants now and then, yet it gives her more time to study.  A plan like this is a reasonable one.

Follow-up

Any time you plan to change your behavior, you have to expect failure.  The trick is not to be too hard on yourself and not to give up.  One of the best ways to do this is keep a daily record of your failures and successes with a simple journal entry.  That way, you can be sure you are making progress and you can check yourself if something goes awry.

Our lazy student might write the following:

January 22

I did really well today.  I got my homework done and didn’t scroll through Tik Tok videos until all my homework was done.  I avoided the Campus Cafe.

January 23

Today I didn’t do well.  I went over to the library, but ended up checking my phone during what I thought would be a short study break. An hour later, I was walked past the Campus Cafe, saw a friend sitting in their eating lunch, and sat talking to him for another 30 minutes.

If you really want to change and are honest with yourself about the reasons for changing, then you stand a great chance to make some lasting changes.  Once you start to have successes, it is easier and easier to keep on trying.  Soon, your new and better habits become as familiar and comfortable as your old habits.

A Word on Procrastination

Procrastination is one of the most common college student bad behaviors.  There are many reasons students procrastinate—the most common is that they simply become caught up in the moment.  Going out with friends sounds so much more appealing than reading history.  Other students get caught up in family drama, or they feel compelled to check their phone every few minutes. Others decide they will play video games for 20 minutes, but it turns into three hours.

Other procrastinators are perfectionists.  They don’t want to do anything unless they know it will be flawless.  Since nothing is life is perfect, and being imperfect is so stressful for these students, they avoid doing work at all. Their motto is, “If I can’t do it perfectly, why do it at all?”

Some students procrastinate because they are afraid of making a legitimate investment in a project and failing.  If they start a paper at 2am the morning it is due, turn it in and earn a D they can say, “Boy, if I’d had more time I could have done better.”  If they earned a B on the paper, they congratulate themselves by saying, “I only spent four hours on that paper and I got the same grade as my friend, who spent 10!”  In this case, the procrastinator continues under the delusion that procrastinating is a good way to manage time. The benefits to the procrastinator? When something goes wrong, they can say, “Well, if I’d spent more time on it, I certainly could have done better.”  (In other words—“I’m really smart, but I just chose not to apply myself, so that D isn’t really a reflection of what I can do.”)  When something goes right, they can consider themselves a good manager of time.  Imagine how devastating it would be if this student put a good honest 10 hours into the project and wound up with a D. What would their excuse be then?

Other students procrastinate because they did it in high school and it worked fine then.  In some cases, parents or older siblings pitched in to help at the last minute to take pressure off the student.

Whatever the reasons for procrastinating, it is a tough habit to overcome. Many students hope there is a magic cure for procrastinators, but there isn’t.  Overcoming procrastination is like overcoming any other bad or destructive habit– the first step is deciding your life will truly be better if you stop doing it. The second step is deciding on a plan to change and doing your best to stick to it.

In Conclusion

A few bad habits can destroy the academic future of a bright student. The first step in overcoming bad habits is to decide that a college degree is worth the sacrifice. The second step is to carefully examine what bad habit is causing the problem and to develop a plan for overcoming it. Setting specific goals, being patient with yourself for failing and keeping track of your accomplishments will help you change your bad habits into good ones.

Another thing that can help is reminding yourself why you are going through all this– if you have a specific career in mind that requires a college degree, that is great since you know what you are working for. If you don’t quite know what you want to do, it can help to consider fields that might be interesting to you– do you like helping people? Do you have a head for numbers? Are you creative? If you look at jobs that use those skill sets, do they require a college degree? If so, you are on the right track– the effort you are putting in now will pay off since it will lay the groundwork for a career you will love. Keep going! Your hard work will pay off!