Have Fun and Get A's: How to Study Less and Achieve More

Introduction

What Keeps You Studying Until Two A.M.?

It was one-thirty in the morning, and Nancy was helping her son, Bob, study. Bob had been staring at the same homework for at least twenty minutes, with no clue how to solve the problem.

She asked him: How much more time do you need to complete your homework? Could you ask someone for help or find any help on the Internet?

Could you leave me alone, Mom? I want to take time to complete the work by myself.

Nancy felt helpless. She went to bed. But she suffered, because it hurt her when she saw her son studying until midnight or later every night. Bob felt bad too. But he wanted to try his best to complete his homework perfectly. Sometimes, he discussed it with his classmates. But most times, this did not seem to help. So he decided to find the solution on his own. He believed that he could improve through repetitive studying what he had learned in class. Many homework assignments were very challenging.

In math, for example, the questions were often those that had not been learned. Because he chose the advanced placement course, he was working at a university level. Many questions were beyond what he could handle. In his English course, Bob had to read half the book in one night and rewrite the abstract. In his business class, he was asked to write a complete business plan. He had to access all the data for analyzing the market and the trends, examine the requirements for manufacturing the product, experiment with various electronic hardware, and write a software program to connect the hardware to perform certain functions.

Each course was different, but they all were very challenging for him. He never had enough time for homework. With all of his music and sports activities, he didn’t even get home until after six p.m., so it was not hard to understand that he had to study till at least twelve thirty a.m. almost every day.

Every morning, Bob found it very hard to get up. He wished that he could stay in bed, even just for one more minute. That minute of sleep was so sound and sweet. Sometimes, he fell asleep in the middle of class and missed some of the teacher’s content. Sometimes, sleeping only five to six hours every day caught up with him, and he got a cold due to his weakened immune system. He felt that being sick would be the worst thing that could happen to him. He was on the varsity football team, and he did not want to lose his muscle and his strength. He wondered how he would balance homework and extracurricular activities.

He wanted to be a good student with high marks, and he wanted to complete each homework assignment with his best effort. Because of his desire for perfection, he was under stress. Bob was a student who was recognized by his teachers for working extremely hard. Did Bob really need to work this hard to get recognition? When Bob was under stress, he was thinking that something was not quite right. But what was it?

Bob is only one example typical of many high school and college students. What other reasons could young students have for staying up late to study? As a university teacher and a parent, I can speculate on a few more.

•   Confusion about the material taught in class

•   Procrastination

•   Excessive use of social media

•   Partying or clubbing

•   Playing computer games

•   Instant messaging

•   Mental stress

Out of the many reasons above, the biggest reason for staying up late is stress.

Stress can come from different sources.

First, some students see studying as extremely important. They think that good marks will get them into a good university. If they go to a good university, then they will get a good job. They believe that a good job leads to a decent life. Even if they don’t like some of the courses, they still will try their best to get high marks.

Therefore, students are willing to work hard to get higher marks because they believe that good ones will lead to success in the future. That being said, study stress is the number-one stressor for college students.

Second, there is a lot of pressure coming from others, including parents, peers, and teachers. Most of the time, parents put high expectations on their children. Often the students hear stressful nagging—Have you done your homework? Moreover, the competition between students creates lots of pressure. Instead of learning at their own pace, students compare their academic performance to others’ marks and rankings. The comparison is not helpful, and it creates lots of unnecessary pressure. The students also face expectations from their teachers. The teachers and schools would like them to study hard and gain acceptance to good universities. That’s because the teachers want to establish a high-ranking status or reputation for their school.

Third, the stress comes from the students’ own belief systems. Another type of student would stay inside the classroom all day and believe that studying hard is the only way to achieve good marks. They give practice and building physical strength less credit. Therefore, they only concentrate on studying and leave no time for fun, sports, and socializing with other students. Their school and personal lives are imbalanced. They study 100 percent of the time, but their brain does not work properly. These factors conspire to render them academically inefficient, and they can easily get stuck.

Fourth, the difference between how students and parents view success also can create stress. This contradiction can develop into strong conflict between them.

How do students see success?

•   As having a happy and joyful life

•   As enjoying love between themselves and others

•   As doing what they are good at and what they love

•   As having a good family

•   As building good friendships and relationships

•   As having a balanced life

•   As being healthy physically, mentally, and spiritually

•   As placing money second

How do some parents see success?

•   As going to good universities

•   As studying majors that have higher potential for high incomes

•   As having good marks and ranking high in class

•   As finding good and stable jobs after college graduation

•   As making a good living and being independent

•   As having a family and kids

The parents’ opinions are practical and result-driven versus the students’ journey-focused and happiness-driven views. These different opinions on what constitutes success put students and parents in conflict. In our society, parents try to share what they think is right with their children. Oftentimes, their thoughts are utilitarian and are not what their children want. Parents may try to brainwash their children into believing what they think is right. Parents try to model and teach children based on their past experiences, but in reality, many of their ideas are completely out of touch.

Fifth, students are stressed from the necessity of cramming. Why are they cramming? Most of the time, cramming comes from not planning or not starting early. If the teacher assigns a project that is due in two weeks that means it requires two weeks to complete. But many students think that two weeks is a long time, so they are not in a rush. After a week has passed, they start the project. Then they find out that it needs a lot more work than they expected. Three days before the project is due, they do not know how to complete it. One day before the deadline, they find some mistakes, erase what they have done, and start over again. The night before, they stay up all night to complete the assignment.

The same thing often happens for the exam. Students are given lots of time to review their test material, but do nothing until the night before the exam. Therefore, they have lots of stress and depression.

Because of cramming, students hardly get enough sleep. When that happens,, they create a bad cycle for themselves. The students may experience mood swings, lack of energy during the day, difficulty in concentrating and focusing, and difficulty in receiving, processing, and retaining information. All of these issues can lead to stress.

Sixth, stress can result when students receive destructive criticism from others. Even though students work hard, sometimes they still make mistakes unexpectedly. Parents may see the mistake as a big deal. Because of the criticizing from parents, the students may feel discouraged and guilty right away. The students then fear making mistakes, and eventually, they stop trying. They feel stressed when they don’t know how to improve.

Finally, the students feel pressure when adapting to higher course curriculum standards. Courses are getting more complicated and have higher standards each year. Students have to stretch themselves to adapt.

Let us check the news. In a June 2013 story for The Globe and Mail—Canadian Students Feel Stress, Anxiety, Have Suicidal Thoughts, Survey Reveals—Adam Miller reported on a survey of more than 30,000 of the country’s post-secondary students which showed the following impacts stemming from stressful academic careers:

•    Nearly 90 percent of them felt overwhelmed during the past year

•    More than 50 percent felt hopeless

•    Sixty-three percent felt very lonely

Miller also reported the following survey findings about these students: 9. 5 percent had seriously considered committing suicide in the past year, and 1.3 percent reported having attempted suicide (www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/college-university-students-feel-stress-anxiety-have-suicidal-thoughts-reveals/article12613742).

Stress is the number-two cause of suicide for college students (accident is the number-one cause).

Another study, from the Journal of Academics and Business Ethics in Taiwan (www.aabri.com/manuscripts/10471.pdf), reported on sources of stress. This work, titled A study of stress sources among college students in Taiwan, was written by Cheng Kai-Wen, who notes: 84.2% of the surveyed adolescents have experienced depression . . . 56.7% of them considered that their depression comes from school stress . . . and 45.6% attributed their depression to academic tests. The survey also revealed that depressed people are eight times more likely to commit suicide than normal people.

More info on the topic comes from reporter Francesca Di Meglio for Bloomberg Businessweek. In Stress Takes Its Toll on College Students, Di Meglio reported in May 2012 for the magazine on the poisonous brew created by high-pressure academic environments, sky-high college tuition, and a slow economy: Already-stressed students, mired in academic debt, graduate into a world where jobs are hard to come by, leading to health problems both mental and emotional.

Di Meglio’s article went on to quote the following statistics on college students from a 2012 American College Counseling Association study:

•    37.4 percent who sought help have severe psychological problems, up from 16 percent in 2000

•    More than 75 percent of 228 counselors reported an increase in crises in the past five years requiring immediate response

•    Of the 228 counselors, 42 percent saw a spike in self-injury, and 24 percent saw a spike in eating disorders (www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-10/stress-takes-its-toll-on-college-students).

From the examples above, we have learned that stress and anxiety are the most prevalent mental health problems that students confront. Clearly, the most successful students are those who best can deal with stress.

From these examples, we also have learned that stress and anxiety are the leading causes of suicide for college students. They take such an extreme action because they think that they cannot deal with their issues anymore.

In the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie said that success is 5 percent what you know and 95 percent how you relate to people. Carnegie wrote that intelligence is as purchasable a commodity as any other. That means no matter how hard you work on your techniques, you only achieve 5 percent of success. Without a big score in interpersonal skills, the result is a failing grade. If you are a genius, but no one likes you, then your brain is your only commodity.

In reality, many people never use what they learned at school in their work. They learn things on the job. Learning is a lifetime thing. So, if you did not earn good marks in school, it is not the end of the world. You still have lots of time to learn. If the average life expectancy is 80 years old, then you have 960 months, or 29,200 days, or 700,800 hours, or 42,048,000 minutes to learn. You have lots of opportunities.

That said, some university graduates are not good students at all. They do not expect good jobs at the beginning of their careers. They start on what they can where they can. They are not afraid of making mistakes. These students are willing to do very hard work because they do not fear getting their hands dirty. They always get firsthand experience. They only have a few marketable skills, but they work hard to improve