How much time do you spend everyday debating with yourself whether you should go
and study or procrastinate just a little longer? Well, let me give you a little advice I’ve
picked up along the way. Sometimes, you must ignore what you’re feeling and just go
through with the motions. You might feel like watching the newest show on Netflix right
before your lecture at 1pm and another movie after the class is over, thinking it’s just
another class that’s gonna teach me nothing and perhaps thinking all I need is a good
grade to keep my GPA intact and finish the degree. We are so focused on the bigger
picture, that we need to get a good job as soon as we graduate or start working with our
parents, that we forget the little steps that could elevate this bigger picture and make it
happen on YOUR OWN terms. So, get out of your comfort zones. Do what you’re
supposed to do and don’t wait for someone else to pick YOU up. It’s the problem we, as
students have, we negotiate with procrastination and trust me, at first, it’s difficult to
overcome but the more you keep doing it, the more you keep working and studying,
even when you don’t feel like it, the easier it will become. Get up from that couch and go
learn, start working on that assignment you were going to leave until the last minute.
See some of us complain about their grades and make excuses why they couldn’t get
that A- or A. They are too busy blaming the lecturer and anybody else but themselves,
so they don’t do anything about it. They don’t plan to fix or improve anything, so they
continue getting the same grades. That was me in my first year here, I thought I wasn’t
getting the A’s because I wasn’t in a good group for the assignments, or the lecturer
didn’t like me. I had stage fright and I knew it was my weakness, but I didn’t do anything
about it and I simply blamed the lecturer for giving too many presentations. It wasn’t
long before I realized it’s time to take responsibility and fix my mistakes first. It wasn’t
long before I realized I wasn’t fulfilling my full potential. I sat down with myself, and
asked myself two things, what is my end goal with this degree and what am I going to
do to reach it. I planned. I organized. I compartmentalized. I told myself that I’m NOT
going to take another subject for granted like I have before. Because what I realized is if
I cared enough to take something home from these lectures, yes even from American
Government, it would automatically turn into results. And that’s exactly what happened.
Because of my drive to reach my end goal, I worked on my weaknesses, my
communication, my stage fright, my lack of confidence and transformed them into my
strengths and I picked up more skills like leadership along that same journey.
If all you do is complain, nothing’s going to happen in your life. Be obsessed with your
future. Let me say that again, be obsessed with YOUR future, not THE future. Be
consumed by the possibilities. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk none of them stopped
when they hit their targets in their early years, they simply pressed the reset button and
kept going. Richard Branson, his high school and his friends thought he was a joke, but
guess where he is? He is literally in space right now, the first billionaire to do so, mind
you, and gave a speech live on his dream coming true. (cue video)
See that dream is not going to just sit there and wait for you to come and get it, you’ve
got to go all out to achieve it. Stop saying I’ve got to wait for good things to happen to
me. Say to yourself I’m going to put in the work for the good things to come to me. So.
What are you doing about it? You’ve got to take action with your studies. Actively listen
in class. Ask the right questions. Find a solution to your problem. Don’t be THE
problem. Isaac Newton famously said, for every action, there is an equal and opposite
reaction. So then if you increase your studying by 50%, your grades are also likely to
increase by 50% right. And if they don’t, then find out why. Don’t be afraid to reach out
to your lecturers when you need help. Trust me, doing it right and doing it the way you
think is right are two very different things. Just the last week, I had a group presentation,
where my group read the assignment brief and got to work with what we understood
from it and got to work. Then the day before the presentation, one of us realized that we
may have misunderstood what the assignment is asking and now we were
contemplating on what to do. I put my hand up straightaway and I said, why waste more
time, let’s call the lecturer and clear our doubts. And to our bittersweet surprise, yes, we
were, in fact, wrong. So, we started brainstorming and put in the extra hours, to work
our way out of this hole. But let me tell you, it was worth it. We went into the
presentation wondering whether our last-minute changes were going to save us or not
and they did. The lecturer was happy, we couldn’t wipe the grins off our faces. So, with
that, I’d like to leave you with one final question: anybody can have their backs against
the walls, what are you going to do yourself when it’s your own back against the wall?