It was too late when I realized why I wasn’t achieving my academic goals

… So you’re absolutely lucky if you’re a college student and you’re reading this

“Remember, you have to get a first class in your first semester and it all begins with your first class in College, okay?” My dad said to me after dropping me in front of my dorm room.

I nodded confidently and gave him a tight hug. I was always the smart kid in high school and I got the best grades in most of my subjects without even trying. And that was my very first mistake; I thought college would be just like high school, but with more freedom and less parental supervision.

Boy, was I wrong. I quickly realized that I was way over my head. My classes were harder, my professors were less forgiving, and my peers were much more competitive.

But instead of buckling down and working harder, I did the opposite. I spent my days sleeping in, binge-watching Netflix, and procrastinating on my assignments. I was convinced that I could pull off the same tricks that worked in high school.

It wasn’t until the end of my first semester that I got my first wake-up call. My grades were in and they were not pretty. I had narrowly passed all my classes but there was a problem. I promised my dad a first class but I was barely sitting on a 3.5 GPA. I was devastated and embarrassed.

But my dad didn’t make me feel horrible about it. He gave me some words of encouragement and dropped me off for the next semester some weeks later.

This time, I was ready. I mean, I felt ready. The determination pumping through me like a river, I was determined to make things right. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I was willing to put in the work.

I spent nearly 500 hours learning how to learn. I wanted to have a first-class so badly. So I set a schedule for myself, wrote down all my goals, and prioritized my classes and assignments. I stopped procrastinating and started studying well in advance. I sought help from my peers when I needed it. You know, doing everything I learned on how to build my GPA.

The end of the semester came around, and I was filled with a mix of excitement and anxiety as I checked my grades. I had put in so much hard work, and I was sure that my efforts would pay off. But as I scrolled through my grades, my heart sank. I saw that I had failed one course and my mind started racing.

My first F grade

How could I get an F? I couldn’t believe it, all the hours spent studying, all the sacrifices I had made, and now this. I felt like a failure. I could see the disappointment on my dad’s face and the embarrassment of having to retake a class and potentially delaying my graduation.

Besides that one course, my other grades were barely decent grades, definitely not worthy of a first class. I felt lost and confused, where did it all go wrong?

I was crushed. After all the hard work and hours of studying, I couldn’t believe that I had failed one course. I felt like all my efforts had been for nothing.

So during the holidays, I thought back to my study habits and realized that while I had been good at prioritizing and organizing my time, I hadn’t been paying enough attention to the quality of my study sessions. I had been so focused on just putting in the hours that I hadn’t been mindful of how effectively I was using them.

It was hard accepting that I spent so much time studying without actually studying. So during the holiday, I decided to look inside, within me. Because it’s not enough to learn how to learn, you also need to learn how to learn in a way that best fits you as a person. And that was when I realized that reading in the nighttime an hour or two before bed works best for me.

And then I also realized that I didn’t have any friends that shared the same goals as me. All they wanted to do was hang out at a restaurant and have trivial conversations with the next cute stranger all night or watch 256 episodes of a Netflix series in one day. I knew I had to save myself from them.

Now don’t get me wrong, a little Netflix and chill after a long day of lectures is great but surrounding yourself with people that stay glued to a series all day is like setting a trap for yourself. So in the next semester, I decided to surround myself with more people that motivated me to complete my study sessions and even do some active recalling with them. And I only hanged with my old friends during the weekends.

August 25, 2019. That was the day we returned to school for the next academic year and the day after that was the day I officially became a girlfriend. Cool, right?

Or not so much.

It was all easygoing and lovey-dovey at first, but then being a good girlfriend was really hard because I had a goal I wanted to achieve. So I tried to incorporate this goal into my relationship. As a couple, we had countless study dates; the ones where you study for five minutes and spend the rest of the night… you know the rest.

It wasn’t helping. And after the first few weeks, we wrote some tests. When the results were out, I noticed they were worse than last semester’s. I had to do something. Anything. I thought my relationship was a distraction so I ended it. I thought I could handle it but I was worse than a stale sandwich.

When my ex spread the news about the reason why we broke up, my social life lost all its balance. Suddenly, I became the villain of my own story: the girl that studies a lot but still gets bad grades that broke little Mr. Popular’s heart. And so I lost all my friends, even my study buds. My goal, the reason why I ended things in the first place, was not being achieved either. I even gained more in the five-minute study date session than I was in a long two-hour personal study.

I suffered burnout, and lack of focus, and nearly fell into depression. The semester eventually went by in a blur. And once again, it was time to check my result.

I got a 4.74 GPA with 7 A’s and 3 B’s. Boosting my CGPA to a 3.9.

I had a lot of A’s

How did I do way better than in previous semesters? This semester was literally the worst!

I was, however, happy about my result. My dad was even happier. It was all good, everyone was happy, and we were good.

And that was yet another mistake I made. Not reflecting.

I got a good grade, good, I’m happy. I didn’t worry about how I did it so I would achieve the same result. It couldn’t have been a breakup compensation, could it? Or was it an exchange for my social life?

By the time I got back to school, I knew what I wanted: I wanted a high GPA this semester to boost my CGPA to a first class. But how? How do I do that? I’d done it before, but I didn’t know how to do it again.

I took a walk in the nature park and thought back to everything that happened last semester. All I could think about was that it was the most horrible four months of my life. Unlike last time, I was asking myself, where did it all go right?

The only answer I gave was that it all went right when I broke up with my boyfriend. Which was correct but not the full truth. I had the right answer but not the right side of the story.

I thought I got better grades because I ‘got rid of a distraction’ but that was not fully the case. Well, I wasn’t thinking too deeply about it, so I just went on and got rid of more distractions. Cut everyone off my life, stopped subscribing to my Netflix, and stopped writing my cringe Wattpad stories that I used to do for fun. I became a loner, but that didn’t make me a genius.

As a matter of fact, when the result for the semester came out, I had a whooping F. Again!

“I give up.” I fell on my bed.

I can never get a first class. It’s too late now. The courses are too hard. I came up with a thousand and one reasons why I was a failure… I beat myself up so badly that I ended up falling into depression. My dad noticed during the long summer holiday and decided to take me to a therapist.

That was when I heard about gratitude journaling. As a student with an overachiever mindset, I forgot the importance of mindfulness and mental stability. There’s no goal too high to achieve but if I gave thanks for the little steps I made each day, maybe at some point, I would have figured out what I did right in the semester I had good grades.

So I started journaling and my mind started getting receptive to kind words, and sometimes the prompts will urge me to think back to a time when everything felt right.

Then it clicked. I was a lone wolf that semester. No study friends, just the reminder I set on my phone to study at 8.30 daily. For my active recall, I made use of flash cards. I was pushed to the front sit in class because all the back seats were ‘reserved’ for a friend of a friend. Turned out front sit helped me focus better in class and take better notes. And so, since I gained enough from lectures, my lack of focus during long study sessions barely affected me. My professors also noticed me more and the nice ones followed up with my progress as my teachers in high school did.

That was my first key moment! I cracked it: the code to finally achieving my goal.

B-But hold on. I already got a lot of horrible grades in the last semesters and failed two courses, and since my course was a 3-year course, I had only one year to get better grades and then an extra year to retake the failed courses.

I hated that it was too late when I finally figured out what to do to turn my situation around but I did what I needed to do as soon as I cracked the code and after four years instead of three, I graduated with a 4.25 CGPA. I know that if I had known better when I first stepped foot in the university, I’d have had a better CGPA. I wish I didn’t have to experiment with two years of my uni life before finally getting it right.

DISCLAIMER

This is not my personal story, but if you could relate to it and don’t know where to go next, here is the right place to begin.

Because I’ve made it my life goal to help as many students do better than they think. I hope you hang around and help me help you.

Bye, till I have more for you.