Have you been underperforming in your college studies? Sometimes you put in your all but you somehow still end up failing or getting grades that are below your expectations.
If you find yourself in this situation, I’ll get straight to the point on what I recommend to get yourself back on the right academic track.
How to improve your grades in failing subjects
#1. Work out the areas or units you are failing in
Arrange the units in the order of the worst performed to the best performed. Prioritize the least performing units in any planned intervention measures.
You can track your performance for a few months or even a year depending on how long you’ve been in college. Write down all your grades and draw up a graph for a better interpretation of your declining grades.
With this information, you can analyze your situation and see if there are external factors at play or if it’s a particular academic shortcoming that’s hampering your performance.
Is there a family issue or a social constraint that’s keeping you worried and distracting you from studying? Or is it that your essay writing skills are poor?
Is your study environment conducive or not? Does the way you study work out for you? After exploring all the possible reasons for your underperformance, you will be able to deduce the problem. It could be one of the factors or it could be a combination of two or three of them.
If the problem is external, you can work towards ensuring it doesn’t affect you anymore; for example seeking the services of the school’s counselor. If the problem is academic, you should talk to your professor or tutor for specialized help.
You can also get a tutor to help you with the particular unit or units. You can also talk to some of your classmates to help you with the particular areas you may need help with.
#2. Organize your life
It is said a cluttered office or desk is a representation of your mind. Improving your academic performance depends on how organized your life is.
For starters, you need to keep your studying space tidy by ensuring all your school’s supplies are organized and that you know where everything is.
You also need to have good time management skills such that whatever you are doing outside the school won’t eat into your study time. Ensure you allocate more time to the problematic subjects and less time to the subjects you are doing better at.
Finally, ensure you have a daily timetable capturing all your daily activities. Of course, your social or work life doesn’t have to stop but ensure after everything has been allocated some time, you still have time for studying.
#3. Explore different learning styles and pick the one that works for you
Some people find it easier to study in pin-drop silence while others prefer studying in a discussion with peers. For others, simply attending lectures is enough.
Explore which of these studying approaches works best for you so that you can put all your energies there. Identifying and horning in on your ideal studying strategy will solve half of your academic problems.
#4. Avoid procrastinating
As I’ve stated before, time management is critical if you’re to improve your grades at the end of the semester.
With this in mind, there’s no doubt that procrastination is one of the leading causes of academic failure among college students.
Sometimes procrastination could be a result of feeling overwhelmed; you have too much on your plate you don’t know which one to start with.
To solve this problem, you need to work with a timetable and have a priority list; you can opt to start with the easiest task or start with the most complicated, whatever works for you.
Once you tick one item off your to-do list, you will be motivated to do more so that you can end up ticking off more as you get used to organizing your tasks.
#5. Make use of your dead time
We use a part of our time in waiting rooms like a doctor’s office, or when riding on buses or trains.
You can use this time to skim through the note of whatever subject you’re struggling with. If it is quite a long ride you can get out your laptop and type your thoughts or ideas.
The idea here is to use any extra time you can get to study more and ultimately master the difficult subject more than you ever would.
How to maintain good grades in college
#1. Avoid missing classes
You should strive to attend all your classes because those knowledge gaps when you miss classes might be the source of your academic woes.
Also, most colleges have attendance points which means each time you miss a lesson you lose a point and this could also affect your grades at the end of the semester.
When you maximize your class attendance you’ll without a doubt learn more and will always have an opportunity to seek clarification from your professor.
Also, asking and answering questions during a lecture will help you grasp concepts faster than you’d have when doing personal study.
#2. Be an active listener
Improving academic performance needs you to be an active listener in class. In summary, put your phone – in fact, turn it off!
Focus your attention on the professor and whatever illustrations they may be using. Also, remember to note down a few things whenever necessary.
This practice alone may be enough to pass your exams. All you’ll do during your preparation will be focus on more complex topics alone rather than the entire subject.
#3. Participating in the class
Concepts stick more easily if you ask and answer questions during a lesson as we’ve already seen.
The more active you’re the more you’re able to retain in your memory – and the more you retain the higher the chances of it being critical information that’ll be the difference between success and failure in your graded tests.
Listening to your classmates’ thoughts and opinions also helps you to remember more since it is easier to remember conversations as compared to written information.
Also, when you contribute to the discussions in the class, you will develop a habit of listening more, focusing on the current discussion, and processing the information better.
#4. Outsourcing your assignments
Sometimes you may get caught up with the ups and down of life and are unable to submit written assignments on time.
Don’t let small misfortunes fail you especially if you’ve been keen on ensuring you keep your grades up.
We can help you during such moments with our unrivaled and affordable academic writing services.
Wrapping it up
The key points to improving your grades are proper time management, organization, and attending all your lectures.
Always ask for assistance from your peers and professors – I’m sure they’d be glad to help as we can also help you get some of your assignments done in case of an emergency.