12 Common Mistakes that Students Make, and How to Avoid These
As students, we make a myriad of mistakes that can negatively impact our student lives and careers.
Many of the things we do in hopes of maximizing productivity and happiness, actually have the opposite effect. These behaviors can lead to decreased performance, health, and social wellbeing. And while we will never be perfect, we can choose to learn from these flaws and try to become the best students we can be.
Because fortunately, there are ways to conquer these common mistakes.
1: Wasting time and money on stationery
You do not need fancy or pretty stationery in order to be studious — they are merely glamorous additions to that habit, and should be used with care.
The truth is, no amount of external materials can replace the value of internal dedication and hard work. Aesthetics are just another hurdle for you to overcome to get to your actual goal: studying well. And for that, a standard pen and notebook are all you need.
What really matters is not the time and effort you put into the look of your academic career, but the time and effort you put into the actual work.
2: Blaming it on a lack of motivation
Despite popular belief, you do not need motivation to sit down and work.
Blaming your poor performance on a lack of motivation is placing the outcomes of your life in external hands. Your level of motivation is not something you will ever be able to control — unlike your behavior. The only difference between the accomplished and the lazy student is the continuous choice of the former to work despite a lack of motivation.
You can only really succeed if you take success into your own hands.
3: Complaining about lecturers and teachers
A lot of students talk behind their teachers’ backs.
Such complaining gets you nowhere. Unless you confront your teachers with these issues constructively, you cannot expect anything to change. So, get yourself together and be more patient with your teachers — or just stop attending their lectures and read the textbook instead.
Do what works best for you and stop complaining about what teachers do that works for them.
4: Showing up to group work unprepared
Group projects really drag when one of its members comes unprepared.
When you show up unprepared, you fail to contribute to the task at hand. You are also unable to engage in meaningful discussions around the topics, and you therefore miss a golden opportunity to add new lessons to already-existing knowledge. Thus, to be on equal footing, you must do the homework that everyone else has done before coming to the meeting.
Come prepared, and the group can spend its time learning instead of teaching.
5: Being on your phone in class
Students that spend their entire classes staring at their phones are disrespectful.
The action signals to themselves, the teacher, and everyone around them, that their attention is better spent on social media. In the long term, this also reduces their attention span, making it harder for them to ignore their phone the next time they feel bored.
So, put your phone away. The notifications can wait.
6: Eating out regularly
Buying food on campus is quick and easy but also unsustainable.
Not only is it expensive in the long term, but the food is often not very nutritious. So, if you can, bring your own food. Save yourself from all those cups of coffee and bread wrapped in plastic.
Home-made meals might even taste better because of the effort put into them.
7: Choosing not to ask questions
Everyone at school is there to learn.
The learning process requires constant curiosity — the ability to admit that your knowledge is incomplete. Most students have similar questions at heart, but they fear that they will appear stupid. So, be the courageous one.
Because if you never ask, you will never get the answer.
8: Focusing on the little details
It is easy to get lost in all the names, statistics, and dates.
But studying requires general comprehension. It requires taking a vast library of knowledge and condensing it into your own limited memory. It is about getting to that 20% core information and using that to access the last 80%.
Knowledge is more easily built if it has a sturdy foundation.
9: Taking lots of notes
Notetaking is a passive form of studying.
You load your mind with information, without working to keep it stored. An active study method would be Active Recall, where you convert the material into questions that you answer whenever you need to update your memory. This trains your ability to retrieve information and thus remember it for a longer time.
All the notes you would otherwise take are in the textbook or video recording anyway.
10: Studying all day
An aspirational student is not someone who stays at the library all day hunched over their book.
An actual successful student is one that manages to get through large chunks of information in a shorter time. As Parkinson’s Law claims, your efforts on a task fall to the time you spend on it. Instead of spending an entire day on the same topic, you could spend a couple of hours on it, and get just as much work done.
Productivity and progress come with spending time wisely, not haphazardly.
11: Managing time poorly
A busy person’s time is often poorly spent when it is unsystematized.
Most of us can only be productive when we have a system to uphold our study routine but also to make room for other important things. We are not only students, after all, but housekeepers, friends, and health patients. Studying ought never to compromise your health and wellbeing — and managing your time can help prevent this.
After all, if you are able to follow your time tables, you can also follow your own schedule.
12: Postponing or avoiding work
Most students avoid work because it is not urgent yet — and not important enough.
While procrastination is fun and easy, it is a choice that has long-lasting consequences. It teaches your brain that you are unable to act on what is truly important — and that a task has to be urgent for you to do it. By eliminating the problem earlier, you can avoid the compounding stress and guilt that come from avoiding such tasks.
Postponing work only prolongs pain.
And if you want to avoid the consequences that these common mistakes can have on your performance, health, and overall wellbeing as a student, you must choose to do otherwise.
