Transform Your Grades

How You can Transform Your Grades from 3.50 to 4.0 and Above

Growing up as a student, I never got good grades because I spent most of my time playing. Having access to a smartphone made me even less concentrated on my studies. I spent my high school life watching movies and scrolling through social media platforms, which had an impact on me becoming unproductive.

In 2021, I was lucky to have my university requirements. At university, I adopted specific habits that changed my educational path completely. From a Senior Secondary School pupil to becoming a university student, I learned a lot from reversing 12 years of bad study habits that were causing me to achieve mediocre grades and turn myself around. Now I can proudly say I am getting better grades.

In this blog post, I will reveal the techniques I used that changed my grades from a student my parents were not proud of to the one they now call their favorite. By applying the same methods you can change the outcome of your grades. 

Step 1. Believing in Yourself

I completely reprogrammed my mind into believing that I could be a grade-A student. Most students get de-motivated because of their mindset. They don’t believe they can achieve anything. Believing in myself got me on my toes to start acting as a grade-A student. So I started connecting with those who got good grades and I came to realize that they:

Used no magic

Were not cleverer 

Were not more talented. 

Did not read or write faster than I do

All they did was put more effort in, which I never did back then. While grade A students are busy working on themselves to achieve better grades, others are doing nothing. 

It is the fact that, if someone gets good grades compared to you, they are studying smarter and harder than you do. Back then I never believed in myself because I thought I was not smart enough or capable, but when I finally mastered the act of believing in myself, my grades transformed completely. As Dr. Benjamin Spock says, ''trust yourself. You know more than you can do''.

Step 2. Take Ownership

Another step I took to transform my academic path was taking ownership of my situation. What I did was I began to self-reflect and brutally ask myself why I was not getting good grades or why I was not prioritizing my studies as compared to others. Often, to shift the thought of failure, we start blaming lecturers, the educational system, friends, parents, and even the financial situation. It is easier to cast blame than take full ownership of our situation. The truth is that when I started taking full ownership of my academics, my grades during the first semester at university began improving. You are only able to fix it when you take full responsibility and start to make yourself accountable for your problems (Mike Dee, 2021.)

Most of us continue to have bad grades because we are never willing to take full responsibility and change our habits to having good grades, yet we feel odd when given bad grades by our tutors.

We never learn from our mistakes, so we keep making the same academic blunders again and again. In Jocko Willink and Lief Bicadin’s book  Extreme Ownership, they explain that our ego is the biggest obstacle because we don’t want to take the blame when things go wrong, rather we cast blame on people around us. 

When I accepted and took extreme ownership of my academic journey, the phase of my education became better.

Step 3. Time Management

One of the greatest differences in how I lived my educational life in high school and university was that I used my time wisely.

It’s never bad for a student to engage in other activities like going to clubs, hanging out with friends, going on vacations, or doing things to get relief from stress. All you have to do is manage your time wisely.

In 2021, research on the impact of time management was conducted among 132 students of the Diagnostic Radiology Technology Department at King Abdul Aziz University and the result showed that students who managed their time wisely had higher GPAs compared to those who didn’t. Most students with high performance spend their time prioritizing what will improve their academic lives. The sooner you realize that, the better. Allocating 2–4 hours a day of your time to study has nothing to do with the remaining 20 hours. When I realized how important time management was, it helped me to prioritize things and events that bring more value to my life while engaging in other activities. 

Step 4. Learning Out of Class Room

One thing high-performance students will hardly tell you is that they do not only depend on materials from the classroom or lecturer to have good grades. Oftentimes, using your phone screen wisely will help you have a lot of materials online.

YouTube has been a great source of learning everything I need to know. Back then, I spent almost the rest of my day scrolling through different social media platforms to get entertained. The pleasure I got from that made me entirely lazy to concentrate on my academic work. Instead of doing assignments or reading, I prefer spending my time watching movies. Social media platforms are places we can learn and even have access to a lot of educational equipment to level up our skills. I have used YouTube for a while now to understand any module or topic that seems difficult to comprehend. I am not saying we should not scroll through our social media platforms to get entertained, but we should learn to consume our time wisely on these platforms.

Adopting these four strategies greatly changed my academic path and I believe incorporating these into your life will make you the grade-A student you always wanted to become. 

Your talents and abilities will improve over time, but for that, you have to start (Martin Luther King)

Studying is empowering one’s talents. This thought can help to find the motivation that is needed.

Please do not forget to comment and ask any questions which we will definitely answer.

Thanks for reading

By Joseph Pujeh