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Study Hacks Blog

The Goldilocks Strategy for Choosing the Perfect Workload

The Student Work Saturation Point

Tasting Porridge…

The hardest part of building a quality student lifestyle is figuring out how much stuff you should be doing. Some students are clearly slackers. And some are clearly grinds. But for everyone else, especially those trying to follow the Zen Valedictorian Philosophy, a nagging question lurks: how do I know if I’m doing the right amount of classes and activities?

In this post I want to discuss a simple approach for designing an optimal workload. I call it the Goldilocks Strategy for obvious reasons: we’re looking for the proverbial work porridge that tastes just right.

To understand this strategy, however, we must first touch base with the reality of how our workload interacts with both our impressiveness and our stress…

The Work Saturation Point

Consider the graph at the top of this post. I’ve plotted two lines. The blue line represents your impressiveness and the red line represents your stress level. As you move from left to right, this represents an increase in your workload (both academic and extracurricular). Therefore, the graph shows how both your impressiveness and stress change as your workload increases.

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Monday Master Class: How to Keep Life Interesting with a Saturday Morning Project

A Dash of SpiceWeekend Work

Have you finished your mid-semester dash? If not, make a plan to do it! I’m already hearing reports from readers of huge post-dash stress reductions.

Once you’ve completed this purge, return to this post. Below, I will teach you how to keep your newly stripped down student life from becoming too boring.

The Grand Project

Readers of How to Win at College know that I’m a big fan of what I like to call: “Grand Projects.” I introduced the idea on the blog early last winter, but haven’t given it much attention since then.

Let’s change that.

Here’s the basic definition:

A Grand Project is any project that when explained to someone for the first time is likely to elicit a response of “wow!’

The purpose of a grand project is two-fold:

First, it injects excitement and possibility into your student life. As I said in last winter’s post: “[A Grand Project] focuses you through the small ups and downs that litter the standard student grind. It gives you higher purpose.”

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How to Become a Deep Thinker at College

Seeking WisdomThe Thinker

A reader from Princeton recently asked me an interesting question. He first highlighted a phrase I once used to describe a group of straight-A students:

…they have trained their mind to think hard, produce subtle, nuanced arguments, and find deep connections between ideas.

He then asked: “how do I do that?”

In other words, this reader wants to actually live the promise hastily tagged onto the liberal arts experience by its many defenders: to learn how to think. He wants to know how he can maximize the increased mental sophistication that college can provide (but by no means guarantees).

I want to describe a simple technique that could help this reader — and you, if you’re so inclined — send his brain development into overdrive.

It requires three steps:

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A Greek Philosopher Tackles Student Activities

Epictetus: Student Success Guru…Epictetus

I’m intrigued by a second century Greek philosopher named Epictetus. He was a stoic. This means, roughly, that he believed the key to a good life is focusing on what you can control, not lamenting about what you cannot.

In other words: A stoic doesn’t sweat bad stuff happening. His concern is how he behaves when the going gets tough.

Because I’m weird, I recently skimmed two different translations of Epictetus’s The Enchiridion: a handbook describing 52 life lessons. There was one lesson in particular — lesson 29 — that caught my attention. It provides a piercing analysis of an issue that we discuss often on this blog: should you focus on a small number of things or experiment with many?

Here is what Epictetus had to say:

In every affair consider what precedes and follows, and then undertake it. Otherwise you will begin with spirit; but not having thought of the consequences, when some of them appear you will shamefully desist.

In other words, think carefully before adding a new commitment. Otherwise, your initial energy is likely to flag. Something he calls “shameful.”

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A Humble Request…

Spread the Good Word I want to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a brief request from your humble blog guide… If you read my … Read more

Monday Master Class: How to Stave Off Stress with a Mid-Semester Dash

October MadnessMess

For most students, the end of October marks the halfway point of the fall semester. Midterm exams loom. The workload has reached it’s full intensity. Deadlines are overlapping. Stress levels are starting their traditional climb from manageable to insane.

From my experience, you have two options at this point. First, you can give into to the chaos and limp through the rest of semester always behind on work, constantly stressed, suffering through one all-nighter after another while you struggle to keep the wheels on the proverbial bus.

The second option, however, is that you give the middle finger to the chaos: fight back the work onslaught and regain control.

Not surprisingly, this post describes a simple system to help achieve the latter option.

The Mid-Semester Dash

Here’s a simple system to stay in control as your semester progresses:

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Q & A: Life After Scoring an 80% and Joining Boring Clubs to Impress Grad Schools

I recently received an e-mail from an Ivy League freshman that I think captures a lot of common concerns about starting college and finding your niche. Below I’ve reproduced my answers to his exceedingly common questions.

Reader question #1:Questions and Answers

I did very poorly on my first test (an 80%)…is it easy or common to rebound from such a grade and eventually end up with a satisfactory grade, like an A?

Cal responds:

We’ll start with some tactical advice then move on to something more philosophical.

Tactical Advice:

You’re used to numeric grades being synced to a letter grade scale. Therefore, you see an 80% and think “I got a B-“, and then conclude that you are now a low B student who will never get into graduate school.

Not true.

Numeric grades at college do not match letter grades. They match, instead, what percent of the points you got right. Your final grade will be relative to the class. It’s possible that 80% is at the top of the class, or maybe the bottom. It just depends on the test. It has nothing to do, at this point, with A’s or B’s.

I once got, for example, the highest overall grade in my discrete math class at Dartmouth after scoring a 50% on the midterm. It turned out that for that particular exam, 50% of the points was pretty damn good. I’ve also had scores in the 90’s deemed average due to the fact that so many students got every single point right. Again: it depends on the test.

To sum up the tactical advice, don’t sweat specific scores. Just keep working to get as many points as possible in each exam. The final grade will reward you.

Philosophical Advice:

Now it’s time for some tough love. I think there’s a bigger issue at stake here. It seems you’re approaching college the same way you approached high school. You fear that if you make any mistake — e.g., missing an ‘A’ in any class — that you won’t succeed after graduation.

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Four Ways to Annoy a Professor When Asking For Help (And Four Things You Should Do Instead)

Note: I was away for the holiday weekend, attending a college conference. Because of this, there was no Monday Master Class yesterday. Today’s post will take the place of both yesterday’s Master Class and the normal Wednesday post.

Professorial WisdomHand

I often recommend to struggling students that they talk to their professors. My philosophy: when a class is giving you trouble, figure out exactly why and then craft a customized solution. Your professor’s input is an invaluable piece of this process.

But here’s the thing: a lot of students have no idea how to approach a professor. As an academic in training I’ve witnessed this firsthand. In this post I want to describe four common mistakes students make when asking a professor for help. I pair each with a suggestion of what to do instead.

Way #1: Saying “I don’t understand this at all.”

Many students see professors as a magic wisdom-imparting machine. To them, the very act of attending office hours holds out the promise of instant understanding. This leads them to show up and say, in essence, “I don’t get it,” and then sit back and wait for glorious comprehension to flow like water.

Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work that way.

The professor has spent hours teaching these subjects, if he could make you understand them from scratch in one short conversation, he wouldn’t have spent so much time going over them in the lecture hall.

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