How to Become an Excellent Student

Steps

1. Like all exceptionally great students, you must pay attention! When a teacher is giving a lesson, take notes and if you don't get something, raise your hand and ask. The more questions you ask, the smarter you'll get, believe it or not. By passing notes and talking to friends, you won't learn anything, so pay close attention!
2. Review your notes when you have free time.
3. Take some time to write some problems up, or you could ask someone to write them for you. Just remember, it doesn't hurt to go over what you have learned.
4. Do your homework. Teachers give you homework for a reason. It is to review what you have learned that day. Take advantage of your free time. If you really want to be a successful student, you should know right from the beginning when you want to be great at anything, you have to put up with things that just don't seem fair. Doing your homework is not a big deal. Remember, homework can also help you develop good habits and attitudes.
5. Be prepared. Bring everything you need with you to class. Books, folders, pens, pencils, homework, review sheets etc. whatever you need it would be a good idea to bring it.
6. Get organized. Keep a folder for each subject, and yes, you put your math papers in your math folder, you put your Language Arts papers in your Language Arts folder, you put your science papers in your science folder, and so on. It would really be a good idea to color code or label your folders.
7. Study. It would be a good idea to start studying a few days before a test. Make a study schedule. If an extracurricular activity gets in the way of your studying, tell the person in charge of that certain event, that you will not be able to attend that event, or you will have to leave early. However, there will be certain situations where you will have to attend whatever it is. In this kind of situation, you will just have to study another day. This is where your study schedule comes in. Write out a schedule of the week of your test and find your free time. Always remember, use your time wisely.
8. Start to read a little more. If you are not already a reader, start at your level and work your way up. You may not know this, but by reading more challenging and difficult books, you are expanding your vocabulary.
9. Ask a parent or older sibling to look over your notes and create a mini-test for you 3 days advance of your test. You should always want to study before the night of your test.
10. Use of mindmaps can be helpful for understanding hard topics.

Tips

• Always go for extra credit even if you are getting a 98% in that certain class. You can always do better.
• Stay focused. Everyone knows school can be boring, but you have got to concentrate on getting focused. Keep your eyes on the teacher, keep your ears open, and take notes. Taking notes will help you think and help you understand what is being taught more.
• Sleep! Sleeping well is essential to keep you concentrated on classes and also on your studies.
• Rewriting notes taken in class is helpful if taking exceptionally hard classes. (Ex. law, economics, engineering etc.)
• Lessons are fun if you pay attention and listen to what the teacher is saying, and if you know about that topic you will feel good, and if you don't know about it, maybe you should study it a little.
• Find out your learning style (ex.visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.) and look online to find out about study habits that match your learning style. You'll be surprised at how much easier it is! But be sure to answer the quiz questions truthfully.
• Also, find out if you are a left brain or a right brain. Left brain is organized, logical, rational. Right brain is intuitive, lets feelings go, sees things in an abstract way. If you take a quiz and discover you are both, no worries! Lots of people are.
• Study before sleeping (but don't stay up too late!). By doing this, you'll remember what you've studied the next morning. But if you study then watch TV or something like that, you'll forget more (because memories are consolidated during sleep).
• Also remember that psychological studies have shown that people tend to forget much of the information learned in the last ten minutes before falling asleep. So you should do something else before you go right to bed after studying.

time management is the most important thing

Warnings

• Whatever you do, do not procrastinate; don't put things off. If you do, you will have to rush on that certain project, and you probably won't get the grade you wanted in the first place. If you procrastinate for a test, you will have to review what you will be tested on in a short amount of time.
• Don't freak out if you get a bad grade on a paper. Everyone (including high level students) get bad grades once in a while. It's not the end of the world. Just try harder next time.
• Above all, don't cheat. Cheating doesn't teach you anything at all. Plus, if you get caught, you will get into serious trouble. It's not worth it!
• Sometimes being an excellent student can lead to unpopularity or people thinking that you are weird. Do some sports or socialize once a while.
• Be on top of your grades. If your school has online grades (Skyward) then check every other day. That way you aren't surprised when you get your progress report, and know if you forgot to turn something in, need to work on something or if a teacher entered a grade wrong.