Three Secrets to Academic Success

Plan:  Ask yourself—Was Richard, the winner of the tv “Survivor” program, really the person who would have been most likely to actually survive on a desert island?  Probably not, but he won because, unlike many of the other participants, he had a strategy, a plan.  The first secret is to figure out and implement your own scheme, your own method to succeeding in this class and in college generally.  Be something of a gamesman: successful people determine in advance how they are going to approach a task, whether it is cleaning out the garage or impressing a boy or girl or something more academic.  Don’t just drift, hoping that things somehow work out by luck or magic or wishful thinking.  Figure out your best way of learning and earning (the grade you desire) and then do it.

Pretend:  One of the most important secrets to success is to learn to “pretend.”  You don’t wait till you really truly 100% sincerely feel like getting up in the middle of the night to comfort a crying baby, you just do it.  Many things in life are like this, from marriage to praying.  If you wait to be “sincere” you may never get anywhere.  “Pretend” to be a better student than you think you really are: always come to class on time, “act” like or imitate students who get A’s and somewhere along the line you will discover that you have reinvented yourself.  A priest friend tells me that this is even true of prayer:  if you pray every day, even if it feels fake, you will discover down the road that you are different.  Don’t wait for sincerity to strike you like lightning—to pray “sincerely” or wait to start a diet or an exercise program until the stars are all perfectly aligned-- or you may never get where you want to go, which is the classical definition of freedom.

Pleasure:  On the other hand, right attitude can be crucial.  To do some things, perhaps all the really important things, well, you must enjoy the experience.  Helping people in trouble, kissing a pretty girl, playing with a toddler, for example:  if you just do these things as a means to an end, you are likely to come up short.  Many students seem to come to the university with strictly extrinsic motivations—that is, they want to get “certified” with the credentials (such as a diploma) required to get a good job and thereby live well materially.  These are not bad goals.  The problem is that learning, like marriage, is so fundamentally experiential that it must be approached with intrinsic as well as extrinsic motivation.  If you marry a girl whose company you do not enjoy just for the extrinsic goal of having grandchildren in your old age the chances are it will not work.  The final secret I want to share with you is that to succeed academically you must enjoy the experience of the library and books and computers and lectures and seminars, that is, of learning.  This should not be difficult because, as Aristotle said, there are only two intense human pleasures: doing and thinking.  If you do not learn to enjoy thinking you have blown off half the human experience.

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