There is one thing that every student hates.  I’ll give you a guess before you read on. It tends to be avoided until very late on Sunday night though you’ll need it Monday morning. It is the thing you stress over at sports practice because you don’t know if you have enough time to do it before you pass out after taking a nightly shower. It isn’t homework. However, studying is essential if you want to strive for great grades and get higher than a 75 on a quiz. It takes a large amount of time after school and on weekends. I understand there are so many things to juggle like a job, other homework and after school sports, but I’m here to give you seven strategies to succeed at this inevitable task.

1. Do not, I repeat, blow off studying. Studying, at the lowest levels classifies as skimming over your notes. Just look them over, quickly, five or ten minutes at the least if you’re the student who could care less about what you get on a test. You’ll remember something; I guarantee it.
2. Ask early. Go to all your teachers on Monday and ask for any tests or quizzes for the duration of the week. It helps with time management to plan out the schedule for after school, and if you happen to miss a day, you know exactly what you need to make up.
3. Make note cards. Basic study material for 99 cents at CVS, or you can make them out of your own notebook paper. They help associate terms with definitions and improve your memory so a word can trigger a distant thought.
4. Take breaks when you study. Your brain cannot separate any facts after 30 minutes of intense studying. So, take a break. This is the time where you say, “I can go watch that episode of ‘Dance Moms’.”
5. Redo problems.  If you know the method once when you do it at home, you can guarantee the repetition will help you on the quiz.
6. Go to study groups. With the aid of a group there is bound to be at least one person that knows what they are doing. That person can teach the group and the group can go on to have a discussion of their own to further understand the subject at hand.
7. Overall, pay attention in class. If you don’t pay attention at school, there is no possibility of remembering the information at home.

Studying is hard. I know it’s boring and I know you could probably be at a party, a movie, or doing some other angst ridden teen thing. But, it’s essential now to get good grades and later in life. College requires studying for exams. Jobs require studying to understand the things you are responsible for.  Would you want the surgeon operating on you to not have reviewed that last section and forget that you were supposed to get a certain amount of anesthesia? No, I wouldn’t either.