Book Summary: How To Win At College

While LinkedIn is a professional platform, it is also a great channel for those people who are in college especially in advanced degrees and out here looking for exposure, information and tips.

1. Get good at skimming through lecture material. Make ticks against important points as opposed to highlighting entire sentences. Skim to have context, but putting energy into the actual class is way more important.
2. Use Sunday nights to prep for material for the week forward - while it may seem counter intuitive to work on a holiday. Putting in a couple of hours to set aside important things actually helps one approach a new week with far less trepidation.
3. Drop classes & courses that don't add value to your life and choose what does. Dropping means change courses if they are terrible as opposed to just coasting through them.
4. Start projects the day they are assigned as opposed to when the deadline is due or the night before. Lets you plan your life to the fullest. If you are in a group project with people who want to leave it to the last minute, try to move to an alternate group (if possible).
5. Apply indiscriminately. You may hold yourself from applying somewhere because you think it is too elite and you won't make it or it's too small for you to pay attention. Apply regardless because something is better than nothing and it will teach you along the way.
6. Build a study system whether it is mapping things out on a board, making quiz style cue cards. It is difficult to slip into laziness when you invest effort to do something. Injecting novelty builds stronger learning systems.
7. Befriend professors - authorities are not bugbears! Good relationships with your faculty is mentally rewarding, opens up opportunities, and gives them a sense of fulfillment too.
8. Average students join extracurricular organisations. Exceptional students run them.
9. Reading a newspaper everyday is one of the most valuable things one can do for themselves. (this does not feature as advice in the book but there is always more scope to get distracted when you consume news on the phone or laptop).
10. One good thing for bolstering your confidence is mastering a skill. Even if it's something small.
11. When you are dependent on good things happening to make you feel good, your life becomes centered on preserving a good mood. Don't let others dictate you. Build your own world view.
12. Avoid a daily to-do list and look at a weekly or fortnightly list. In college, very little changes on a day to day basis. Making a daily to-do list can one make feel as if they are not doing enough while the truth might be that there is not enough to do.
13. Giving up is important. Whether it is friends who pull down or courses or clubs that no longer serve their purpose. Reducing your involvement over things that don't matter is the most important.
14. Avoid naps as they can take away from your productive afternoon/evening time. Try to sleep in the night even if it is for a shorter duration to get the most out of your day.
15. Work on ONE major project - a personal grand project that you seek to complete during college.
16. Take courses that serve cultural and humanitarian interests and not just those good for your career. College is the best place to get cultural exposure.
17. Force yourself to ask a question in every class you take. Nothing wakes you up faster than that.
18. Involve yourself in research. Irrespective of whether you are in a science or non science domain. Research is a building block for logical skills and rational development. It also looks great across industry and academia from a CV perspective.
19. Don't study for longer than 50 minute chunks at a stretch. Your brain needs a break.
20. If you truly want to do everything at college (friends, academia, extra curriculars) then schedule your free time or you will overrun and constantly be grasping at threads.
21. Dress nicely for class! While college is that one point of time when you can sluggishly walk to class in shorts or tracks - avoid. Getting ready the first thing in the morning sets your day off to nice start. It preps you!
22. Always decorate your room with shades of your personality. It is going to be a personal space that is going to be your own on a crowded campus. Anything that comforts or alerts you (as you would want) should be part of your space.
23. Write outside of class. Writing well is a critical life skill. And also what all your assignments consist of. So practice some non academic writing to get better at academic writing.

If you found this gist helpful, I suggest you get a copy Cal Newport's How To Win at College - a succint but impactful read (not a paid promotion).