Undoing years of bad study habits. Got any tips?

[wubwubwub]

I've been a bad student my entire life, and I'm 22 now. My goal right now is to become an electrical engineer. Problem is that I do just enough to pass. My GPA is at about a 3.0 and classes are getting harder. I'm almost done with my lower division and I know my GPA is going to drop more, and I know it's going to be impossible to get a job with a low GPA. Problem is even if I try to study harder, my mind just wanders off somewhere. It doesn't matter if I'm in a library studying, I would just end up looking around. And in class, my mind just wanders off and then I'll get lost mid-lecture. Any tips for me? This seems like this should be something easy to fix. But to me, it's not. I've been trying to fix it for a couple years now. It's getting a bit better now, but not by much.

 

[Mépris]

For what it's worth, I have the same issue. It's called laziness. The key is to just sit down and work. When you're bored, stop. Do something else for a few minutes - maybe watch *one* episode of a TV show or better, read a (comic?) book - then get back to work.

The other part is to study systematically. Try make it part of your everyday-life, like brushing your teeth, for instance. The other cool thing is that studying can be fun. When it stops being fun (or engaging?), switch to something else! It's like when you're bored of Nando's and you switch to KFC for one day, then you go back to Nando's. Poor analogy but I really have a problem with KFC as of late. :-)

Also, thank you for making this thread. It allowed me to get my thoughts in order (sort of), share them here and also allowed me to adopt it myself. Okay, now I'm taking a break and then I'm off to study! Good luck! Let me know how this works out. :D

 

[Timo]

In class, my mind just wanders off and then I'll get lost mid-lecture. Any tips for me?

Do you write down notes in class? If not, try that.

Also, you should probably consider considering your apparent lack of interest as a lack of interest (but that's an over-the-internet character diagnosis, so only take it as a random suggestion, not as a qualified statement).

 

[harrylin]

I've been a bad student my entire life, and I'm 22 now. My goal right now is to become an electrical engineer. Problem is that I do just enough to pass. My GPA is at about a 3.0 and classes are getting harder. I'm almost done with my lower division and I know my GPA is going to drop more, and I know it's going to be impossible to get a job with a low GPA. Problem is even if I try to study harder, my mind just wanders off somewhere. It doesn't matter if I'm in a library studying, I would just end up looking around. And in class, my mind just wanders off and then I'll get lost mid-lecture. Any tips for me? This seems like this should be something easy to fix. But to me, it's not. I've been trying to fix it for a couple years now. It's getting a bit better now, but not by much.

Like Mepris said, just take short breaks (however, risk is that the breaks could get longer than intended). A trick that sometimes works better than nothing at all for me for studying, is to listen to music tapes at the same time - while it is sub-optimal, it can keep the wandering-off in check.

 

[wubwubwub]

Do you write down notes in class? If not, try that.

Also, you should probably consider considering your apparent lack of interest as a lack of interest (but that's an over-the-internet character diagnosis, so only take it as a random suggestion, not as a qualified statement).

I write lots of notes. But I just blindly write it lol. I don't think it's a lack of interest since I'm like this even with things I like. I'm going to be in the library during the weekend so let's see how this goes again.