My college advice 2026/01/13
my exams and therefore my semester are almost finished and BOY was it the toughest semester i've ever had in my LIFE. all because of one professor i'm so serious. and FYI, this has nothing to do with him as a person, but oh my days this man genuinely has 0 teaching experience and has the complete inability on how to guide and support students. he DEFINITELY knows his stuff, but he just lacks the ability to properly teach it.
i wish i was exaggerating when i say this semester was hell on earth. my college in general also seems to completely lack the ability to properly plan our schedules and stuff, so everything was incredibly packed. i've never been this busy before i think.
i've crashed out multiple times lmao. compared myself and questioned my own intelligence regularly. "am i too stupid for this?" "others are just 'getting' this stuff right away, how come i can't?" everything was so overwhelming.
so here comes my advice from the stuff i learned through this all. in a classroom full of people taking the same course, no one is 'too stupid' to get it. the fact that some of your classmates digest the material faster than you do is LITERALLY simply because of experiental knowledge. i repeat: experiental knowledge. i study programming, for context. for some of my classmates this might be their second time taking this course because they had to redo it, so of course they're going to understand the concepts way faster. perhaps others have already learned a different, but similar programming language, which means they got a head-start on this new language.
my point is, you don't know other people's backgrounds. and even if you do, there are lots of things people struggle with in secret that you're not aware of. someone who constantly gets high grades might struggle with extreme perfectionism and are constantly on the brink of burnouts and crashouts. THAT'S NOT HEALTHY!!! and this is NOT who you should be setting as your example!
besides! PLEASE remember that you have a life outside of higher education and that school is simply a part of your life. school is not your life that you happen to be a part of. think of your hobbies. you might have more time-consuming hobbies than your classmates, so naturally you'll be having less time to sit down and study a subject. if this is not the case, go back to the second point i made: these A students might be mentally struggling more than you think T_T
i struggled a lot with trying to 'keep up' this semester, because i kept feeling like 'my best' wasn't 'good enough'. but you need to realize that 'your best' means whatever effort you can put in COMFORTABLY. anything else, anything beyond that, is no longer your best, it's your worst, because you're turning into the worst version of yourself by pushing yourself into a burnout. it's imperative that you NEED to remember this. YOUR best does NOT equal what you think you SHOULD achieve. YOUR best has to do with whatever you're able to achieve within your own limits.
and i know this might not feel 'good enough', and that's normal. that is the point. you are already imagining the 'end of the road' (if that's even a thing, because i believe we are lifelong learners) as the 'best' you should be doing now, when you still have to start walking the road. you cannot possibly write a novel when you haven't fully grasped the alphabet. the thing is, through experience, you will slowly broaden your limits, that's how this all works. and then you will look back at where you started, and then you will smile and think, "wow, i can't believe i used to struggle with this".
so if you struggle with studying: listen to your body. do you feel like you just can't study anymore today? then that's your best. your body is literally telling you: you did your best today because you just hit your limit. stop here, and do something fun. any more than that and your mental health is going to go downhill again (aka, no longer your best). try again tomorrow with a fresh mind. don't think about approaching deadlines, they don't matter in the long run. at the end of the day, there should be no rush if you truly care about the things you're learning. again, you did your best today, and you should be proud of yourself. time will do its thing, as it always does.
so don't be too harsh on the current version of yourself. you can only work within your current limits and with the current knowledge that's sitting within your current brain structure. the most you can do, is your best. expansion and experience with come naturally everytime you do this.
don't let grades define you either. it's easier said than done to not feel like a failure, but "failure" is an inability to fullfill a directive. and seeing as your life shouldn't revolve around school, humans have no programmed directive. humans' evolutionary directive is to live. you are alive. everything else is bonus.
- sky