Suggestions on motivation:
- Think through why you are going to college and try to develop
some realistic and meaningful
 reasons
for spending four years of your life doing the things required to
obtain a college degree.
- Think through what you would like to be doing after college
graduation and try to formulate some realistic and meaningful
educational and occupational goals that are appropriate to your
interests and abilities.
- Try to correlate your course work with your occupational
goals. If possible, include a course required by your major each
semester.
- Try to get to know others who share your educational and
vocational interests.
- Try to get experience that involves work that is closely
related to your chosen occupation.
- Set short-term goals for yourself, for each class, each
assignment, and each study period.
- Prepare a visual record of your progress toward each goal.
- Determine the grade you want, record every quiz or test grade,
and keep a running grade point average so you are constantly aware
of how far you need to go to reach that goal.
If you tend to
skip class and want to change that, keep a visual record of how
often you have skipped class. Then you will know whether or not
you can actually "afford" to skip another class. Make a sincere
effort to improve your study habits.
- Stop thinking that you are unable to grasp an idea, for that
assumption causes low motivation. You have all the brains you will
ever need, the only thing keeping you from learning something is
yourself.
- Learn to take criticism in the form of grades or in the form
of dialogue with a professor. Do not be discouraged by criticism.
Use it to grow by looking for the lesson in it.
- Watch getting caught between the constant striving for
perfection and the simply get it done attitudes.
- Constantly striving for perfection may be good, but may set
you up for failure or cause you to feel you can't be perfect so
why try? Simply getting things done, which often implies a
slipshod or imperfect manner, may well set the image the professor
has of you.
- Remember that your college is your job. You are developing
attitudes and habits which will carry over to your professional
life. Look at yourself and see whether or not an employer
would want to hire the you reflected at this point.
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