How to ace the school year

Today’s episode is for all the students. You may be starting your first year of university or you might be wrapping up your last year and you’re trying to figure out what the hell you want to do with your life. Or maybe you are somewhere in between. It doesn’t matter, what does matter is that this episode will help you ace your next school year.

I graduated last year from college and by now I’ve been working for a year. I loved school and I kinda still miss it. But I also struggled a lot during my school years. I had no idea who I was and where I wanted to go. I tried to balance an almost full-time job with my education. I wish somebody had given me tools back then that I have here for you today. It would have helped me so much.

It’s not about the grades, it’s about what you learn

The first tip that I have is to stop focussing on the grades. And I don’t mean that in the way that you might think. I’m not saying you should stop striving for great academic results, you should it’s so fulfilling but you should not be doing it for the grades. If you study for the grades, you study for external validation and that is hard to maintain. You might end up cramming all the knowledge into your head the night before an exam and you don’t remember any of it. If you want to enjoy school, you need to learn to enjoy the process of learning something new. and the grades will follow. And yes of course there will be those courses that you have to take but that you absolutely hate, for me that was Spanish, and you will never enjoy them. But for the courses that you find interesting focus on the knowledge. Implement it into your life, look for examples. Internalise it.

Staying motivated

But even then keeping the motivation going might not always be easy. Motivation comes from your why. You need a strong why to put in the effort to study. So try to come up with your why. Your “why” is personally you. So it’s not I want to get good grades so my parents are happy. It’s the benefit you’ll gain from getting an education. My why has always been financial freedom. My parents never went to university and that was always reflected in their salary. I wanted better and more so got an education. Maybe for you, it’s also financial freedom or maybe it’s to be able to do your dream job like becoming a doctor or a lawyer. Now if your goal is more abstract like financial freedom or a stable future, notice how the degree you get for that doesn’t really matter. I highly encourage people to go to school but if you don’t have a specific job in mind that you want to do, it doesn’t matter what degree you get. So you might as well study something that interests you. I have a degree and it helps me when applying for jobs but I never did anything specific with my degree. There is no point in studying law if you hate it because it’s a prestigious degree if you know you won’t be happy in that field. Pursue your passions even in school. There are so many options, there will be something you love. Parents have a tendency to push you in a certain direction because that is what they think is safe. But that’s the thing with parents, they want you to be safe, not great. So do what makes you great and prove to them you’ll be safe there. They are often not even aware of all the new professions the last 10 years have created. Choose yourself and you’ll be okay

Now If you are doing something you love, even then relying on motivation alone is setting yourself up for failure. Binge-watching Netflix or hanging with friends will always be more fun than sitting behind your desk. and putting in the work. But I have some tricks that might help you out.

Make it fun! Nobody says you need to be in your dorm alone doing your work. Especially if you have essays to write or summaries to make, it’s more fun when you do it with other people. Hit the library or your favourite coffee shop with your friends for a couple of hours and put in the work together. If you work better on your own you can create a killer playlist to listen to or go to a coffee shop alone. Make up songs to retain your knowledge, make it silly and fun. It doesn't have to be boring

Make it a habit. Try to schedule study time every week at the same time. This way you are less likely to plan other things during that time. You can even make it a ritual with your friends or alone if you prefer. My favourite thing was to go to a coffee shop every Tuesday morning to work on school for a couple of hours every week. I tried out new coffee shops if I got bored with my old ones. I would get myself a nice chai latte and a nice big piece of cake or a doughnut. It made the study time attractive. And that is a key takeaway from the book atomic habits. if you tie a time and place to a habit and you make it attractive, you are far more likely to do. it.

Make a plan. If you schedule your study time but you have no idea what to do during that time it is very easy to convince yourself you have nothing to do. It’s not visible so it’s out of your mind. Plan what you are going to do in your study sessions before you start. This eliminates a lot of resistance to starting. If you find it hard to start even if you know what you need to do, you can even plan out the first few steps you need to take to get started. Say for example you have a Spanish exam coming up. If you just write down: Study for Spanish exam, you might still feel resistant because you have so many options. So you can narrow it down and say: Study Spanish vocabulary. To eliminate resistance even more you can list your first few steps: Make flashcards of chapters 1-4. Practise words from chapters 1-4… Okay, this was maybe not the best example because voc is pretty straightforward but you can also break other courses down into read and highlight in textbook, make summaries and so on. You get the point.

Balancing school and work

Let’s move on to the next point, balancing school and work. You might need to work alongside your studies. Whether it is to gain experience in your field, get some extra cash or fund your education. There are many reasons why you might have a job and they are all valid. I have some tips to prevent you from drowning in all your responsibilities.

My first tip would be to again, find a job you enjoy. I’m starting to sound like a broken record maybe but I can’t stress enough that it’s never worth it to do something that. you hate. You might not love going to work every time but if it’s a job that you like it helps a lot. It doesn’t even have to be the job it can also be your colleagues that you love.

Try something in your field. If you can find a job that links with your education it can help your resume out a lot. It gives you an advantage over your peers you might not have any relevant experience going into the work field. Now you can be creative in this. You might not be able to work as a lawyer yet as a student but maybe you can answer the phone and do other administrative tasks in a law firm. If you want to be a writer you can get a job proofreading and so many other options. You get my point, I hope

But what if you have no idea what you want to do after school? Maybe try to build something that can stand on its own after uni. Document your life online, and build a following, it might come in handy something. You don’t have to be a basic influencer if that doesn’t appeal to you. Maybe you can talk about your hobbies or passion. If you love history you can make a youtube channel around that or if video isn’t your thing maybe you can start an innovative blog or something. Do you love sports? Coach your friends and gain experience as a personal trainer. There is something for everybody. Maybe I'll do an episode on getting paid to be yourself, let me know in the comments if that would be something that could interest you.

Time management

So you have school and a job and you want to see your friends and you want to have time for your hobbies? Seems impossible right? What if I told you that it isn’t? It just all comes down to great time management and planning. If you hate the word planning and you don’t feel like sticking to a schedule that dictates your every move that is totally valid! But I’d like to make an argument that planning actually gives you more time and freedom if you do it right.

First of all, it just helps you to stay organised and on top of things. It will relieve a lot of stress from your brain and that, in turn, will help you to be more present and happy overall. Going on a bender with your friends is way more fun if you know you don’t have any work waiting for you the day after am I right?

Second, it allows you to schedule time to do fun things or to do nothing at all. This doesn't mean planning all of that too but you can leave gaps in your planning for last-minute ideas. Good planning also allows you to move things around if something happens to come up.

So how do you go about planning? I like to use my building blocks system. You might have heard me talking about it before. Today I’m going to teach you how to apply it as a student. So take a piece of paper and draw 6 big blocks and 4 little ones. If you can’t draw now, no worries I'll link the podcast recap in the bio where you can find the explanation again. You can also find a visual example over there if you would need one. So you have your 10 blocks on your paper. In the big 6 blocks, you’ll put everything that you need to do that takes up a lot of time. In the small blocks the things that don’t take up as much time. As a student you’ll for sure have 1 big block with classes and 1 block with school work. Then if you have a job that would be the 3rd block. I recommend always having a big block for self-care and rest so you don’t burn out. That leaves 2 big blocks for whatever you want. Maybe it’s your hobby that takes a lot of time and time hanging with friends. Maybe you have a boyfriend who you want to spend a lot of time with. Or maybe like me, you are involved in some clubs at school that take up quite a lot of time. You name it. The smaller blocks are for things you need to do but they take up less time. As a student “household task” will probably still be a small block. your room is probably not that big so you don’t have a lot to clean yet. Then you might have the small hobbies that you love doing like reading or thrifting or knitting you name it. If it’s important to you list it as a block. So once you have your block you can start listing them in your calendar of choice. This can be a physical planner or a digital one, whatever you prefer. If you tend to shuffle your thing around a lot, I recommend digital but it’s up to you. So the idea of the building block is that you don’t have to balance all the blocks every day. You balance them on a weekly basis. For example, if Monday is a day full of classes you might only have room for 1 or 2 small boxes. But if you don’t have a lot of class, your big work block might fit or your school work block. You can fill your week up with the boxes in advance and then schedule specific tasks into those boxes. It’s a really simple system that allows you to prioritise the big things per day while leaving room for other small things that are important to you. If you try doing all the big important things in a day you’ll never get around to doing it all. This system allows you to visually balance everything.

Figuring out where you want to go

My last topic for this episode is figuring out where you want to go with your life. It has probably crossed your mind a couple of times already that you’ll have to start functioning like a proper adult soon. And maybe that scares the shit out of you. I know it sure scared the shit out of me, and honestly, sometimes it still does. But let me tell you, you can’t figure your whole life out right now and you don’t have to! There is not even a point to it. But what you can do, is figure out who you are and what your next step is going to be. throw your 5, 10 or even 15-year life plan out the window and limit yourself to imagining the next 3 years of your life. That’s all you can control. You have no idea what opportunities will come your way or who you will be by then. And that may seem scary but trust me, it’s not. It’s the route to happiness. By following your heart and instinct your whole life you prevent getting stuck somewhere you don’t want to be. But even the next year's might seems daunting. If you want to dive deeper into this topic I recommend giving episode 3 a listen if you haven’t already. This episode dives deep into figuring out who you are. And knowing who you are is crucial in figuring out where to go. And if you really want to get serious about figuring the next steps of your life out, check out the dream life workbook. Because I know first-hand that you probably don’t have a whole lot of budget as a student you can use the code STUDENT for €15 off the workbook. It’s an amazing resource that guides you through my whole process of planning out your dream life and the path to getting there. But if you don’t have the budget or you simply don’t feel like spending money I’ll give you the basic rundown. So you first want to figure out who you are and what’s important to you in life. Like I said episode 3 of the podcast will guide you through this so you can listen to it after this episode. Then once you know who you are you can start imagining where you want to go. If you have no idea of what job you want to do or where you want to live and all that jazz, focus on how you want to feel and how you want your days to look. You might not know what job you want to do, but maybe you do know you want to be creative every day. Or you don’t know where you want to live but the idea of living by a beach sound really great. Write down what you want your life to look like and then think of all the ways you could get there. The job you get after school doesn’t matter. It’s where that job can get you that does. So if you know where you want to go and you have your stepping stones to get there. Start building them, start putting in the work to make it happen. Set goals and break them down into small daily actions that get you a little closer every day. And you don’t have to wait until you graduate to do that either. For example, if you want to be a writer, write every day. You’ll get better and you’ll build a portfolio. If you want to work at that top law firm, start slowly building your network. Not interested in working at all? Start building a passive income. You have all the options in the world. And you can go where ever you want. Some paths may be longer than others but they all start with taking 1 small step.

Okay, that got a little too deep all of a sudden! But it’s true, hard work can get you anywhere you want to go and if you want some help along the way don’t forget to check out the workbook I'll link it in the description.

Thank you so much for listening to yet another episode of the studio-I podcast. I hope you gained some value and I’ll see you again soon.