How to make a successful academic comeback
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “I’m going to make an academic comeback next semester,” I’d have enough money to circle the world and back. In all seriousness, that phrase gets tossed around a lot and it’s easy to say but hard to follow through on. However, I actually managed to turn things around after a rather tumultuous first semester at Tufts. The following are some small but powerful steps I took to make my spring semester 10x better than my fall.
Firstly, I know you’ve heard it a lot, but office hours are your best friend. Even if you feel like you’re grasping the material in a class quite well, it's important to take advantage of the one-on-one and, often, group review and help sessions that are offered because once you fall behind, it becomes increasingly hard to catch back up. I wish I had known that before I took Chem 11 because I could have done so much better. But, I made up for it by doing really well in the Physics class that I took the next semester.
Secondly, I can’t place enough emphasis on staying consistent! You may get your first good test grade back and feel like you don’t need to put in as much effort for the rest of the semester, but it’s a trap. Don’t fall for it. Seriously, there’s nothing worse than going from doing really well to not at all by the end of the semester. Once again Chem11 taught me that trying to catch up right before the final is like being at peak athleticism and then taking a year off, just to try and run a marathon. It’s not realistic!
And lastly, but certainly not least, giving yourself grace when you stumble is the most important lesson to learn. Maybe you missed an assignment or did really badly on a quiz, that is not an excuse to give up or lose hope in doing well in the class. Your perseverance and determination to succeed should conquer your ego. It’s okay to not be perfect at everything you do for the first time, but practice does make perfect.
All in all, the goal of this post is to help prospective (and current) students avoid the oh-so-familiar panic-fueled cram sessions and instead learn how to start strong and maintain. The academic comeback is real but the real win is not needing one every semester.