I was never able to do well enough in school to get anything other than a 2 year degree. I have a good white collar job and have been in IT (for lack of a better word) for 20 years or something at this point.

School isn’t everything.

I didn’t unless I was with other people, in class or the exam was the next day.

Got my college diploma and now I’ll never go back to that hellish place ✌️

Looking back I was never really able to do long study sessions. What helped me a lot was to break it down into smaller sprints with something as reliable reward inbetween.

In the past that was OGame or other browser games where you couldnt play for long and had to wait some time inbetween. Nowadays it’s tarkov scav runs that sometimes work well. Im currently trying to write my PhD thesis so this is my struggle again :)

Also for me it’s specifically a momentum thing so just telling myself 5 minutes is enough will get me over the hump usually. And not expecting too much for the day. Otherwise I will be demotivated even if I managed to do a fair bit.

Pomodoro timers, as someone else mentioned, are great. It was a lot easier to start when I could tell myself “ok, I only have to do this for fifteen minutes” – and most of the time when that first timer went off I’d gotten into a groove and kept going anyway.

For writing assignments, I found starting with a blank page really difficult, so I’d paste in a paragraph or two of lorem ipsum or some other nonsense text and go from there. Having words on the page, even though they were irrelevant and I knew I’d have to delete them later, tricked my brain into thinking “oh, I’ve already started this; carry on, then!”

The habit of doing even just a little bit every day was more sustainable and more effective for me than infrequent big cram/study/writing sessions.

I had probably the most success with using musical cueing. Whenever I sat down to write or study, I listened to one of the same two albums on repeat. (I like classical; one was Handel’s Messiah and the other was a two-disc set of Thomas Tallis choral works.) Even now, almost a decade later, when I put either of those on it instantly snaps me into work mode. Creating that kind of association is really helpful! And having only one or two choices also meant I couldn’t distract myself by trying to figure out what to listen to: it was A or B, end of.

You might also consider how/whether you could spread out your course load. Most years in undergrad I did five classes a semester, but one or twice I did four only (plus a summer class to stay on track) and being at only 80% of a full load made a huge difference.

Good luck!

The way I pulled it off is basically by pure chance. A few classmates had gotten the impression (still don’t know how or why) that I was a good student. Whenever they had any difficulty at all they’d ask me. As such I was constantly explaining a bunch of stuff, especially the more difficult parts of the material. So from the moment I first understood it I just kept on repeating it to others endlessly.

In retrospect that’s probably what helped me get through the whole thing.

i am probably not the best example, as i never finished my degree, but studiying is the one thing where pomodoro timers were actual helpful for me, but nothing was better than having a small group of people to study with.

Working on problems together on a whiteboard was almost magical, because so much stayed in my brain without totaly draining my batteries.

other than that keeping things fresh and fun is important, to this day i’ll draw pictures on my notes when going through them, emphasize stuff by putting it in speech bubbles or write stupid stuff in foot notes.

i also sometimes experiment with different note taking techniques, but it’s mostly bullet points.

anki flash cards worked well for me. Most of the time is used making the cards then can easily learn anything in less than a day by cramming them.

Study into the night. Your brain will be too tired to get bored and so will stay focused on only one thing.

I used to study from about 1 to 6 in the night. Basically when everything is closed and asleep. I then mostly listened to Binärpilot and Röyksopp. This was usually mere days before exams or when papers were due.

I somehow managed to finish studying, so it worked out fine. Work, being a parent and owning a house nearly broke me though. Currently trying to find new coping mechanisms. Fuck adult life.