Throughout much of high school, I coasted through my classes and hardly had to work to see exceptional results. I took AP and Dual Enrollment classes, but they still were not particularly challenging, and I could get by without many hiccups. Coming into college, I thought it would be the same, as I thought I had experience with college through my dual enrollment experience – I was very wrong. In my first quarter of college, I took studying very lightly and suffered heavily from it, doing abysmally on my midterms. The only reason that quarter was not a total disaster was that, with no other choice, I put in long, awful hours of studying for finals. I knew this approach would not work for the next quarter, as classes got more difficult and my club duties more.

During my second quarter, I thought that I would take studying much more seriously and vowed to put in a massive amount of time per week to my studies. I thought that studying for 40 hours per week would be the best approach. Even if my productivity for each hour was not great, I reasoned that with so much time spent, I would be able to brute force my way through classes. This worked for the first few weeks, but I burnt out very quickly and neglected my roles in things outside of the academic realm, like relationships and clubs. By midterms, I had studied a ton and did very well on them but was not motivated to work as hard for the rest of the quarter as I needed a break. I finished the quarter even worse than the one previous and suffered even more mentally during the quarter break. I knew that neither of the approaches was best for me and toiled on what to do over the break quite a bit. I finally decided to find a healthy medium between them, trying to optimize quality over quantity in my study hours.

During this quarter, although it is still quite early, I am taking what I am calling the “Goldilocks” approach. We all know the old fairy tale, where Goldilocks tries both ends of the extreme and settles on the middle option – I am doing the same thing. I tried being super lax about studying, and then being hyper-focused on it, with neither approach panning out, so I am trying a mix of them both. I have been studying at least 25 hours a week. This is less than the recommended 30 for my units. In the same vein, I have also started spacing out my club activities and adventures with friends to keep me motivated. This has made my study time more productive. I can set a goal knowing that some fun activity waits for me when I finish, even if it’s just grabbing a meal with a dormmate. By pacing myself more and incentivizing productive study, I have felt much more refreshed, productive, and happy lately. Most upper-class students I have talked with say the first year of college is more so about getting the GEs and required courses out of the way.

They say it’s about preparing you for your later major-specific courses, and that the biggest takeaway should be productive studying. that in my first year, I have tried, failed, and now learned what works and what does not, and am so much better equipped for my future than before.