Preparing for a Successful Academic Year

The new academic year is just about to begin and everyone enters the new classroom with fresh resolutions to stay up to date on their classwork, and assignments, make friends, participate in new competitions or programmes, run for important positions, or study regularly to ace the assessments. Resolutions must be tempered with setting realistic goals and creating a game plan to help you achieve your target for the year. You can also create a larger aim of building sustainable long-term by identifying your strengths and weaknesses. Approaching your goals with a clear strategy and contingency plans will lay the foundation to create a successful plan for your academic year.

Look back to plan forward

Ask yourself -

Why was I unable to prepare for the debate competition on time?

Which were the tough topics and subjects I found uninteresting or challenging?

How much should I practise or what are the requirements to get selected to the sports team?

What are the important activities/teams I want to participate in this year and what skills do I hope to learn from them?

Learning is an ongoing process and school is the place with maximum opportunities to learn and improve oneself. Before planning, recapitulate your past year’s performance, and put them in categories such as -

• Academic
  • Subjects I could do better in
  • Subjects that are my strengths
  • Topics that I am good at and those that I must work on
• Sports
  • Training Schedule
  • Weaknesses
  • Strengths
• Skills I want to learn this year
  • Communication
  • Presentation
  • Mathematics
  • Time management
  • Hobby-related

Understand your habits

Everyone has their learning style, some prefer to read, and others prefer a more demonstrative style where someone is explaining the concept to them. For conceptual clarity and practice you can find ample resources online and in the library. Be more focused on your habits that hindered your progress in the previous year and try to break them with focus and discipline. You can enlist the help of your teachers, parents, siblings or friends to make you conscious and help you from straying from your goals.

Treat yourself

Rewards are great for motivation. You can set small goals and treat yourself to your achievement. Slowly, you can work towards larger goals as you get habituated to a routine. Don’t be hard on yourself if you are unable to achieve your goals. Failure is part of the game and how we deal with failure defines who we are. If you fail, give yourself time to be unhappy and recover from it. Reevaluate what went wrong and what steps you can take in the future. Sometimes there is no recovery from a failure, for instance, if you lose a part in a play or the opportunity to be the Headboy/ Headgirl. It is important to credit yourself for trying by participating and acknowledging another person’s merit in winning. Treat yourself by celebrating your efforts and begin preparing for the next challenge.

Don’t put a brake on your schedule

Holidays, vacations, parties, new friends, visits from relatives, family functions - there will be many distractions, and you have to factor them in when you are planning for the year. Sometimes, you may feel saturated and want to take a break. It is alright to go easy and have fun, but not at the cost of completely losing sight of your goals or reaching a point where you make major compromises. Learn to make sacrifices and set your priorities. If you want to do well in the academic year, then that must be your main goal, and you must remain focused on it.

What do you want to achieve?

A student’s academic year is filled with co-curricular and extracurricular activities. All of these are learning opportunities and can define the future path you will take after school. So, be conscious of all the things that you are interested in and make a checklist of all the things you want to achieve and the timeline you will follow for the same.

Enlist the help of your parents, friends, siblings and others who are close to you. If they know your goals, they will help you even when there are times when you have to make sacrifices. They will also help you in dealing with setbacks and motivate you to stay focused when you need some external push. So, gear up for the new year with focus and positivity.