Artwork By Yelim Kim
‘School literacy doesn’t guarantee success. Don’t let your grades define who you are’ might be one of the most cliche quotes everyone must have heard throughout their lives. Even though many people state that grades are important but aren't everything, still many students are pressured and worried about grades. Our society has given the expectation that ‘good’ grades will guarantee success and ‘bad’ grades won’t. According to Stanford University’s study on students, they have concluded:
76 percent of students reported that they always or often worry about the possibility of not doing well in school.
75 percent of students reported that they always or often feel stressed by their schoolwork
72 percent of students reported that they always or often worry about taking assessments
This raises the question of, ‘Is it worth having all this stress just to be successful in life?’ Many have controversial views on this question. Most parents would say, ‘This suffering and stress will only last for a few years and later will lead you to happiness and tranquillity, with no stress or pressure present. Therefore, you need to suck it up and move on’. However, in reality, as you grow older, you tend to stress in more aspects of life, excluding grades and studies. For example, you will worry about promotions, bills, rent, and all sorts of stuff. In other words, stress will not end.
Through these kinds of stress, students tend to become ambivalent about studying. Studying is meant to teach and prepare young adults for the real world, finding jobs, solutions and happiness through challenges in life. However, as students always worry about getting ‘great’ grades, they become toxic and dangerous. Students would overdo every single study session, work until late nights to finish homeworks and additional studies, go to hagwons until 11pm and would have a mental breakdown if one grade came out low. These kinds of behaviours will corrupt our mental minds, increasing the possibility of depression to occur. And I believe no mother nor father would want that for their child. Even though the success of their child/children is the parent's pride and joy, always their health is first.
Personally, I have learned this the hard way. After transitioning to high school, I felt a lot of pressure on academic grades. As everything in high school is taken seriously and into account for my collages and resumes, a lot of weights were on my shoulders. Everynight, I would work from 8~12:30 finishing homework, extracurricular activity work and extra studies for upcoming assessments. Through this, my immune system became very weak compared to middle school, as I didn’t have the time to rest, exercise or eat properly. From this I have learned how toxic my study habits have become. This got me thinking to myself, ‘ I should be finding joy and curiosity from these studies, not stress’. To this day, I am deplorable towards every moment of my studying methods. Therefore, through this blog, I wish to widen your view on academics, and in the end, hopefully you can see the fun out of studying, not stress.
Some studying methods that allowed me to not only study but to also have fun are:
Youtube+memorising: When you need to memorise something, try and repeat it several times. This might be a very obvious method… But here comes the fun part! When you believe you have completely memorised it, watch a 3~5 minute youtube video. This will allow your mind to be distracted by something else, releasing the amount of stress on memorising and allow you to have fun. After the video is finished, try and recite everything you have memorised. If you missed out on some components, highlight it and use this method continuously until you can fully enumerate everything.
Collaboration+The Pomodoro Technique: If you have a friend that needs to complete the same homework as you, call them and collaborate on it together. As they say, ‘two heads are better than one’. While doing this, use the pomodoro technique! The pomodoro technique is where you set up a time for the actual study, and when the timer rings, you set a 10~15 minute break. When taking this break, you are free to play video games, watch youtube videos and more. This method will ensure a break between your studies.
The World of Stationery: When thinking of studying, one of the most common words that will pop up in our minds is ‘effective note-taking’! In fact, the majority of people do use the Cornell note-taking method in order to create organised and clean notes. However, many people find enthusiasm through all the lovely pens, pencils, whiteouts, highlighter pens, and more! Through the variety of stationery, this can be a very effective method for some people to release their stress as when viewing the after-results of note-taking with all the bright, scintillating colours showing!
In conclusion, as pontificating as it may be, studies are not everything. I know, I know, this again, really? But this is true. There is no guarantee in life that studies will actually lead you to success, but if you believe in that theory, then find ways you can start to admire the values of studying, not just because you were forced to! To all my fellow students out there, always remember this quote by Mahesh Gupta Chunduri: ‘Study is important in our lives, but life is more important than study’.
P.S. There are more methods cited below if needed!
Works Cited
Bridgestock, Laura. "6 Fun Study Tips (No Really!)." Top Universities, 10 Mar. 2021, www.topuniversities.com/blog/6-fun-study-tips-no-really.
Feldman, Joe. "Taking the Stress out of Grading." ascd, 1 Sept. 2020, www.ascd.org/el/articles/taking-the-stress-out-of-grading.
PARKER, CLIFTON B. "Stanford Research Shows Pitfalls of Homework." Stanford News, 10 Mar. 2014, news.stanford.edu/2014/03/10/too-much-homework-031014/#:~:text=Greater%20stress%3A%2056%20percent%20of,homework%20was%20not%20a%20stressor.
"10 Ways to Have Fun While You Study." Oxford Royale, www.oxford-royale.com/articles/10-ways-fun-study/.
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