"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."
A comment sometimes heard about students who do extremely well in school is that they are geeks who have no life beyond school. We beg to differ. Have you ever really thought about why any student, yup even you, SHOULD get supergrades?

Here are some ideas to stimulate your appetite for them:

• self-esteem improves. When you do something really well and honestly, you can't help but feel great about it.
• you get positive attention. Others take note of excellence and will give you opportunities that you would not ordinarily get. You will be in demand. Isn't that the kind of attention you want? Check around. The busiest people are always asked to do things because everybody knows they get things done. Isn't it a privilege when somebody recognizes your abilities and asks you for help or to lead something important!
• scholarships come your way. Top students get the scholarships and in many cases get almost all their post high school education for free. Think about this. In your whole life, you only have to get supergrades for about 4-5 years in high school and then for 3-4 years in university - with summers off.
• career options expand. Excellence always draws the attention of employers and leaders in society. People will be begging to hire you instead of the other way around. You will be almost guaranteed of getting a great job after graduating.
• life after graduation is better. After all the struggling, learning, discipline, researching, grappling with concepts, etc. you will be far better equipped to handle the problems and situations that come up in life. Ask any adult and they will tell you life is easier and more satisfying when you know how to learn quickly and efficiently and you know a lot more and/or can do a lot more than others.

Important Ways to Get Super Grades

• Establish Attitudes for Success
• Know Your Learning Style
• Discipline Yourself
• Play Mind Games
• Value Your Time
• Be a Creative Learner
• Notice Little Things That Teachers Do
• Relax, Eat Properly and Get Proper Sleep
• Understand How Your Senses Work
• Keep Your Records Straight

Final Comment:
A wise person was once quoted as saying, "The harder I work, the luckier I get."
Supergrades are not achieved through dumb luck. Anybody can work for them. As time goes on, it gets easier to do harder work. Strange idea but true.

Good luck. Let us know when you achieve supergrades and what worked for you. We will pass it on to others.

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Establish Attitudes for Success

These are some positive attitudes leading to supergrades:

• I do my best when I have firmly fixed in my mind that I WILL achieve something.
• I am a professional student and I will behave in a professional manner.
• There is a big difference between "I want" and "I need". I must need more than I want.
• I must allow the wonders and beauty of creation to unfold in front of me. Some are hidden and I must search them out. I must have curiosity.
• Learn a little about everything and everything about something.
• Hard courses are more meaningful and eventually more useful than easy ones.
• I want to understand not just know.
• I must make an effort to find the good in my learning not just the bad. I will save myself a lot of aggravation by judging the value of this course AT THE END of it not now.
• Somebody else actually likes this course, so what am I missing?
• I don't know when I might need the knowledge from any course. I will learn as much as I can in each so that I will be prepared for anything.
• I will stay positive and not complain.
• I will sometimes attempt things that are totally outside of what I normally do.

Know Your Learning Style

• Do I do my best when I look, listen or read?
• Do I work best in the morning, afternoon, evening?
• How easily am I distracted and what can I do to reduce the possibilities?
• Is it better for me to sit near the front or back, inside or outside rows, middle of classes?
• Do I need time to digest stuff or do I absorb it pretty quickly?
• How quickly do I really work?

Answer these serious questions. Know yourself as a learner. Find creative ways to accentuate the positive and negate the negative. You will get closer to supergrades.

Discipline Yourself

• A job is easier to complete after you start it. That hard part is starting. Do it.
• Make your motto: If I start something, I will finish it. Pin it up somewhere and read it daily. Your brain will slowly make it happen.
• ALWAYS keep your ultimate goal in mind and you will be more likely to do the work to get there.
• Discipline helps fight the most common causes of low grades: laziness, lack of skills and procrastination.
• Everything you do and submit to teachers is worth marks. Losing the easy ones is dumb.
• Action soon overcomes laziness. Start working no matter how much you may dislike it.
• Putting things off makes the situation worse. Take control. Make your body start the task even while your mind is fighting to resist.

Discipline is a great help in achieving supergrades.

Play Mind Games

People often want to do anything but what they are supposed to. If you feel you are going to be impulsive or procrastinate, mind games can be useful. You will recognize related situations as you read these:

• I will do what I must do now. I won't lose because I am postponing what I want to do till later.
• If I do this now, I will give myself a reward later. This is what it will be....
• I don't have to watch this TV program now because it will be exactly the same later played back on the VCR.
• People have a lot invested in me so I better give them a return for their money. What am I worth and how much interest do they deserve?
• I will experiment to see if my life becomes utterly destroyed if I don't do/watch this other thing right now. (Psst. It won't!)
• Create a personal rant: "I will be the greatest student on earth by doing my best" or "I am a good and worthwhile person and can handle tough school work." These are positive affirmations that you can make up and say every day. You will start believing the idea and behaving to make it come true.
• I won't let a subject defeat me. I will defeat the subject.

Get the supergrades idea firmly entrenched in your mind in whatever way you can!

Value Your Time

To get supergrades, be aware of your time. There is only one life to live and some people beg for more when it is too late. Live each moment and fill it with something productive and meaningful whether it be work or relaxation.
Here are some ways to control time the DiscoverTeenergy way:

• Fill small breaks with little jobs

e.g. a room can be cleaned during the commercials of a one hour show, read during lunch, tape-record notes and study on the bus. This doesn't mean you have to be on the go 100% of the time. Be alert to when there are golden opportunities to fill what appears to be down, lost or in-between time. (P.S. We don't want to get too serious here. Relax once in a while too.)
• Find out how much time you are on task

(Paying attention means a willingness to give time). Do this: At the beginning of a class, draw a line at the top of your notepaper. Place a starting mark on the left end and then put a mark further down the line each time you start paying attention to something different. Label the sections. For example: on task -1min., daydreamed-2 min., on task-5 min., talked-1 min., on task-8 min., thought about girlfriend/boyfriend-5 min. You might be surprised by how much or how little time you actually spend on task. Learning becomes very fragmented if you are off task.
 
Paying attention and staying on task takes you closer to supergrades status.
• Begin projects, studies, and reports on the day you get the assignment

Do an outline, jot down what you already know, create a framework for researching. Do anything related to the topic, just start it THAT DAY. Here's why:
• It gives your brain a chance to get rolling on the topic. You will be on the alert for related information in conversations, magazines, texts, TV, and other experiences during the day
• It allows you to set YOUR own deadline/due date. There will be virtually no pressure or stress because you are working to YOUR deadline not somebody else's
• during the time leading up to the teacher's due date, you might find new information that can be added to the finished work to make it even better
• when you start and finish early, you won't worry about:
  • emergencies taking you out of the house
  • illness which might prevent completion
  • computer or printing breakdown
  • having to make up lame excuses
  • getting enough or the right information
• Do you really want stress with you for the entire week, month, semester, right up to the assignment due day? Doesn't it make sense to worry about it for as short a time as possible?
• If you have difficulties, ask for help


• Don't waste time struggling with it if you have reached a learning wall.
• Don't ask someone who is as clued out as you are. An expert can solve it for you quickly and you can go on.
• If you don't understand something, get the help as quickly as possible so that your understanding can continue to build on correct knowledge.
Don't be afraid to ask. Be afraid of what happens if you don't ask.
• Work to deadlines


• Confine the job to a reasonable amount of time. At the beginning of any task, start by deciding how long it might take or the amount of time you are prepared to give it.
• Set an alarm and work to your deadline. This is a very good way to make efficient use of time. You will work faster and more efficiently.
• Reward yourself if you meet the deadlines. However, reset the alarm for extra time if needed and don't sacrifice quality for speed.
• Keep a neat and tidy workplace


• You save time if you don't have to look around for things.
• Organize files and shelves.

(Murphy's Law: A job always seems to get done in the time that is allotted to it.)

Be a Creative Learner

Talk to and listen to the smartest people you know and get them to tell you their little secrets of learning. We now present some of their creative ways to get supergrades:

• Write a song/poem about the information
  (e.g. " Doing the Digestive System Stomp") Use some special skill or talent that you have and apply it to studying. How you learn in one area of life can be applied to others.
• Draw pictures
  that are suggested by the words in your text book (a picture is worth a thousand words and easy to see in your head) Vocabulary words are easier to remember if you can see what each represents and also how each relates to other things in the picture .
• Make up memory games
  HOMES - Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior.
   
  Here is another one: H. Helman Liked to Be a B or C student. NO Fun said Nervy Nate. M(e)g AlSiPS and ClArK Can't understand why. (the underlined letters in these easy to learn sentences are the letters of the first 20 elements of the periodic table. What a great trigger for recalling them on tests/exams and as a bonus, they are in proper order too.)
• Pretend you are the greatest expert on the topic
  Give a speech to world experts who are attending the conference you have organized. You can see them all in your mirror. Evaluate your performance. Do you really know your stuff or do you need to do a little more learning?
• Teach somebody else what you know
  A study team can be very effective for this. Parents can be made smarter too. The best way to find out if you know something is by teaching it to somebody else.
• Visualize a movie in your head
  Have information relate and interact until it can be played from start to finish with it clearly in your mind. Imaginary rehearsal of how you will be at tests/exams is an important skill to learn also.
• Make your learning enjoyable
  Joke and laugh and feel excited about what you are learning, "thirst" for the knowledge in it, play creatively with the ideas and your mind will stay open and receptive to the new learning.

Notice Little Things That Teachers Do

Teachers often unconsciously, in their body language and how they say things, give away what is likely to be on tests and exams. If you observe and listen, you can learn a lot that might help you to get supergrades.

Here is what to look and listen for when it comes to teachers. Something will have a greater chance of being on a test/exam if:

• The teacher gives you lots of notes and handouts on a particular part of the topic
• The teacher hesitates when asked about whether something will be on a test/exam
• You are aware that the teacher likes some topics better for personal reasons
• You noticed the teacher put some extra energy into a topic when it was taught
• It is a major topic in the section of your textbook
• The topic is covered during a test/exam review. NEVER miss reviews!!!
• During a lesson, the teacher tells you how importance the topic is. Develop a code and mark your notes.
• There are noticeable changes in the teacher's facial expressions and/or general body language when you ask if something will be on a test or exam

Relax, Eat Properly and Get Proper Sleep

When you are relaxed, well fed and rested, your mind functions better. It stays wide open and receptive, processes information more efficiently, associates ideas more readily, absorbs more freely and willingly, wants to be helpful in an energetic way. Let's look at the ideas one by one:

• Relaxing
• prevents mental blocks
• keeps the mind open instead of narrowed, memory is increases
• allows energy to go into thinking rather than stress control in the body
• stimulates creative play with ideas
Buy some audio relaxation tapes or take a course in yoga, meditation or relaxation. Do it regularly to train your body and mind. This is an easily learned "mind over matter" skill that can be learned by anyone.
• Eating Properly & Drinking 8-10 Glasses of Water Each Day
• provides steady levels of energy throughout the day
• provides the nutrients and fluids for optimal brain functioning
• quiets the body so the mind doesn't have to think about getting food for it
• provides stamina to concentrate on a task over a long period of time
• Getting Proper Sleep
• allows the body to repair itself during a down time
• lets the body rebuild brain cell connections
• increases alertness level during waking time
• allows important chemicals to balance themselves throughout the body giving a sense of wellness
Sleep is not intended to provide energy. During sleep time, body repair work is greater than the destruction of cells. During awake time the destruction of cells is usually at a faster rate than the repair work.

Understand How Your Senses Work

The following apply to all of the human senses. The list suggests the order in which we get sensory input to the brain and eventually into memory.

• scanning

a broad, general "sweep" to get an idea of what is there
• searching

picking out the details of what is sensed. This may be done repeatedly while searching
• focussing

selecting something to stand out from the foreground and background and making it clear in the mind's eye in the middle ground. This will now make one thing stand out from everything else
• attention
  a willingness to give time to something. A person's attention span is the time willingly given to something that is being focussed on
• concentration

a combination of attention and creative thinking to achieve understanding of something

Keep Your Records Straight

Daily Notes

• add your own ideas to copied teacher notes. Make them personally meaningful.
• keep notes neat, dated, numbered, sorted by subject, meticulously up-to-date.
• develop a colour code to indicate easy, questionable, difficult work. This helps you to put special emphasis on things at study time. Colour codes might also encourage you to get teacher assistance if necessary.
• keep a special page at the front of all notes for all assignments and homework.
• draw pictures in the margins, quick sketches, diagrams, etc., anything to help you remember. Notes do not all have to be in words.
• develop your own shorthand to save time and effort in recording information.

Reviews for Tests/Exams

• sort notes into study packages. Make new notes about the old notes.
• prepare a study schedule based on the number of packages. Check things off or cross them out as you do them. This will be a visual sign that things are getting done.
• study by writing. This is the format of your tests/exams. You will not be asked to read at most exams or merely think about the answers. You will be asked to write answers, so get lots of practice.

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