Author: Sabour Al-Kandari

You’ve left high school to finally embark upon the “real-world”. All of a sudden expenses went from field trips, lunch and maybe the bus into thousands per semester and hundreds per book. Classes went from students being an eraser’s throw away (good times) to titanic lecture halls in the hundreds. No doubt a lot of people take hits in their marks/GPA and achieving less may just stick with you well into the rest of your education – but just because university is different doesn’t mean you can’t do as well or even better while you’re here. It’s easy to get comfortable with personal underachievement when following the graduation carrot-on-a-stick, but as a Muslim who has made the decision to become skilled in worldly knowledge and has invested a huge amount of (healthy-life) time and money – it only makes sense to demand the very best from your personal potential, maximize the efficiency of these resources and not let them be squandered.

Abdullah bin Abbas (Radiallau Anhu) reports that The Messenger of Allah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said: “There are two bounties of Allah wherein most people are deceived, health and free time”.
[Bukhari]

I use the word “personal-potential” to highlight that everyone’s capabilities are different. You’re not here to measure yourself according to Mr. 9.0 (who isn’t just a legend by the way) but according to where you stand. A C+ may either be a great personal success for a D student or a failure for an A student. Although I must say I do believe success in school has much more to do with nurture than nature.

Anywhoo, every time I give advice about school I seem to always get to the same talking points – so it’s about time I sorted it all into an article and saved myself some breath. This article is geared towards university students but a lot of the ideas are general and can be extrapolated for anyone to benefit insh’Allah.

Scheduling

First things first, you MUST know your degree program and all of its requirements like the back of your hand (all the way up to 4^th year). You need this info to plan well ahead and do your best to beautify your semester’s schedule. This thing is going to be your soul-mate for the next three months so choose wisely and be very persistent and stubborn in getting what you want. I haven’t had a single semester where I wasn’t constantly tweaking my schedule and making rearrangements even after school started to get the best lab, tutorial or lecture. A lot of the time students really don’t take this as seriously as they should only to get owned mid way through and get their cash hustled by York on the drop date.

You're looking for a "middle-path" between these two extremes.

As for what makes a good schedule, that’s for you to decide and everyone is a bit different. It depends on your other activities, your work schedule and your commuting as well. If you live right beside campus coming 5 days a week might not be an issue for you, but if you have an hour and a half commute then having a day or two off will cut you a break.

The main idea though is you want to maximize your efficiency and use of time. You don’t want big holes where you have nothing to do and you don’t want the wrong kind of conflicts either. Some conflicts are OK and recommended because they are doable and give you a nice schedule in the end.

Also, ratemyprofessors.com is your bestest best friend fo eva. Do not be ashamed to internet stalk to oblivion and find out everything you can about a professor and the course you’re taking – and make decisions based on the information you get. Don’t underestimate the power of preparation, even if you find out he has a dog you know what to kidnap in case he pulls a fast one for the exam (muahaha). Seriously though this has made a world of difference for me and I’ve avoided so many headaches and/or prepared myself for them.

Lectures

You’re probably used to hearing the whole “go to every single lecture and take down notes diligently” cliché but that’s not always the most wholesome advice. I completely agree with the attendance part, in most cases, you have to be out of your mind to miss lecture – you will fall behind and you will pay for it. Since this is the clearest advice I can give I’ll say it again, YOUR MARKS WILL BE HIGHER IF YOU GO TO EVERY LECTURE AND TUTORIAL! No exceptions, even if your professor sucks it’s an hour or two spent that you would have otherwise wasted in the MSA comparing beards anyway. Look, I screw up and skip too but don’t justify it – it’s a bad move that results from poor planning, so don’t fool yourself. Learning is much more efficient in class time and tutorial and in most cases you have to spend hours just to get ready to begin learning what you missed. Even if you do learn faster at home lecture becomes your safety net and for a small investment in time you gain more exposure to the material so again, your marks go higher.

As for the actual time in lecture and tutorial, the following advice may seem a little unorthodox to some people. Paying attention and understanding the material in class is a much higher priority than taking notes. I see the vast majority of students diligently regurgitating notes with little to no understanding of the material in question and end up wasting the entire point of going to lecture and tutorial – which is to learn and be exposed to the subject. The textbook and lecture slides don’t need you to rewrite everything again, they are there for a reason and if you don’t know what you’re writing you’re just a printer. It’s more important that you remain human and sit there, pay careful attention, swirl the material around in your head, build neural connections with other knowledge, try to make sense of it, and ask questions if you don’t. I personally don’t take notes for most of my classes unless there is a lot of undocumented material being presented that I can’t access later. Kicking notes completely out the window like I have might be a little extreme because writing good notes is really helpful – just remember it’s not the priority, not by a long shot.

Oh and while you’re in lecture, please turn away from Facebook, your cell phone, and Starcraft (you suck anyway). There’s no point, if you try to half-do two things you end up less than half-doing and double failing. I completely understand some Profs are so horrible they are practically breathing out chloroform fumes when they speak, but you have to do your best to hang on and not give in. Sleep well the night before, bring snacks, and enjoy the show (I will bring popcorn to a lecture one day insh’Allah).

Labs

(If you don’t have labs you can skip this section)

When I think of students in the laboratory the only words that fit perfectly that I can think of is a phrase in Pashto, “war khata”. I really don’t know how to translate that, but it’s a lot like being a chicken with your head cut off. It’s when you’re confused, nervous, inefficient and just plain not using your head. No worries it happens to everyone, but sooner or later you should figure out the vibe of the laboratory and realize how repetitive and similar most labs are. Everyone wants to get out of there asap, so in order to prevent this confusion and inefficiency, reading the lab manual isn’t enough. You have to understand the lab in question and it’s not that hard to figure them out. Take for example this part I took right out of my CHEM 3030 lab manual:

Dissolve 2.5 g of [Co(NH₃)₄CO₃]NO₃ in 25 mL of water and carefully add concentrated HCl (2 to 4 mL) until all of the CO₂ is expelled. Neutralize with concentrated aqueous NH₃, and then add about 1 mL excess. Heat for 20 minutes, again avoid boiling….

To me that just translates into “take this thingy and put stuff in it” – and that’s most of the lab. The rest of the manual goes on to say “put funky stuff in machine and press print graph”. Remember you are actually going to reread the lab manual a zillion times again during the lab so there’s no point in getting tangled with the individual measurements and specifics. Just understand the jist of it, the important stuff/precautions and simplify! Oh and try to understand the actual science behind what you’re doing so you can actually learn something and appreciate the awesomeness of what you’re doing (unless you’re in bio1010 – nothing to learn in those labs lolol). Also, try to get away from negativity and the “oh man labs suck” attitude as much as you can, it just makes your life harder.

As for writing reports, I must have pumped out about 20 reports this semester alone (alhamdulillah I’m still alive). You get faster at them as you go along and each class and TA has their own style for the level of detail (read: redundant explanations and overkill of the subject) they expect. It’s really helpful to actually know what you did in the lab. Also, my gr.12 physics teacher taught me a technique where he would just run through every section (intro, results, discussion) and jot down quick points for what needs to be there to make it easier to fill in later. If you understand the lab just tabulate the results/calculations nicely (I usually do this first) then have quick explanations of what went down in the relevant sections and if your marker wants wordy jargon you can build that around this core.

Essays

(If you don’t have essays you can skip this section)

One of my biggest criticisms of the current school system is the weakness of the writing skill it pumps out in its students. The issue with good writing is that it’s an art and a science at the same time. It requires a lot of core logic in the skeleton but a lot of stylistic sense to build around it. Nobody is born knowing how to write by the way, and so these are skills that you have to practice with, take continual criticism with and nurture throughout your life alongside with strong speaking which is connected closely. This is something that you will reap the benefits from your whole life. The secret here is to thrive off criticism and constantly push yourself to figure out where you can get better – don’t ever get comfortable with the level you’re at.

Learning by observation is excellent for this, and so you have to develop a personal love of reading. There are zillions of topics out there and many blogs on different subjects from Islamic studies to useful/interesting worldly knowledge, so you have to figure out what you’re interested in and indulge into the world of the pen. A lot of the time people who are usually good at writing read more than others.

Aside from this work at the personal level, for actual assignments you have all the resources available to you with professors/TA’s/peers that will edit and give you the feedback that you need, but then another problem sprouts up…

LAZINESS. The vast majority of weak writing (and speaking) does not have the proper time and effort put into it. You need to edit, edit, edit and then edit again. This isn’t just about spending hours and hours but actually spending hours and hours efficiently and targeting the right issues. If your core skeleton is weak and you don’t have strong and clear arguments and research to back up your thesis, pulling an all-nighter to rephrase all your paragraphs isn’t going to help. Similarly, if you have all the research and arguments to support a well-defined thesis but your writing has no natural flow, is confusing, hard-to-understand and riddled with grammatical and spelling errors more research isn’t going to help either. Again, you need to get feedback from others because a lot of the time things sound good in your head but don’t read the same when most people are looking at it.

Evaluations: Tests and Exams

Here it is, crunch time! Regardless of how hard you worked and how much you know the material, it all goes through the filter of how well you perform on the evaluations. This is why, and most people still don’t get this, test taking is an art and science in and of itself.

My December schedule =)

I should have put this in the “scheduling section”, but aside from labs/assignments this is where the beauty of having an agenda really shines. I personally use the calendar part (with two months on one page) of the York agenda to fill with all the due dates, tests and assignments (and other reminders) to really see and plan ahead. You know, having three exams in two days isn’t as big of a surprise or an issue when you’ve been seeing it on your desk for a month and a half beforehand and can figure out where the open spaces are for good studying.

On top of this, you really need to find yourself a nice place to study. A nice, comfortable, quiet zone of awesome where you can concentrate on your work and have all the resources you need (books, paper, internet) to do any and every kind of studying and/or plan for world domination. A lot of people really love studying at school and in the library which I don’t quite understand to be honest, but hey whatever works best for you. For me personally my optimal studying place is in my room at my desk with the door closed. I have all my books and utensils and can go to my computer to access online resources (like googling subjects and looking for helpful websites/videos) and I can take enjoyable breaks and grab food without having to pack everything or make time and money wasting trips to the student center.

As for studying itself, I always say there’s a difference between studying hard and studying right. You can study hard for a zillion hours and pull all-nighters but it won’t make any difference if you are inefficient. What defines efficiency depends on the nature of the course, the material and the professor. Some courses are really heavy duty memorization (I’m disgusted by this more than you are) so you need to be able to list out all the important stuff you learned from going to lecture and asking the professor and learn memorization techniques like association, grouping, and repetition. If you try this with other courses however that are heavy problem-solving you’re going to be turned into road kill. For those you need to actually learn to solve problems ON YOUR OWN and develop those skills which you’ll only get from doing the assigned problem sets and going to tutorials. I can’t count the number of students in chemistry/physics courses that think they can get away with reading the textbook for hours and walk into the exam. Or, they do the problem sets but only through LOOKING AT EVERY ANSWER without learning to do it on their own. The formula for success is very simple; you’re not going to have the answers on a test. Figure out what you’re going to have to do for the exam (remember stuff/solve problems etc) and practice doing that on your own in a simulated test environment.

This is actually one of the reasons organic chemistry (CHEM 2020) has a reputation for being such a hard course, because it requires serious memorization, understanding the concepts and being a pro at problem solving at an even higher level than most people are used to. What happens is a lot of students (especially biology noobs) walk in and see the stuff as simple and easy to remember at the superficial level but don’t fully understand the high degree of actual comprehension, ingenuity and problem-solving skill it requires to answer the questions on the test. So please, if you’re in organic chemistry, do all the problem sets and be able to solve the questions on your own.

Being able to predict what type of questions you’ll get on the test and understanding your professor’s style is another skill that you have to develop as you go along.

Conclusion

As stated in the beginning, I am convinced that doing well in school usually has more to do with nurture (putting in the time, effort and work to grow) rather than nature (being born smart). Again, are you here to pay with time and money to be a sub-par version of yourself, or are you here to reap the benefits and grow from being challenged? Get motivated, and get rid of laziness and procrastination because those are diseases that will affect everything you do for the rest of your life – not just school.

The final point I want to make is one of the most important things I learned about work-ethic and ties the constant theme of efficiency together. A true lazy student never procrastinates. Laziness stems from the desire to minimize work, but procrastination implies you have to do it sooner or later (choosing later). The contradiction here is that procrastination actually increases the work load you have, and makes things more difficult and punishing and the only way to balance out the increase in work load is to do a worse job. Efficiency is really just a fusion of laziness and the desire to do a good job. As a result, you use your brain to target the right things to minimize the overall work load but maximize results. So if you’re in school, get efficient! Get your schedule organized, don’t procrastinate and think critically about how to get the most out of your time. You’ll do a better job, have less work to do and actually enjoy the time you spend at school!

Oh, and learn to relax and enjoy play time as well. Believe it or not, a lot of people who truly don’t know how to work don’t know how to have fun either because of inefficient wasting of time. Honestly, if you spend 6 hours for a 1 hour study session because of distractions and piling up studying, you just lost 5 hours of free fun time.

Like I said on the marriage article, I’m hardly an expert. So please, add to the discussion with your own knowledge, experience and study tips so we can all benefit insh’Allah.
May Allah grant us all success in this life and the next and make our education full of barakah, easy and fun. Ameen!