College Tip #14

"Find your study spot early."

Claim it, like a plot of soil in a Wild West land grab; like a hunting territory to be protected against orca and bears; like an ancient burial ground that brings things back to life only imbibed with mystical powers.

Like your college GPA depends on it.

You see, gentle reader, it does. Your study spot will dictate your staying power in college. It is non-negotiable. You will either make the grade or you will not, and you will not if you don't carve out a quiet, sustainable place to lay your books and your technology and your caffeine about you, a wall of academia to firmly push the world back with, to be pushed upon by the world.

For the record, your dorm room (or other living situation) cannot count as your study spot. Because other people are there. The math is that simple:

[All things ready to be studied. A knock on the door. Enter any other human.]
HUMAN: "Hey, what are you doing?"
YOU: "Nothing, wanna do something?"
HUMAN: "Uh huh."
[You and other human exit room. Or stay in room, doing things not studying. End scene.]

 

As for me, I went Underground. To IWU's old Sheean Library, basement level, English literature side, southeast corner carrel. I had a carrel! Now this was pre-phone, gentle reader, and I did not yet own a laptop, so I carried nothing with me but books and pens and such. Antiquity, I know. But that is where I carried my stuff. And I sat there, staring at books and notes. I sat there and studied. And studied. And I wrote. I reorganized. I churned things over. I also daydreamed, and fantastically, I went wandering up and down those rows of literature. I read Yeats. And Frost. Yes, I was wasting time, but I was wasting time reading Poe and Steinbeck.

I became a student down there.

Listen, this isn't about pretention. Or impeding your social agenda. I don't care where your study spot is, or what decorations hang near it, or who else shares it, or how severely isolated it is, or what tree you had to fell in order to supply the fuel to heat the room, or other such madness. This isn't a contest. But it is about the very real reason why you are attending college in the fall. To do college-level academics.

You can't accomplish those without your study spot. Mine was in the basement. There were no windows, it smelled like old books, the carpet was clean but old and trampled, the lighting was poor, the desk had a weird rut burrowed into the right-hand side which made writing on single sheets of paper tricky, but it was mine. I had to find it out. And I still remember it, among other things.

Happy hunting.