I’m taking several courses at a community college this semester. They are part of the core curriculum for transfer to a 4 year school. The classes are pathetically easy, but I’d honestly rather sit at the wall and watch paint dry than actually do the work.
I paid more than $800 of my own hard-earned cash for these classes (with books and fees) and it is too late to get my money back.
I know somebody will tell me to get a menial, back-breaking, low-paying crap job, but I already work 40 hours a week at one of those (I’m a grocery store stocker) and I still just don’t care.
I know there are plenty of smart, successful students here who could probably give a little advice and I sure would appreciate it.
This is too late for now but one solution is to take harder classes. I am the type of student that will literally flunk a class if it gets too easy. I went to one of the crappiest high schools in one of the crappiest school systems in the country and I flunked some classes because I refused to do the work. I couldn’t force myself to do it. Long story, I still got accepted at a very prestigious university. Most classes were hard as hell and I was A student after that. You might be the same way. There is nothing like a challenge to bring out the best in some people.
I could tell you about studying systems and allocating X time per day to a class but that never worked for me at all.
A study group can be pretty helpful as long as the group is structured and actually focuses on the class. I don’t know how many people would be interested if the classes are that easy though.
What Shagnasty said, but I would also like to add:
I love school supplies. School supply shopping makes me giddy. So, how do I keep myself entertained? I play with all my new crap! New paper, new highlighters, agenda, pens. . . it is all good as far as I am concerned.
Tell yourself that you’ll only allow yourself to do something you find enjoyable (like watching tv or coming online, or whatever) AFTER you’ve finished your homework for the day. That seems to help me stop putting it off. Good luck with your classes.
Survivor worked like this for me. I only watched it twice. Once, I got motivated to do a take-home exam I’d been putting off, the second time I got motivated to do my taxes :eek:
I have a Ph.D. and started my education at community college. Not only did I go to a pathetic high school where the only prerequisite to graduate was breathing, I was so scarred by my dismal high school career that I didn’t go to college until I was almost 30 and then I attended an inner-city CC that had some issues that sound similar to those you describe.
What I did was get extra-motivated in the classes I knew would be part of my career path and made sure the professors knew me through my projects and visiting them in office hours. In other words, I totally dorked out. I transferred to Major BigTime U after two years at CC and went on to get an M.A. and Ph.D. at a highly-accelerated rate. My ability to do this came of the hyper-discipline I developed at the CC level.
While your own path might not be trajected toward an advanced degree, the old saw that “you get what you put into it” might be one way for you to look at your education. I might add that being a brilliant student in a pond of mediocrity can open a lot of doors: scholarships, letters of recommendations, even job opps.
And, the teacher in me just has to end with: “you will never, ever, regret getting an education!”
Jennshark took the words right out of my mouth: delve so deeply into the material you wow your professors and annoy the crap out of your classmates who just want to coast through an easy class. I think of it like a particularly boring video game. You might get so bored you’re tempted to stop playing, but then one day you decide to see if you can get a perfect score. You obsess on it and cannot put the damn crappy thing down until you do it. It turns out to be more challenging than it would have been otherwise and holds your attention longer. Your Professors will eventually be writing glowing rec letters to Mario U. for you.
why do you go to school? to get an education. why is that important? knowledge, obviously. knowledge is essential to having any kind of a interesting and fun life. you could sit around and watch mtv all the time, but what does one glean from that? it comes down to finding what makes you happy/what you want to do in life. find those two things, and you’ll be motivated like a motherfucker. or have the abyss like sattua said.
time to go off on a tangent…
that’s why i would NEVER move to the suburbs. it’s a pathetic place to raise kids and grow as a person. there is no culture whatsoever. all that is there for kids to learn is the mall and movies. if that’s all a child has, how do you think they’ll grow up? at least a city can provide you the opportunities to actualize yourself.
Do you have children? Making a better life for my son and myself was a HUGE motivator. Education is the ladder.
Another vote for new, shiny school supplies. I looooooooove a new notebook. I also love keeping everything organized and in its place. I have one small table for only school stuff. If it got mixed in with my books, clothes, and magazines, it wouldn’t seem as special.
It sounds like you don’t currently really want to go to school. I did the school thing on and off for years while working retail jobs. Wasn’t very motivated to study because I didn’t have a clear goal. Then I finally got tired of working 60 hour weeks and earning $17,000 a year. I found a major that interested me (civil enigneering) and a school I wanted to go to. So I busted my butt to move and get good grades at the local community college so I could get into a good school.
The point is I didn’t start working hard until I really wanted to get somewhere. Even then I still occasionally had trouble with some classes (Texas Government was the least interesting class ever) but I just kept “my eyes on the prize” (stupid hackneyed phrase that really did help me as a mantra) and finished. You might want to just save your money and not do school for a while. Eventually, you’ll either find something you like to do that doesn’t require school or get so tired of the schlep job grind that you’ll have the motivation to finish.
What motivated me was thinking about my future. I knew that if I wanted to get into a good grad school program, I would have to study my ass off to get good grades. I would always remind myself what a difference in my GPA an A would make compared a to B (or worse, a C or below), and plus it was fun to brag to my friends/family about my high GPA. Studying wasn’t fun, but daydreaming about how great my future was going to be was.
Get halfway through your degree, have 30k+ in loans, and realize that you HAVE to finish, or you will be screwed with 1/3 of a housepayment for nothing.
I used to schedule 6 or 7 classes a semester, then quickly drop the two or three that had (what I considered to be) bad teachers, that way I was still full-time. For me, the prof is about 90% of the class. I have taken subjects that I had absolutely no interest in, but I loved the class because of a good prof, and I have taken classes in subjects that I really liked, but dropped the course because I couldn’t stand the prof. YMMV. Good luck.
