Ever since I was fifteen or sixteen years old, I couldn’t wait to go off to university and experience the student lifestyle. I couldn’t have cared less about the classes—I wanted to experience the wild parties and pub nights that the students experienced in all my favourite movies! I managed to get decent enough grades in high school to get into a respectable college, and I moved into residence for my first year. Quickly, I got swept up in the dorm’s social life, and began partying nearly every night. I think during the first three weeks, I read a book once for half an hour. When midterms rolled around, I started to panic since I had done so little studying, and I’d also done pretty poorly on the assignments I’d managed to hand in.
I ended up failing all of my midterms, and I discovered that meant that I was nearly failing all my courses. That didn’t please my parents, who said I would have to move back home and commute if I didn’t pull up my socks. Luckily, a more serious student on my floor told me about “Max Grades Min Effort,” which she’d come across online when she’d been searching for resources to use for a sociology assignment. “Max Grades Min Effort” is a program that teaches students more effective studying techniques. It was created by Jacky Truong, who managed to overcome his problems in school to graduate in the top 5% of his class with a civil engineering degree. Since he’d nearly been flunking out of school at one point, his story gave me confidence that I could eventually reverse my bad grades. I ordered the entire “Max Grades Min Effort” program for an introductory price of $47 (this special is still on!), and downloaded the five e-books, plus the Gantt Chart time management software and the 14-day Action Plan. The other student from my dorm told me to focus on the “Time Management” section of the program, so I did.
After I read the Time Management module, I realized that I had no time management skills at all. I just partied and studied whenever I felt like it, and definitely ended up doing more of the former. To learn to manage my time, I followed Jacky’s recommendations in the module, and wrote down an estimate of how much time I spent doing non-studying activities per week. The time left over was the amount of time I had to study. After entering the amount of hours I spent in class, my only non-studying activity other than going out, I realized that I had loads of time to study—I was just using it all to party instead! To help myself get organized, I decided to create a schedule using the Gantt Chart time management software. I also put all the deadlines for my assignments on a regular calendar, which I hung just above my desk. Jacky offered me a strategy which would help me avoid leaving my assignments and studying until the last minute, as I dashed off to clubs instead—set deadlines for small tasks within an assignment, which fall before the final deadline, in order to keep yourself on track. For example, if I have to do an assignment which requires research and writing, I’ll set a deadline for when I have to complete the research. Meeting a deadline like this actually makes me feel like I’m accomplished something, so I’m more motivated to continue with the rest of the project.
I’ve set aside two nights, Friday and Saturday night, on which I go out, and put them on my schedule. If someone asks me to go out another night, I have to either say no or sacrifice one of my Friday or Saturday nights in order to go out that night. I’ve been pretty good at sticking to my restricted partying times, because I’ve told my friends on the floor about them, and there’s always someone who will tell me to get back to my books if I try to go to an extra party. In one of the “Max Grades Min Effort” modules, Jacky recommends that if you want to be held accountable for a certain goal, you must talk to people you know about it. While I’ll never be the type of person who stays in all the time, I’ve come to enjoy it some nights; some of the books and poems I have to read for English class are actually pretty interesting, when I take the time to understand them.
If anyone else is having trouble putting down their “party hat” in order to hit the books, I strongly recommend that you order “Max Grades Min Effort” like I did. By the way, since I started using the program, I brought my grades up a great deal. I’ll never be Albert Einstein, but by the end of my second semester, I was getting all Bs and some grades of B+, just like I was in high school. If you want to turn over a new leaf like I did, go to this website and order “Max Grades Min Effort” using your PayPal account, credit card, or debit card
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