<p>My classes begin in a week and they include fluid dynamics, an advanced engineering math class that focuses on higher-leveled math and programming skills needed for engineering, and a separations process class. These are going to be the hardest classes I've ever taken in my life. My goal is to get into the honors program at my school and to do that I want to set myself up to ease into my finals, get a 100% in everything, and leave my professors and classmates awestruck. Of course this has never happened before but that is my goal. </p>
<p>I have read Cal Newport's "How to be a Straight-A student" three times and intend to follow most of his advice except I'll maybe read my textbooks in case I don't understand something taught in lectures. I am the type of person who needs to be 5 weeks ahead of the rest of my classmates in order to get a good grade because I feel like everyone else in my major is a genius.</p>
<p>I also do plan on making a schedule of what I'm going to do everyday, but I have noticed that I when I get frustrated with my studies, my mind just shuts down and I can't do work anymore, at least not for a while. So I'm wondering what tips I can use to overcome frustration at myself and my thinking that I'm not good enough to be an engineer?</p>
<p>Also, what are any of your top tips to do extremely well in your engineering classes, things you wish people told you before you went off to college?</p>
<p>Edit: I think it's also useful to point out that my scholarship to the school pays for a grad student to tutor me in my courses. I regrettably didn't use him a lot last year though.</p>
<p>I was in honors engineering and graduated with a 3.8+ GPA, but I still made a couple of Cs and a few Bs! College is HARD. You WILL NOT make all 100s, most likely not even all As.</p>
<p>Having said that, I found that going to profs’ office hours often helped a lot. Ask lots of questions! I also got involved in study groups whenever possible. I got a tutor in the second semester of physics as well as electrical circuits. I took extensive notes in class and studied HARD. It helped me to rewrite a lot of the notes, but that might not work for somebody else.</p>
<p>I wish people had told me what I just posted! I freaked out when I got a 45 on my first college exam, in physics! I had a 98.8 GPA in high school! I thought I was going to flunk out of college my first semester. But I hung in there and got a B that semester. Second semester was one of my Cs.</p>
<p>Can you elaborate on how you studied hard? Like did you read the textbook a lot and/or did you do a bunch of problems that weren’t assigned along with your homework?</p>
<p>You will find that the pleasure from showing off grades is generally quite short-lived. It is possible to ace everything, but it simply isn’t worth doing. You learn much more from taking additional difficult classes and getting some B and C grades than from just overstudying for your core classes.</p>
<p>How much effect do your high school grades have on your life now? A few years from now, your grades here will be the same. You will have some job or some graduate school, and that will be the end of that. Worrying about that sort of thing is just a waste of energy.</p>
Be capable of earning the A through brute force (all the stuff you entered above). It probably goes without saying, but this requires an already decent baseline level of talent.
Be resourceful, find solutions manuals, past tests (especially from the same prof), or even past homework sets (preferably worked out) in case the class doesn’t offer many sample problems. Students ahead of you and online sites are places to look for these.
Find someone in your major smarter than you, in your classes, and equally hard working. Be their friend as well as a good go to resource (see step 2). They will be the primary person to check your answers with as well as a good person to partner with for labs.
Establish a network of like minded people in your major that are willing to pool resources with you. This doesn’t have to be a study group per se, in fact it works better as needed one-offs so you don’t become dependent on each other. </p>
<p>Staying on top of things is admirable, but it really is more a function of stress than understanding. Basically how easily would you like to accomplish your straight A average. If you start adding EC’s you will sacrifice lead time and eventually lag. This is where the network and resources act as a safety net. There is a limit to this obviously. </p>
<p>In the end your 4.0 doesn’t impress anyone outside of your academic circle. If you want a real challenge go out and learn a completely new skill (I.e. new programming language while working on a project, learning how to build microelectronic devices-from design of pcb to signal processing).</p>
<p>@NeoDymium The courses I’m taking are the hardest of my major, so I’ve heard. And I feel like the greater the challenge, the greater the feeling I will have once I succeed in the classes. I still do look back at some high school classes as inspiration where I’ve had to persevere and work hard in order to get the top score in the class and hopefully the same happens to me at the end of this quarter.</p>
<p>@colorado_mom I have a 3.18 gpa now so I’ve always been a B student, unable to make that push to the top. At the end of my classes I would usually only understand the what and the why or the what and the how of multiple concepts and not all three at the same time.</p>
<p>@eyemgh I’ve been using Cal’s advice since the end of Fall quarter and my current gpa has increased by a lot since then. I would have gotten all A’s last quarter but one of my engineering professors was an anomaly: he only gave out two homework problems and 3 example problems every week. I thus just used those problems to study from and that turned out to not be enough when I had to apply the concepts in novel ideas for the final. It’s just that when I study the same problems over and over again I automatically memorize the steps and forget the underlying techniques.</p>
<p>You’ve got all the “tricks” then and it sounds like they’re working. By far, the two most important concepts are scheduling and timed studying. Get your work done between classes in a scheduled manner, set a timer on your phone for a segment as short as 30 minutes and no longer than 50, put it in airplane mode so it cuts out the anticipation of an email, call or text, and go hard while in that mode. Then study to deeply understand the concept particularly how it will relate to engineering. Old tests are also particularly helpful in prepping for exams. Exact problems don’t tend to repeat, but styles and tricks do. Sounds though like you’re well on your way. Good luck!</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. I still feel really scared though. My classmates are far superior to me in terms of intellect and their ability to grasp concepts well. Will my time management skills and perseverance be enough to tip the balance in my favor?</p>
<p>In my experience, engineering students are, on average, no smarter than any other students in the hard sciences. However, engineering students definitely have a much stronger need to pretend otherwise. Chances are, with the exception of a select few who really are that smart, everyone in your class is just pretending to be that good at it. </p>
<p>“My classmates are far superior to me in terms of intellect and their ability to grasp concepts well.” - If that were true, then maybe they would deserve the higher grades… But my guess is they mostly just have more confidence. Either way, good study habits will be useful. </p>
<p>Also consider joining a study group to share knowledge. You may have some good insights that add to the mix. </p>
<p>Study when you capable of absorbing. Focusing is better than spend a lot of hours . I also read many books from the same subject in the library until it becomes second nature. I really understand this stuff. When you tire rest. I never did any homework and never studied from the homework but somehow I’ve aced my tests.</p>
<p>I’ll expand on this with my own personal experiences.</p>
<p>Unless they’re shoving their midterms and hw grades in your face, which is a ■■■■■■ thing to do, then you’re probably getting this impression because there are a couple of arrogant/insecure kids who like to show off what they know and brow beat anyone who will let them. The thing with that is, in my experience, the people who act this way aren’t actually the smartest kids in the class. The ones who are constantly questioning themselves and the material tend to get the best understanding of it, especially come test time. These are also the ones who are most willing to share their thinking/methodology on any given problem with you, to see if they themselves understand the material well enough and more often than not they genuinely want to help teach others.</p>
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<p>I agree with this whole-heartedly. However, I’ve met more than my fair share of physics majors who act like they’re the next Feynman or Einstein and a few this semester who openly chuckled at the idea of an engineer in their upper level class when we were doing introductions. Unbeknownst to them, all last year in the prereq classes leading up to it, the 3 engineers in a class of 30-40 physics majors took the top 3 grade spots :-)</p>
<p>" I never did any homework and never studied from the homework but somehow I’ve aced my tests." - I did the opposite, with decent results. Each student needs to find a mix that works. </p>
I still do look back at some high school classes as inspiration where I’ve had to persevere and work hard in order to get the top score in the class and hopefully the same happens to me at the end of this quarter.</p>