Lazy Academic. Need Help ASAP

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

Hey!

I’m currently a High School Sophomore with a relatively high GPA (I’m an A student), but I need serious help.

Right now, I personally feel that I’m very distracted . I do all of my work, more often than not with effort, but I get distracted VERY, and when I mean VERY I mean it, easily (I can easily go from searching Lao Tzu to ISO 3166-1 on Wikipedia without hitting the search bar.) This takes time away to relax, or should I say, study, which I don’t really do at all because I get distracted during my work time. I just find studying to just be a long and boring process.

Currently, I have two hobbies, Speedcubing (I can solve a Rubik’s Cube in about 40 seconds or less) and Planet Hunting (I’m a member of Zooniverse.). I love to do them, and I find it annoying when I don’t have time to attend to them.

I did try Khan Academy, but I found it sort-of like if you were learning Spanish but the test was in Portuguese, and I don’t feel comfortable using it. I’m left with nothing to do, other than me just brushing everything off I found this to be a major flaw, because I saw myself struggling on parts of the PSAT, especially reading.

Speaking of which, I don’t read AT ALL. I usually read a little, then just stop. I’m not an avid reader, and I acknowledge that hurts my ability to analyze literature.

I currently take all Century Honors Classes and the one AP class that my school has to offer: AP World. I know that I should be taking more if I want to get into an exceptional college, but my schedule is loaded (I vouched to get rid of my Lunch for Spanish Class), so I really have no in-school social life other than side conversations. Whenever I don’t have work, I don’t dare to study, which I should, and I rest. I try to sneak in a few skype chats during work, but I know that’s a serious problem.

My organization is an issue. I take too long to do stuff, and overall, I can’t have relaxation time without being smacked heavy with work I should’ve done prior, which I find annoying. I should be with my family, not glued to a chair doing work.

I don’t want to drop any classes, but I just need to be more of a scholar if I want to go somewhere in life. I just need to organize more, I need to study, but I don’t know how…

2

Oh. one extra detail: How do I make studying fun?

3

someone please respond, I really do need advice.

4

For procrastinating, have you tried the old strategy of braking your time into chunks? 15-20 minutes of work/studying, followed by 5 minutes of break, going in a loop until you finish everything you have to do. Takes a little bit of willpower to stick to it, but it has helped me a TON with writing essays, as I hate them and so always put them off until the last minute if I don’t use this strategy.

I’m not really sure how to make studying fun. I’ve just always thought along the lines of “studying isn’t something you need, it’s something you want, because you want to pass your classes”. If I think of studying as something I want to do, it motivates me to keep going.

5

Well, there isn’t really a way to make studying fun, is there? Let me know if you find a way…

One thing I do in order to better motivate myself is playing music (8tracks is a godsend) or incentivizing my homework by promising to watch an episode of this or play 3ds for thirty minutes if I finish something.

And if you don’t like reading, chances are you’re not reading the right books that you like/the way schools force kids to read kill it for them. Try reading a classic (Grapes of Wrath, Tale of Two Cities, etc.) from really different eras and writing styles. Something might resonate with you then. I’d be more than happy to write you a list of book recommendations as well!

6

First of all, I think it’s great that you are reaching out for help with this early on because you have time to work on this prior to applying for college. Have you talked to your parents about your struggles? Lack of focus can be attributed to many things besides being lazy. Have you had a health check up recently? Are you sleeping? Anxious? Stressed? Eating healthy? From your grades and course load, clearly you are smart and people learn in different ways.

The previous posters have some good ideas, sometimes it’s just a matter of finding the right “study environment”. I always found if I had the tv on in the background or music playing, I could focus better.

I’m not a therapist but have family who had similar struggles - extremely smart, wanted to succeed but couldn’t focus and had a serious lack of organizational skills, messy room, etc. Feeling overwhelmed led to “freezing up” and doing mindless things, to kind of avoid everything. Turns out they had attention deficit disorder and didn’t find this out until dropping out of college freshman year.

I would recommend talking to your parents about your struggles, ask to see a therapist - try to find out the root cause of what is really going on in your head so you can learn about some new tools and coping skills that can help you focus and become better organized so that you can meet your goals in life.

I think it shows great maturity that you recognize this is a problem and I have no doubt you will be able to make a change and be successful!

7

Talk to your parents/guidance counselor about this…the most important thing is to get it addressed during HS as these things are worse to deal with at college without the support of family/friends/school.

8

I need a strategy. However, the only thing that is a major problem is my curiosity. I don’t really get distracted with fun stuff, but just rather my curiosities. I like to know things. Sometimes I am doing math, and look up strange things, like if there are imaginary numbers other than i. Or doing science, I go to look up ifl science, or look something up about Ununenium, and wonder about what a quark is made of. When I don’t get to those wanderings, I end up worse because my thought is on them. Any suggestons for that?

9

You don’t sound lazy. You sound incredibly intelligent and curious and that’s a fantastic thing! Try to hold on to that curiosity but reign it in when needed. Google can be the curious person’s friend, but it can also be our enemy when it takes over because it’s so easy to think “I’ll just quickly search this” and an hour later we’re still searching but we’re on our 10th topic and nowhere near where we started our “quick search”. You might do this: Keep a notepad near you or make a note in your phone. As curiosity questions pop in to your mind, write them down. Give yourself a self-imposed schedule that works in this free time of curiosity searching that seems to feed your soul (everybody has to have time during the day to do the things that make them feel alive and fuel them). You might give yourself an hour after school to do this, then after you’ve spent 2 hours doing homework, you get a 15-minute break to do it some more, then another hour of homework (or whatever schedule works best for you). As others have said, you are very smart to address this issue now (before it’s a huge issue in college) and it’s wise to talk to your parents or a guidance counselor about it because there could be issues such as ADD or depression at work here to. I have no doubt you will be successful because you are extremely mature to be reaching out like this. And last thing, it’s wonderful to reach out even if it’s to an online community, but remaining connected to other human beings in a face-to-face way is CRUCIAL to being successful and keeping you mentally healthy. Best of luck to you!

10

OP, you sound like me in college. I’ve never taken an official ADD assessment, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got a pretty good helping of it.