<p>I'm going to a tough school next year and I have a track record in high school for slacking off. I hate the fact that I slack off and can't stay organized, and when I try to stay organized I eventually stop staying organized. I'm also extremely easily distracted by my computer. I want to learn, I want to get the most out of my tuition, I want to be a motivated person, I really do. I'm really really really worried for the future. Thoughts on how I can keep myself on track?</p>
<p>A few things that may help:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Make sure you know, from the moment you arrive on campus, what the academic support system is like. Sometimes there are workshops you can go to about study & organization skills - keep an eye out. Figure out if there are writing or math centers, etc. so that if you start having any problems, you know immediately where to look for help.</p></li>
<li><p>Don't study near your computer. Seriously. If you have a reading or problem set, do it in a different room. If you're writing a paper, I know people who've created a separate user account that can only access a word processor (no Internet, etc.) - it cuts down on distractions bigtime.</p></li>
<li><p>Get your friends to police you. Big paper due? Tell your friends on AIM and Facebook (or your social networking tools of choice) to nag you if they see you online. Enlist your roommate's help in making sure you stay on-task.</p></li>
<li><p>Find people in your classes to study with. It actually helps if they're not your friends, because then you don't need to worry about being social when you should be studying. Get together regularly to talk about assignments or compare notes. (If you tend to tune out in class, comparing notes is a really, really good thing.)</p></li>
<li><p>Set up a reward system for getting work done. Make a list of all the things you need to do, and a list of all the things you want to do. Then match them - "I won't go watch the game unless I've finished my essay outline", etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Break things up into manageable chunks. If you've got a 60 page reading due in 3 days, don't do the whole thing in one sitting the night before - do 20 pages a day. (You can even break that into sub-chunks: do five pages an hour over four hours of studying, etc. But that's a little obsessive.)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Find someone to work on papers with. When I was in seventh grade I met a student who was new to the district in English; we sat next to each other. Both of us like to write and began to look over and revise each other's papers. We both go to the same college today and continue to check over papers for each other. He actually is on the staff of the writing center now and does it for pay (unless it's me, we do ours privately). In addition to him, I met another guy my freshman year who has done the same thing with me.</p>
<p>You'll be surprised how much someone else can catch in your paper. Even if he's wrong about some grammatical issue you can still get some good advice from outside the box.</p>