Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

It’s still not paperless!

Targeted Audience: Students

I believe that you can score very high in your academic career by practicing certain disciplines irrespective of your intelligence level. Of course, if you are a super-intelligent person, then it is a no brainer that you can score high. But please note that, I said, you ‘can’. It is not guaranteed that you ‘will’. I have seen few of my genius friends getting C grades in graduate classes because of their lack of discipline. The problem is not when you are a super-intelligent person and rest of the class is intelligent. The problem is when even a single person from rest of the class is as super-intelligent as you are. It is the discipline of a person, which will distinguish the final performances of both.

It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people’s lives. –Clint Eastwood

When I say beyond intelligence, it means your systematic hard work and discipline you follow in your day-to-day life. There are some key ways to develop discipline patterns in your daily routine. In this series, I will cover each of these disciplines, which are essential to excel in student life. Many times, they may sound trivial, but believe me, I have experienced that sometimes these trivial traits help tremendously in unseen situations. But if you follow these practices, you will see its fruition in long run in any walk of your life.

Go Paper

As the semesters are starting, let me start with the very first discipline. This is the first thing you should do when you are registering for any course. Buy a separate notebook for that course and write down following details on the inner side of the front cover of your notebook:

• Course number and name
• Class timings and location of class
• Professor’s office hours and detailed contact information
• TAs’ office hours and contact details
• Important dates of midterm and final exam of all courses you have registered

Of course, I am assuming that you are writing your full details like name, contact address, phone and email address on the first page of your notebook in case it get lost. You cannot imagine the panic you may have to face during the exam period when you will find out that your class notebook, in which you have written down the golden words of Professor, is not with you.

Even though you will get all this information on the web, it is highly advisable to write it down on handy paper (internal notebook cover). You just cannot guaranty the availability of resources like computer, internet access at any given time at any place. It’s very essential to have all these details available when you need it the most.

I still remember following incidence. During one of my classes, Professor wanted to postpone the midterm exam. And as you know that, the dates of midterms are decided way early to avoid clashing of multiple exams on the same date. During that class, Professor took the vote to postpone the exam to certain date and asked if anybody’s exam is clashing on the same date or not. Well, I had taken three courses during that semester so the probability was little high that one of the other exam dates may clash. But when he asked for it, I was not having any clue that I was having another exam on the same date. In the class, I voted for ‘Yes’ but then had to suffer for it on the day before exam. It would have been very helpful to have other exam dates handy in my notebook.

The bottom line is, keep the critical information handy, and do not rely on internet everytime. Use of smart mobile devices can be another alternate to this discipline.

For working people, please read my previous post on similar subject.

To read more articles from this series, please visit Beyond Intelligence.