In my final year of University, I managed to go out 2-4 times a month (in terms 1 and 2), co-founded and run an entrepreneur’s society where I acted as the Vice President and despite maintaining a fairly active social life and being involved with organizing numerous society events, I still managed to graduate with a first class degree in Accounting and Finance (2010), taking home the prize for the highest dissertation mark, as well as sharing a prize for the highest mark in a challenging Finance module.

Could it be that I am some kind of super-smart-naturally-talented-student? Not really. My IQ is only slightly above average and on numerous topics, I had to ask my classmates for help, whereas in other areas I resorted to 12 hour days in the library in the final term to really grasp the more difficult topics. To a number of friends, the fact that I got a first was surprising because in my first and second years (where I had a lot more non-academic pursuits), I actually averaged a mid-level 2.1.

Some people think that to get a first, you either have to be naturally very smart, or you need to spend every living hour in the library. I would argue that both of these premises do not need to hold and that a student of average intelligence can do extremely well without leading a boring student life where they spend every free moment studying.

Reflecting back on my time at University, I have identified a number of behaviours, ideas, and principles that helped me succeed, and I believe that if other students adopt them, their chances of achieving a first class would be greatly enhanced. These are as follows:

1. Choose the ‘Right’ Degree.

This is perhaps the most important of all the points but yet also the most ambiguous. The ‘right’ degree could be a subject area you enjoy, one where your strengths lie, or one you believe will help you enter a certain field of work. Either way, you should do a degree in which finding the motivation to work your ass off is not a problem. To me, this is a key factor in determining the ‘right degree’.

1. Have the ‘Right’ Mindset.

When people ask, what are you aiming for, you may lie and say; “I am aiming for a first so that worst comes to worst, I will get a 2.1″. But when you talk to yourself, never beat around the bush. If you want a first, you must believe that by putting in the effort, you will get it. As corny as it sounds, positive self-talk works. Believe that by putting in the effort you can do it, and you will. Think otherwise, and you will probably not get a first.

1. Get Study Buddies.

What worked really well for me was that I had a core group of friends with whom I went to the library and study zones with on a regular basis; not necessarily to work and study together in a group (we only did this once or twice a month for 2 hours to discuss some topics), but to know that we were not at it alone. We would go into the library and sit in a quite zone to work solo, only getting up to ask each other questions when we were really really stuck. The main advantage of having such buddies is that they can motivate you to work harder and to focus again if you start to get lazy. For example in the final term, there were days when I would get up to leave the library early, only to sit back down after being mocked by a friend: “You only been here 6 hours and you are leaving already?!?! You are getting lazy man!”. Having study buddies also means you can moan about how hard things are and do a bit of venting about the struggle from time to time, which is healthy.

1. Don’t Study at Home; Study at University.

80%-90% of my studying was done at University in a quiet zone. You have to get yourself in a good environment to study effectively. It’s like going to the gym. You work harder there than you do at home because in a gym you see other people sweating it out on the bench and treadmills and automatically you are motivated to push harder. Therefore, stay at University as long as you can to cover all the work that needs to get done such that when you get home, you can relax and enjoy the rest of the night.

1. Attend All Lectures in the Final Year.

I will admit, I did not attend all of my lectures and missed quite a few in years 1 and 2. But in your final year, you should aim to attend all lectures and take as many notes as you can. When taking notes, it does not matter if understand them at the time or not, write them down anyway. As you return to revise, armed with more knowledge, those once illusive notes will begin to make sense. Also, by attending all lectures, you will pick up hints as to what could come up in the exams. The lecturers usually emphasize these topic areas, or say things like, “this would make a nice exam question”. If you have to miss a lecture, then ask a friend to record them for you on a usb recorder to listen to later, or at least copy some notes from a friend.

1. Have a Healthy Body.

Tony Buzan, a world leading expert on the brain and learning who has experience advising Olympic athletes suggests that having a healthy mind requires a healthy body. This means that you should aim to get enough sleep, drink plenty of water, and minimize the amount of junk food in your diet. In terms 1 and 2, I would hit the gym 3-4 times a week and in term 3, I cut it down to 2-3 times a week. Spending time on the treadmill and lifting weights made the crucial revision period near the end of the year less monotonous and boring, and I felt much more energized after breaking a sweat.

1. Maintain an Active Social Life.

In the first and second terms of my final year, I went out on most Saturday nights and hardly ever said no to invites to parties, as long as they were on days that did not result in me missing lectures. Human beings are very social animals and it appears that the more we lock ourselves away to study all alone and isolated, the more we become miserable and this ends up affecting our work. If you are not the going out type, there are many other things you can do with friends and family on the weekends. Having a day, once a week, where you can simply relax and enjoy the company of friends and family can do wonders for your efforts in achieving a first.

1. Always Do More.

Do more than is expected in all the work that you do. For example, do more reading. This is particularly important in subjects that involve essays and a fair bit of writing. I recommend however that you first understand and learn all that is taught within the syllabus and then complement that information with additional knowledge that you may not be expected to know. For example, when I was revising certain topics in my final year, I would go the the eLibrary and search for all journals and articles related to the topic, pick out the interesting ones and with a pen in one hand, start to read them while taking notes. Lecturers are always impressed by a student who mentions relevant knowledge not taught directly in the lectures.

If you made it to the end of this rather long article and found it useful, perhaps you can help me assess whether it would be appealing to write a much more extensive purchasable guide as an eBook.  This would be over 100 pages long and consist of more detailed strategies, ideas and motivational tips to greatly increase your chances of getting a first class. By voting below, you can help me identify the level of interest.

more info at www.firstclassdegree.co.uk

Published on www.studentlifeblog.co.uk

Many generations ago, the work ethic of successful rice farmers in Southern China revolved around the following proverb: “No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.” We are all familiar with other similar proverbs, among them, the well known English saying: “the early bird gets the worm.”

So here I am reading this month’s issue of the Harvard Business Review when I come across an article titled “The Early Bird Really Does Get the Worm“. In it, Christopher Randler, a professor of biology at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany, discusses his scientific quest which puts such proverbs to the test.

In a number of studies, including one where Randler surveyed 367 university students, he found the following:

“Though evening people do have some advantages—other studies reveal they tend to be smarter and more creative than morning types, have a better sense of humor, and are more outgoing—they’re out of sync with the typical corporate schedule. When it comes to business success, morning people hold the important cards. My earlier research showed that they tend to get better grades in school, which get them into better colleges, which then lead to better job opportunities. Morning people also anticipate problems and try to minimize them, my survey showed. They’re proactive. A number of studies have linked this trait, proactivity, with better job performance, greater career success, and higher wages.”

So how do you know if you are a morning person or evening person? And can you alter your “chronotype” (the preference for morningness or eveningness)?

In answering the first question, Randler points out that morning people have a the tendency to wake up around the same time on weekends as they do on weekdays, while evening people tend to get up at later times on the weekend. For example, in Randler’s study of college students, he found that evening people on average will wake up two hours later on the weekend than during the weekday.

As for whether you can change your chronotype, our efforts are limited because around 50% of it is determined by genetics.

Randler admits some obvious limitations to his findings and other research in this area. The data merely shows a correlation over a large sample, so you do get morning and evening people who deviate from the above characteristics. Additionally, the exact reasons why morning people are more proactive are yet to be determined. Randler suggests that perhaps it is because they get up early and have more time to prepare for the day—as the successful rice farmers in Southern China did—or it is the result of something more inherent, such as the personality trait of conscientiousness (a tendency to show self-discipline and a love for schedules). As a morning person, I suspect that proactivity stems from something more inherent because there are many mornings where I get nothing done, and equally, many evenings where I accomplish a lot.

The diagram below highlights a number of traits that morning people enjoy but it is conceivable that there are those of us who fall somewhere in-between, sharing some of the traits that evening people have (both the negative and positive). For example, I tend to enjoy writing and reading in the morning, while I enjoy music production (an activity I feel more creative in) more in the evenings and well into the early mornings (9pm-4am). Which side of the following diagram do you fall on? And do you find that you have any of the following traits?

Source: Harvard Business Review (July-August 2010) pg. 31 Note: This diagram appears to miss out on some of the negative aspects and dangers of being a morning person; such as not getting enough sleep in some instances.

Finally, graduation is upon us. In last three years we have slaved away and worked relentlessly to achieve one key goal: to graduate. But now that University is over, a whole new world opens up. How are we to direct our lives from here on; especially after spending 17+ years in an education system, which to a certain extent did the directing for us?

As we enter the ‘real world’, we are invited, or rather, are required to consider the bigger picture and direct our own lives. The best way of doing this is by setting our own goals and working towards new aspirations. Goals will continue to be particularly important in this journey because:

Ample evidence links goals to well-being. Goals can provide structure, meaning, identity, and a sense of purpose, and progress towards goals results in positive affective states such as hope, enthusiasm, and pride.

(Segerstrom and Nes, 2006)

In other words, goals are good for our psychological health. But what kind of goals should we pursue after graduation? Ideally the ones that lead to the highest level of life satisfaction and subjective well-being. Many desire money, material wealth, image, and fame, but there is a ‘dark side to the American dream’, as Kasser and Ryan (1993) found. In a study where they interviewed college students, they concluded:

When goals for financial success exceed those for affiliation, self-acceptance, and community feeling, worse psychological adjustment was found.

(Kasser and Ryan, 1993)

Therefore personal growth, close relationships and community involvement should not be ignored as we venture out into the real world. Such aspirations, labeled by Kasser and Ryan (1996) as intrinsic goals, help satisfy our basic psychological needs, which are:

Autonomy

a sense of choice and free will




Competence

effective interaction with the environment




Relatedness

connecting with others and being cared about




(Niemic, Ryan, and Deci, 2009)

Extrinsic goals such as money and fame are not as conducive to these needs and so we must be cautious, for the single-minded pursuit of extrinsic aspirations could lead to a very unsatisfactory life.

Not to say that pursuing money is totally unhealthy. If you want to be rich, just make sure that it is for the ‘right’ reasons i.e. the money facilitates an increase in autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The wrong reason would be an attempt to use the money to show off, or to garner some form of external validation about yourself.

I guess this essay applies to me more than anyone else. In fact, I wrote it firstly for me because I have a big financial goal. After doing some reading and reflection, I have adjusted my goals accordingly.

Fellow graduates, as we set out to begin our adult lives, let us make sure that if we are to pursue anything in life, that it leads to an increased sense of free will (autonomy), personal growth (competence), community involvement and good relationships (relatedness).

References:

Kasser, Tim, and Richard M. Ryan. “A Dark Side of the American Dream: Correlates of Financial Success as a Central Life Aspiration.” Journal of Personality and Social Pyschology (1993) 65, no. 2: 410-422.

Kasser, Tim, and Richard M. Ryan. “Further Examining the American Dream: Differential Correlates of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Goals.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 22, no. 3 (1996): 280-287.

Niemiec, Christopher P., Richard M. Ryan, and Edward L. Deci. “The Path Taken: Consequences of Attaining Intrinsic and Extrinsic Aspirations in Post-college Life.” Journal of Research in Personality 43, no. 3 (2009): 291-306.

Segerstrom, Suzanne C., and Lise Solberg Nes. “When Goals Conflict But People Prosper: The Case of Dispositional Optimism.” Journal of Research in Personality 40, no. 5 (2006): 675-693.

Let us take a trip back to the 60s. Back then, American railroads were in trouble. Cars, airplanes, and even telephones were eating away at an industry that was expected to grow to no end. Eventually, the railroads ended up on life support and relying on government subsidies to survive.

The late Theodore Levitt wrote in a 1960 issue of the Harvard Business Review:

“The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble today not because the need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, even telephones) but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business.”

Contrast this to the current music industry. New forms of entertainment are eating into its profits (kids will easily spend £40 on a new video game, but not £15 on a new album), and the piracy issue has been ferociously nibbling away at cd and mp3 sales since the stone ages of Naptster in 1999.

The record executives, like their railroad counter parts in the 60s, have now run to the government for help. In the UK we have the digital economy bill which can have persistent online sharers disconnected from the internet and in Japan they are looking to use software to block music being shared on mobile phones.

The customer wants more music, and they want to share it. But record labels don’t seem to understand this. They are far too ‘product-oriented’, as Levitt would put it, and are somewhat more focused on digital mp3 and cd sales.

We are seeing some change in this perspective however. The music business is shifting from “record sales”, to “entertainment”. So some labels are looking to 360-deals, which entitle the record label to a percentage of income from all of an artists activities (concerts, merchandise, endorsements etc.). This gives us some insight as to what the future record labels will look like.

Future labels will not rely on revenues from record sales, instead they will feed off of an artist in every single imaginable way they can. In-effect, they will be more like personal brand managers and specialist marketers than manufacturers and distributors of music.

This is because the cost of manufacturing (recording) music has been driven down by technology and now any average Joe with a decent computer can put together a radio ready song.

Record labels used to have an edge with their large recording studios but today they are finding it hard to justify the costs of maintaining them (EMI for example thought about selling its world renown Abbey Road Studios).

I suspect the future label will most likely do away with large studios for pop music, except for recording symphonies and music for film.

As for distribution (another advantage of signing to a record label), its costs have also been driven down by technology. The marginal cost of selling another song is virtually zero and so is the marginal cost of producing another copy of it. This means that average Joe can distribute his music online without a huge capital investment.

Therefore the future label will be lean and entirely focused on what the current labels do best: marketing and brand management. This will be the selling point of signing to a major.

In summary, the record label 2.0 will be an equity investor in an artist and will expect to reap benefits from whatever an artist produces; whether that be a book, a role in a hollywood blockbuster, concerts, or more generically, royalties from music.

Also, since the customer wants more music and the ability to freely share it, the future label will loosen its grip on trivial matters of online copyright infringement and focus more on facilitating the exposure of an artist brand to new markets in order to generate further revenues from other sources of income.

The CV, in its traditional form as the sole source of information about a candidate is on its way out. Virtually everyone has an online persona these days and it should come as no surprise that people and employers alike, will google you more frequently in the not so distant future.

According to a Microsoft study, in the UK alone more than half of recruiters and HR professionals believe that in 4-5 years time online reputation data will  be used in the recruitment process all or most of the time!

What will they find if they search for your name? Will it help or hinder your chances of success?

To some extent, we have no control over what other people write about us (and this turns up in google results), but we do have control over what we write and produce online.

So why not take the power in your hands, buy a domain of your name (www.myname.com), and create an online CV or  free blog with wordpress for example?

The future is that our online personas will be so intertwined with our real personal lives that when it comes to people wanting to get to you know you, the first thing they will do is google you!

We all spend money on clothes to look nice when we go out, so why not spend some time and money on looking nice when we go online?