College takes a lot of time and keeping grades up can be hard when you've got a full workload.
For those in college or thinking about it, the following advice saved me a LOT of work in school and allowed me to become somewhat a specialist in my field beyond my level of education.
If you know this - GREAT! If not, think about it. If it doesn't apply to you, share it with someone who might need it.
In the course of a full term you're probably going to be taking anywheres between three to six classes, depending on the level of punishment you're into.
While you probably won't find what you're specifically interested in for a graduate degree until your last year in school and find a place you want to specialize, you can explore the field your first three years or so in school.
Use all your courses to study something you're specifically interested in from a myriad of different angles in order to become a specialist at it as you find your specific interest.
For example, I took a research writing class, a biopsychology class and a psychology of addictions class all in the same term. I used those three classes to study the same subject from different angles (Mine was psychosocial addictions).
I did a research paper on pictorial pornography and addictions, I studied in my addictions class the course of addiction to pictorial pornography and I used my biopsychology class to study the impact of visual images on the brain.
All this actually saved me homework and gave me a MASSIVE resource to draw from on each individual paper, more than if I ever did three separate topics. I could use the same reference from different angles for different papers, saving myself work but becoming extremely familiar with the topic. I also pursued the same topic over a period of years every single term going deeper and deeper on the subject to where I got invited to speak and present on the topic by a Ph.D. I worked with before some of the universities in the area.
Never ever do a topic or a study that you're not really passionate about. Combine studies if you can, but if you're not REALLY interested in it, you may end up just doing the work to get it done and your grade suffers.
In short: if you combine classes on a specific subject you can essentially do three or four times the research on a topic than you would EVER do, while essentially doing only a fraction of the work for any one class.
That's my college tip for the day!
