On the 26^th of March, 2025, I was presented with an award for emerging as the best-graduating student in the Nnamdi Azikiwe University faculty of law for the 2023/2024 session with a cumulative CGPA of 4.84. Although unannounced, I was also the best female graduating student in the university. Now, although I take a measure of indulgence in joking about my ‘unseriousness’ during my university days, and how I performed a lot of last-minute wonders, the truth is that emerging with that sort of result did not happen by chance, but was the product of a lot of intentionality, wisdom and intimacy with God.

So let’s hop on and ride with me on my journey to becoming the best graduating student in my class. Forgive me, you are going to see a few of my personal non-aesthetic writing on this journey. Let’s start with this one which was something I wrote at the age of 16 in my first journal.

 

 

YOUR GATES

In Christianity, there is a popular concept known as the spiritual gates. These gates are the entrances to your heart and life, through which we accept information which would then be processed by our hearts and minds and play a huge part in the way we live our lives. Some of the gates are our eyes, ears and mouth because they are the main organs of the body used in the collection of information.

Why am I talking about the spiritual gates? Because we often neglect these and the influence they play in our lives, not only our academics. Even in all of the talks that I have given regarding academic excellence, I do not believe that I have actually spoken about our spiritual gates and the roles that they play in our academics.

But now, trying to find a beginning, I believe that it started with the sort of information that I began to receive, back in 2020.

Now, you may ask why 2020, given that I began schooling in 2019 and I haven’t had a terrible, (well, in the general overview of terrible) semester. That’s easy to answer. I have never deemed myself a remarkably and extraordinarily intelligent person, at least more so than any other person. I was mostly not at the top of the class in my primary school days. I found Mathematics, amongst other subjects, difficult to understand, the only person in my science-oriented family to have such a peculiar ailment. In fact, the only time that I performed excellently was during my Common Entrance Examinations, in which, due to the diligent perseverance of my mother and the relentless evenings of (mostly forced) studying, I was able to emerge the best in the school. In my secondary school days, I was mostly also just an average student until my senior secondary school days, when I wrote my first award-winning book, began to represent the school in external competitions and dropped all science courses. My WAEC and JAMB scores were good, but not exceptional, just good enough to be on the merit list to study law.

So, you see, I was never really so much of a star academically. I took my academics seriously enough to pass, but not enough to be gobsmackingly outstanding. When I first entered the university, I did not enter with a storm. I did not immediately begin to read voraciously and burn the midnight candle. In fact, during the first two months of my university days, I would come to classes, sometimes sleep through lectures, then go back home and watch a movie till it was time to do other things. I remember seeing other students stay back after lectures to read and wondering what their deal was. School was not that serious.

Then 2020 happened.

I will admit, before COVID happened, exams were probably scheduled to be held in about two months’ time. But then, the lecturers went on strike and I was hearing rumours that the next thing that would come after the strike would be exams. So, I began visiting the Kenneth Dike Library. I would go there in the morning, read my GS books for a while, come out, buy snacks, wander about the library lusting after novels and sometimes caving into my lusts, and resume reading, leaving by 6 pm in the evening. I did cover some ground, but a good chunk of what I engaged in was pseudo-work. Libraries were and have never been my thing.

 

PSEUDO-WORKING

A mentally draining state of work in which one works in a distracting environment and insists on working in long, tedious stretches thereby ending up crippling the brain’s ability to think clearly and efficiently accomplish the task at hand – Cal Newport.

 

Anyways, when COVID came, libraries were closed and I was stuck at home. Everyone has different stories to share about that time, some positive and some negative. Mine is this. I spent about two months completely abandoning my academics or any other productive endeavour, simply existing and following my parents to watch CNN. Then after some time, I guess I became positively sick of doing nothing.

I cannot remember the first day that I decided to pick a book to read, but I do remember that one of my first books was ‘Letters to a Law student’ by Nicholas McBridge.

Shortly after that, I encountered books authored by Cal Newport and proceeded to feast on all of them, from ‘Deep Work’ to ‘How to Win at College’ to ‘How to be a Straight A Student’ to ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’ and ‘Digital Minimalism’. Then, I read ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. Oh, and I didn’t just read these books. I carefully jotted all that I intended to revisit from these books, some of which I will go back to in the course of writing this post, in a huge thick-back notebook which is still in pristine condition.

These books, and I’m not just making mouth when I say this, changed my life. Suddenly, I was trudging back to my abandoned school books, downloading habit-tracking apps and making detailed to-do lists. They were the fuel of motivation that I needed to begin structuring my life, a structure which has influenced and is still influencing my day-to-day activities.

So through the gates of my mind and eyes, I had been introduced to a new framework for my life, one that I can say was the beginning of my success. But books are a bit abstract, in a way. Though filled with detailed explanations, they do not offer a true viewing experience into the reality of living a structured life as a student. Even this post will not show you, truly, how I lived my life as a student.

 

That’s where the gates of the ears come to work together with the eyes, through videos and documentaries. For me, it was through certain YouTube videos of students, both those in Ivy League universities such as Vee Kativhu and Elena Handtrack and the study streamers such as James Scholz, A studies (Adelina), and Study Vibes (Heleen) amongst many others.

                                               

Through them, I learned that it was possible, through the right framework, such as the Pomodoro system, to read for long lengths of time without burning out and breaking down. I must admit, I never reached the feat of reading for 12 hours in a day as the study streamers did but I did hit 10 hours at least once and 8 hours many times. I would, just like they did, read for 50 minutes, take a 10-minute plus break, then come back to reading whilst carefully documenting my reading hours in a mini jotter where I also wrote down my goals and whether or not I was able to complete them.

                                    

So, when the lockdown ended and after eight months of strike plus lockdown, the exam timetable was released with only three weeks to prepare for exams, I was ready.

 

If you’re in 100 level, this is the best time for you to begin visiting the right sources and reading the right books to ensure that you have the right mindset towards your academics. Even if you are in your 500 level and reading this, you can spend some time reshaping your mindset by feeding yourself with the right sources of information. There’s a sort of magic that comes with seeing the feats that others have been able to attain, especially when it comes with step-by-step instructions on how to attain the same feat. It shapes your mind. Makes certain seemingly impossible things become more realistic and possible. 

YOUR COMPANY

In 200 level, I moved out of my parent’s house (after much pleadings) and into the Elmada hostel. My parents were reluctant to let me go but I was able to convince them that I was being repressed from doing several activities which I could engage in as a student by staying at home. They saw the logic in that, but not the logic in my wanting to be alone, so I was practically forced to choose between Unizik Girls’ hostel and Elmada. Choosing Elmada was a no-brainer.

Maybe it was in a bid to prove to my parents that they were not making a mistake or perhaps it was because, as a 200 level student, I was not really engaged in so many extracurricular activities, but I do not recall ever reading as hard as I did in my 200 level. That 5.0 that I got both semesters? God’s grace, yes, but also sweat and blood and many tears. I have a vivid memory of being in my room crying and having panic attacks due to my academics in my 200 level, the kind which hit me many more times during my university days, but never in my 100 level. You see, results of my 100 level had started coming out, and even though I did have some heartbreaks (a few Bs), the possibility of graduating with a first class was becoming clearer than ever. I was in a very solid first class, and I intended to retain it.

Someone told me something when I was still a secondary school student when I visited Landmark University for the national stage of a competition. She was a second-class upper student and she told me that if she were handed a first class, she would not accept it because there was this pressure to keep up and replicate one’s success when one begins on such a strong pedestal. How true that is.

Anyways, I am not going to emphasize much on my long hours of reading, on how I practically moved my table and chair to Elmada reading room and many times, only came down to my room to eat and sleep, or on how I was known as the girl who practically colonised the Elmada reading room when I lived there. Oh no. I am going to talk about the company I met there.

You see, I strongly believe that your association shapes your mentality. If your friends and acquaintances consist of unserious people who do not have any goals in life, it’s easy to fall into the same slump as them. As a wise man once said, if you are surrounded by 5 fools, you did not count well, they are six.

The girls I met and befriended in Elmada were focused, career-oriented girls, who took academics seriously. When I was with them, it was easy to get motivated to read. You see, I very much enjoy encountering people that make me feel oppressed. I run on that kind of positive jealousy. Yes, make me feel like I have not covered anything even though my eyes have sunken in from reading, so that I can go and sit back down and continue reading. Make me question my seriousness. Make me push myself to my breaking point and push myself even more. I thrive on that kind of friendship. I could feel unmotivated and lazy which, yes, I did feel on certain days, I am not a superhuman or the human embodiment of hard work and diligence, sift to certain people’s rooms and head back feeling an uncommon sort of strength to keep grinding. I mean, when this girl had finished making notes on a course in which I had not gone halfway through and this other girl had already learnt all the cases of a course when I was still beginning to learn the principles, did I dare go back to my room to sleep and indulge in fantasy novels?

Some of these people ended up becoming part of a quasi-reading group that I was involved with. One was essentially my reading partner, and we answered past questions together, reviewed cases right before examination, and kept each other on track. I do not hold words when I say this, my friends and company were my academic saviours. During times in which activities prevented me from having the notes I needed or when I needed the extra boost, or even a point in the right direction for my studies to ensure that I was in line with what was going to be set in the examination, I could always rely on them. I was more than willing to learn from them, to feed from their well of knowledge.

So there lies your next task. Look at your circle of friends. Who do you need to cut off? Who do you need to draw closer to? Many people have this complex that prevents them from reaching out for help even when they desperately need it. Kill that complex. It can ruin your life. It does not matter if you think you are smarter than that friend of yours. If the person has something that can help you academically which you do not have, kill that pride of yours and go beg for it. Also, be ever willing to help and teach others too, whenever such a need arises.

 

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

Towards the end of my 200 level and the beginning of my 300 level, my relationship with God took a deeper and more intimate curve. This was mostly based on the fact that I had found a church in which I became committed and I was made an executive at CLASFON. It was also in that period that I began to hear clearly from God, when I got a prophesy that I ran with for the rest of my academic years, the vision of academic dominion.

You see, my 300 level came with a lot of heartaches, and none of them had anything to do with a reduction in my reading patterns. The level was already famed to be notorious, with courses which had strict lecturers or lecturers that expected me to compromise on my values to get the grades that I deserved. However, that was the year when the vision for academic dominion became clear. I still have journal entries where I wrote down God’s promise for my academic excellence, the seed I sowed for my academics, and the revelation that I would emerge as the best graduating student in my class.

At the time of writing it, I was very doubtful of my status as the best in the class, and when the results came out and I got a B in Criminal Law, the first ever law course in which I had gotten less than an A apart from Logic, and a D in accounting, it was my relationship with God, the words that He spoke to me in spite of my doubts and lack of faith that kept me afloat, helped me keep pushing. When I was in my final year and I felt like an academic wreck even as people all around me were proclaiming me to be the BGS, it was my spiritual advisers who helped me stay strong.

God has spoken to me about many aspects of my life, but I am glad that He was ever present in my academics.

 

Often times, we tend to neglect God when it comes to academics, either abandoning Him during exam periods or only coming to him to cry for help during exam periods. For the overly ambitious, we tend to think that time spent working in church or serving in a fellowship takes away the time that we could be using to read our books. I’ve been guilty of this sort of mentality, so I know. But spending time with God actually quickens you. When you are intentional about involving God in your academics, He will give you tips and tricks on how to memorise a lot of things in a short period of time. Trust me on this. God does not want you to fail.

But be careful with this. Know how to balance your time. Do not get so invested in church activities that you forget that you came to school to study, not to run your church or fellowship. You cannot be spending 10 hours praying during the exam season and neglecting your academics. Even God frowns at such poor time management. As my pastor once told me, do academics like there is no God and do God like you are not a student. In simple words, find balance.

 

YOUR READING PATTERN

By 400 level, I had become a machine. I was doing 10 things at the same time. I had no time for myself. I had no free days. Every day was occupied with something that took time away from academics. No longer did I have the luxury of spending eight hours a day immersed in my academics, like some other students did, like I did as a 100 and 200 level student. I was pressed for time and the academic calendar was not even smiling down at me.

This might not resonate with certain students in certain fields of study but the legal profession is oversaturated. We have way too many lawyers with way too few stable, well-paying jobs. So fighting for the good spots, the top-tier law firms and the generous salaries is like a blood bath, with so many students desperately clawing after very few spots. Simply put, as a law student, you cannot afford to just read. You’ll be making a huge mistake if you try to go down that route.

Due to grade inflation, there are more first-class students than ever, and there are even more second-class upper students. In the end, even though the first class comes with its set of advantages, it really boils down to how you applied yourself while in school. Law firms want to know if you are really a good investment.

That realisation dawned on me hardest in my penultimate and as a result, I decided that I was going to apply myself the most in all areas. I held numerous time demanding leadership positions. I went to a few conferences. I participated in a lot of competitions. I picked back my essay writing skills and tried to refine myself as a writer so that I could win national awards. Plus, I was actively serving in one of the most time-demanding positions in CLASFON, as well as serving as a worker in a church that had activities almost every single day.

So, my academics…

At a point, I realised that there was no way that I was going to be able to trudge on the same time-consuming way that I had done in my lower levels. I simply did not have the time to do so. So I prayed. Asked God for help and to show me reading hacks that I could implement to ace my academics.

And He did.

I’ll list some of them out here.

1.     Lecture Recordings and YouTube lectures: I had always known that people took recordings of lectures to help them in their note-making but I felt it to be a long process, especially for someone who had just attended the same class. However, God showed me another way that I could make use of lecture recordings. You see, we spend a long time engaging in activities that do not require the use of our brains very much. Washing clothes. Cooking. Cleaning and sweeping. Trekking to and from classes (I trekked a lot in school). The learning part of our brain is not actively engaged when we perform those activities. And those activities rack up a ton of precious hours.

 

It occurred to me that I could find a way to engage my brain in learning when performing those activities. I could blast the lecturers’ voices in my ears or through my speaker as I did those mundane activities whilst actively trying to recall what they said. Many times, I would pause and try to repeat the cases or principles mentioned as I performed those tasks. It wasn’t very easy to do. I usually prefer listening to music when doing those activities. But I can tell you that a lot of cases and principles effortlessly stuck in my head because I had listened to them several times through audio recordings. You know how you suddenly learn a song you’ve never bothered to actively learn simply because you have listened to it multiple times? Yeah.

 

The same thing applied to the YouTube videos that discussed law, especially those by Dieko Daniels and some Indian videos, because Indian and Nigerian law are very similar. Sometimes, due to the videos, I even got ahead of lectures and got an understanding of certain concepts before the lecturers taught them.

 

 

2.     Listening to typed notes: I began typing my notes in my 100 level, inspired by the videos of Elena Handtrack, an Oxford law student and the way that she made her notes. But up until my 400 level, I only made them, then drew revision notes which I would use for final readings during examinations. However, I also applied the same tactics of listening to the recordings and many times, doing that saved my grades. I can recall two very specific instances.

a.     400 level first semester. The exam timetable was brutally wicked or wickedly brutal. We were to have a marathon of three papers, but the issue was, Political Science was to be held by 4 pm on Tuesday, I think, and Equity and Trusts was to be held by 8 am the very next day. I had played a very risky game with my political science that semester, focusing on the law courses and abandoning it since it was my only borrowed course and I did not particularly like the lecturers. So, you can guess that the hours I had before the exam were spent in brutal cramming mixed with a good amount of righteous panicking. Then, in the exam hall, I wrote so quickly that my palm was spattered with ink when I was done, and I did not even get to finish all that I wanted to write. When I trudged home by 7 pm, I was exhausted. I had a blistering headache, but at the back of my head, I was well aware that I had about 12 hours to revise a course that I had not looked into for a while due to the other papers that I had. When I went back home, my body needed sleep but my mind could not let me. Funnily enough, I could not also read because of the furious headache I was battling with. I lay in my bed and watched YouTube videos, trying to reduce the panic and to calm myself down but after an hour, I still could not read. So I went to God.

Shortly after, I had an idea. I picked up my Tablet which contained my typed notes, grabbed my speaker, used the PocketBook app to begin to play the notes, and grabbed a pen and paper. For the first time in my life, I prepared for an exam without really looking at the notes I had, only jotting down case names so that I could revise them one last time before exams. By 11 pm, I was done with two lecturer’s parts (the parts I ended up answering) and went to sleep for about two hours, to wake up with a fresher mind and revise (by reading) a lecturer’s part which I did not eventually answer.

People did not perform well in that exam. I think I got the highest score, if not close to the highest score in the class for that course.

 

b.     500 level second semester. A particular conveyancing lecturer emphasized a particular topic so much, even pointing out areas that he claimed that he would set in his examination, that I was a hundred percent certain that he would set that part. So I focused all my attention there, all but ignoring the second topic that he taught. The semester was not a nice one, so I gambled a lot and that was one of my gambles. The morning of the exam, I was sure that I had everything that I needed to know on the one topic in my head, so when bathing, I decided to just play my notes on the second topic, trying to grab all that I could from it. (I hate gambling with exams). I came to the exam hall only to find out that the lecturer had ignored the first topic entirely, setting his three questions from only the one topic he taught once and very half-heartedly. Two things saved my exam, the notes I listened to and the revisions I did that morning with my coursemate and reading partner on a past question covering that topic.

 

3.      Active Recall and Quizzing Myself: This one trick is the main reason why I didn’t necessarily need to spend all the hours of my day reading. It is the ultimate hack to easily memorise anything that you have read. You see, I have never subscribed to the idea of passively reading your notes over and over again and hoping that somehow, all that you have read will stick to your brain without actually trying to make sure that what you have read has stuck to your brain. You don’t need to read your material ten times. You just have to read once to get a general knowledge of the topic, the second time whilst making your notes and then, the third time, you begin active recall. In fact, if you can, (I can’t, I have to have an organised note), you can even skip the second step and go straight to active recall after getting a general understanding of the trajectory of whatever topic you are trying to recall.

 

Active recall and cramming are not the same. In cramming, you are trying to get everything inside your head the exact same way that it is written in your books, with little understanding of the concept. Active recall is more fluid because it requires an understanding of the topic in question. My trick was to read several pages of a concept, close the book and try to rewrite what I have just learned (not everything verbatim, just the main points) in an organised manner. This was what made up my summary notes. Also, for cases, I used different forms of mnemonics (down to even an attempt at building memory castles) to ensure that they stuck because they were my weak points.  Then, I would go over them, not by just rereading them, but by sitting or standing or walking around my room, recalling (either orally or in my mind) all the cases and sections and key principles to be perfectly sure that I understood them. If it were possible, I would get a classmate to assist in this, handing them a long list of cases and principles that I intended to memorise and having them listen to me go through them (if you are going to do this, be ready to reciprocate the favour). Ensuring that I had mastery over the concepts was my key secret in ensuring that I could pour out all I knew and breeze through exams without spending precious time cracking my head to remember what I needed to write or looking for who to ask for answers. Active recall consumes more brain power and is more stressful, but in the end, it saves so much precious time.

Regarding quizzing myself, I never wrote an exam without looking at a myriad of past questions and attempting to answer them. I do not even know how people write exams without doing this. It gave me an idea of the lecturer’s exam style, the way the questions were to be arranged, as well as the concepts that I needed to pay special attention to. Also, when I looked at a past question and could not answer the question well, I knew that I needed to read that concept more.

 

4.     Teaching: Those who knew me when I was in the university know that I spent my Saturdays teaching as a tutor in the CLASFON academic board for four out of the five years that I spent in the university. However, I am not talking about the teaching I did then, as I was teaching concepts that I already had mastery in to younger students (hence, the subjects were not relevant to the exams that I was preparing for). I am talking about teaching my fellow classmates.

I love teaching. It is a highly underestimated way of learning. Even better, I love attempting to teach concepts that I am still attempting to gain full mastery of. There’s a magic in cracking your head trying to figure out the best way to teach a coursemate something that you have just gone through, understood but have not yet memorised, that makes the concepts stick. Of course, you must actually know and have a level of understanding of the concept for you to teach it to others, but for the purposes of learning and memorising them, the concepts do not need to all be in your head to be able to teach someone that is still trying to understand. Get out your textbook or notebook and offer to teach the person and when it’s time to do your private reading, you’ll be surprised to learn that the cases and principles have effortlessly stuck to your head.

 

5.      My summary papers: I do not know how you read in the mornings of or the night before exams, but I find it incredibly unrealistic and quite panic-inducing to still have to refer to your textbook during those critical hours. For someone like me, who took advantage of her writing skills and the plethora of online resources I had to make quite voluminous notes, it would mean having to look at a hundred, two hundred pages worth of content. Absolutely not. That stuff is for the month before exams, two weeks before exams, a week before exams, but definitely not exam week. In the line of active recall, I always ensured that I had like one or two A4 papers covering all key cases, principles, locus classici and all other important material (in very a condensed form) for each lecturer. The importance of having this was that I was not overwhelmed on the morning of the exam. I would go through the concepts in my head and if I forgot any, it would be very easy for me to pinpoint the concept. Sometimes (rarely), I would need to get more information to supplement the little in my notes (if I realised that I had forgotten quite a lot). Then, I would go back to my notes to look at them briefly.

Remember, you should have already covered all your material and had your notes and summary papers by the night before exam. But then again, I know that situations might occur in which you would need to learn new material that morning or the night before. Try to squeeze in time for that but do not, in the process of trying to learn new things a little too late, forget the ones you have already learnt. Double down on your strong topics. I do not know how much to emphasize it. Make sure that you know the ones that you know very well before you begin to look for new things to learn.

The thing is, it is important to find reading patterns that enable time efficiency. You can’t just only focus on reading in school so when you read, you should ensure that you maximise every single hour you spend with your books. You cannot waste your time, for instance, engaging in passive reading without using active recall because you’ll end up forgetting things in the exam hall or spending precious time that you do not have trying to think or even resorting to cheating out of frustration.

 

YOUR EXAM TACTICS

It’s amusing and devastating how months of work are condensed into just a week or two weeks’ worth of three-hour papers each. But it is what it is. And while that system of testing is not ideal, you do have to adapt to what you have. I had a bad experience during exams. Many times, I would break down and be on a plethora of drugs just to boost my system enough to write exams. In my 500 level 1^st semester, I seriously broke down with malaria immediately after my jurisprudence paper. My saving grace was the fact that the next paper came three days later. In my 500-level second semester, after subjecting my body to night classes, marathon reading and energy drinks so that I could cover all that I needed after the time for exams was slashed, I ended up taking like 6 drugs daily during the duration of the exams, some of which made me sleep like a mad person during my exam nights. In my 300 level second semester, whilst preparing for my Intellectual property exam, I had an exacerbated flare of allergic rhinitis that rendered me so unable to breathe properly and function that my parents had to come at night to my lodge to administer injections to me (now that I recall, I also took energy drinks that session. Avoid energy drinks, kids.) Of course, you should try as much as possible not to be like me. In fact, I am trying not to be like myself now that I am in law school so that I will not break down during bar finals. But that just shows how much weight and pressure even I, who tries to read early, can get into the moment of exams. However, you have to navigate such a season and excel and I believe that a lot of conscious decisions that you make in the exam morning have a huge role to play in determining the grade you come out with. Here are a few hacks of mine for maximising your exams:

1.      Come early: This is very important. I have never, for the life of me, understood why people came late for exams. Even if you have not finished reading, bathe and come to school then look for a good spot to continue your reading. If you have a habit of falling asleep on exam mornings and sleeping just a little too much, stay with a friend that will wake you up. But just come early, at least 30 minutes early. Information flies a lot during exam mornings. I cannot even begin to recall how many times the information I got from my friends on exam morning has helped me pass. There are times that I have been informed of a new case I did not know about, or an area that the lecturer said that he would set that I perhaps did not know about, and used that 30 minutes to grab something. Ideally, when coming for my exams, I try as much as possible to have read and recalled everything so that I can have precious time to get this information.

Additionally, you do not want to end up in a situation where an exam starts a bit early and then your head is crowded with fears of missing out on precious meaning as you are running to school. Or you do not want to have to encounter a nasty invigilator who will take away precious minutes of your time. Just come early and get settled.

 

2.     Be vigilant: Don’t be dull during exam mornings. Look around. If there are places where people are gathered, go and find out why. Trust me on this one, at least more than half of the time, someone has gotten information regarding the exams and is telling his or her friends. That information could save your life.

 

3.      Choose your preferred seat: Choosing a seat that you are comfortable with does wonders for how organised you will be during exams. Ideally, I look for a seat in front, near or under a fan, with enough lighting. I also choose to sit next to people who I know will not say a single word to me during exams and will allow me to be completely at peace whilst I write my exams. Of course, to be fair, sometimes life happens and you can get moved to a horrible seat next to noisemakers and have to cope with them. But in my experience, that rarely happened and because I came early and chose my seat, I was able to optimise the hours I used in writing my exams.

 

4.     Get good stationery: I do not think that I need to talk too much on this. If you have ever been in a situation where one of your pens have stopped halfway through exams, and you did not have a replacement, you would know the importance of carrying at least two of all the stationery you need and making sure that all of them are working properly.

 

5.      Start strong: If you ever saw me writing during exams, you would think, for the first hour, that I was the most confused person you have met. I do not write serially. I write according to the topics that I recall best. So I can write 1a, leave space for b, go to 1c, go to 3, then to 2 and fill in the gaps when I am done writing the ones that I am strongest in. It saves my time and when I am going over the ones that I do not remember so clearly, I am doing so with the peace of the knowledge that I have written the ones that I know very, very well.

 

6.     You will forget things. Be comfortable with that and plan to forget: It’s painful knowing that you should know something during exams and finding out that you have forgotten it, but this is a common occurrence. Ideally, you should recall 95% of whatever you have read and memorised, but you cannot kill yourself because of the few that you do not remember. Say a mournful goodbye to them and move on. This is why you should read like someone who plans to forget. You cannot just select three cases when there are ten available because you 100% trust your brain that you will be able to recall all three. Well, I don’t trust my brain that much, so I learn 8 to 10 so that if I forget, in the worst-case scenario, I would still be able to recall 4. Then, if I recall the 4, I do not kill myself trying to recall the 6 that I have forgotten because I know that what I have written is sufficient. I move to the next question.

 

7.      Time yourself: Time constraints are one of the most difficult aspects of exams. The time given for exams is often too short for the volume of work which students are expected to recall and write. Due to this, even I have fallen into situations in which I have not been able to finish answering exam questions to the best of my ability.

 

So, if you have read and you do not have a plan on how to tackle the time constraints, they may be the one thing that could reduce your A to a B. Hence, you should have a plan for how to write your exam answer and execute that plan. Be ruthless in managing the time spent on each question. That means that when the time allotted for a question runs out, stop working on that question. Leave some blank lines in your answer sheet in case you have time to return to the question at the end of the exam, but move on to the next question. The biggest mistake often made is spending too much time on one question (or one aspect of a single question), which leaves insufficient (or no) time to work on subsequent questions. Also, should you run into time problems, write your answers in short notes, covering all of the relevant points. Shorten the paragraphs, ensuring you just write the essential parts and leave out all of the fluff.

To monitor the time, carry a watch if you have to but if you cannot read an analogue clock quickly, you can ask an invigilator for time at intervals. Of course, this works best if you are in front, directly facing an invigilator, like I was during most exams. This is important so that you do not get caught unawares when the time for exams is exhausted.

 

It’s painful having to prepare for months and months just to have little contingencies that occur during exams ruin the grades that you deserve. So you must do everything possible to ensure that you maximise your exams to achieve the grades that you deserve.

 

YOUR BELIEFS

Now, this is a very sensitive area so please make sure that you read this carefully. A lot of us disregard or pay little attention to the thoughts we harbour regarding ourselves. We disregard the identity we attribute to ourselves and we do not realise that this subconsciously affects everything about the way that we live our lives. In my university days, I encountered a number of people who believed that aiming for an A was too high a target. They believed that they did not have the mental capacity to grasp and understand all that they read. Back then, people would tell me, “ND, my brain and yours are not the same. We cannot carry everything on our head.” This always amused me, the fact that they believed that people who aimed for and got As had bigger brains than everyone else or were unusually good at memorising things. As I have said before, I have never seen myself as having an unnaturally big brain. I see myself as an ordinary girl who, when she makes up her mind, can double down and work very hard for the things that she wants. I struggle with learning names and it affected my memory of cases a lot in the university. Did I decide then that I was going to be picky about the cases to learn? No! I decided that I was going to work twice as hard to ensure that I learnt everything that there was to learn.

As I was saying, your identity plays a key role in the way you live your life. If you see yourself as someone without the mental capacity to make a first-class, you won’t. Simple and short. I would advise that you begin to change the narrative that you tell yourself. Tell yourself that you can do anything you put your mind to. You can make a first class. You have the mind of Christ. You have academic dominion. Say that to yourself long enough for your thought patterns to have a total transformation and you will see your actions change slowly but surely. I have a friend whom I have seen this happen to in real life. In her 100 level, she made a low 2.1 because she never thought that she could make a first-class or that she was smart enough to write exams without cheating. However, she encountered the right set of friends from her 200 level onwards and her thinking pattern changed so drastically that not only did she eventually graduate with a first-class, but as the 4^th best graduating student in my class.

 

YOUR RESILIENCE

At the end of it all, I do believe that resilience plays a key role in emerging with a first class in the university. You have four or five or even six years there. Not all semesters will be nice and favourable. You might have some bad experiences. You might fall sick and get some bad grades. But you must keep pushing. It is possible to rise after falling and you have enough time to correct your mistakes if you have made any. Some semesters, you might get so overwhelmed that you would want to give up. You might find yourself breaking down in tears several times. This is completely normal. But the secret is to keep pushing. Never stop. Write the vision, make it plain and keep pushing till you get the grades you deserve. You can do this. I believe in you.

 

 

So you’re in a rut.

You’re not exactly sure how it happened. A few weeks, months or years ago, you decided to allow yourself to relax just a little bit and take an off day. But now, you have been in bed all day for the past week and your room is in a mess. Your dishes have piled up. Your work has been ignored or forgotten despite looming deadlines. If you are a university student, your books lay tucked away on a shelf and you cannot remember the last time you voluntarily woke up early and went for your lectures except when pushed to by impending quizzes, tests etc. You spend a good chunk of your time swamped on your bed, binge-watching movies or scrolling mindlessly on social media. You lack the energy and motivation to push yourself to do anything productive. In fact, the thought of picking yourself up and getting back on track with your goals fills you with so much dread, it is paralysing. And the further you slide into this rut, the harder it is to come out of it.

At this point, you might be feeling a strong desire to move forward, to push past the state of lethargy that you might be experiencing, but such feeling would be met with an equally strong, if not stronger compulsion to stay fixed to where you are. You want to improve, but your limbic system is in overdrive, making the desire to indulge in momentary pleasures stronger than the desire to change for the better.

And here’s the thing. You know about self-improvement. You have seen the results of it. In fact, you might have been the most productive you had ever been just a month ago. But currently, you’re in a pit and you are absolutely sick of it. The messy room and the approaching work or school deadlines are starting to give you anxiety and are putting you in a depressive state. However, no matter what you do, you cannot seem to break out of your rut. You may try to pull yourself out and be successful for a day or two, but eventually, you find yourself falling back into that pit.

So why? You may ask yourself. Why am I in a rut?

BURNOUT

In my personal opinion, falling into a rut often comes right after a long stretch of overworking and not getting appropriate levels of rest, completely neglecting the need to take care of yourself and being very stressed. The rut you have fallen into comes simply as a response to the chronic stress that you have been experiencing and neglecting. In other words, you’re not in a rut because you are lazy, you are in a rut because you are spent. You are severely burnt out.

Due to your burnout, you find yourself losing the joy and passion for your work, being completely apathetic towards any productive endeavours and feeling the desire to just curl up in your bed and never move. Your energy has been depleted, the passion long gone, but because you used to be so productive and something within you craves to get back into place, you might find yourself hating yourself for letting yourself go.

 

STAGNANT ROUTINES

More often than not, it is easy to get sucked into a life bedevilled with rote routines, where you can begin to operate on mindless autopilot and fail to enjoy the nuances of life. This can often lead to a life rid of any form of excitement, which strips away the joy of life, making life feel monotonous. Because daily life has become uninspiring, you can begin to lose joy in activities that once brought you enjoyment, leading to a feeling of dissatisfaction. When life feels monotonous, it’s easy to begin to rely more heavily on bad habits that give you the release of dopamine and provide some escape from your routine, otherwise, boring life. Soon, you can find yourself deep in a rut, and not particularly having any motivation to go back to your mindless, repetitive routines.

 

PERFECTIONISM

If you have grown to believe that perfectionism is somehow the secret to success, you might be surprised to find out that that trait might be sabotaging your success. Perfectionists usually believe that anything less than perfect is unacceptable. Therefore, they often tend to unconsciously reject making any form of effort towards their dreams and aspirations, operating under the misguided belief that it is better not to do anything at all than to produce results that do not meet the high standards that they set for themselves. Furthermore, perfectionists are often over-thinkers and this trait can lead to a condition known as paralysis by analysis where the need to make a perfect choice could lead to them not making a choice at all. Additionally, the need to avoid making mistakes could lead to a reluctance to take risks at all and with a combination of all these toxic traits, it is easy to slip into a rut, choosing to do nothing at all rather than do anything that would not be perfect.

 

LACK OF PURPOSE OR DIRECTION

A life without purpose or direction is a rut in itself. As sentient, rational humans, it is all but impossible to live a life lacking any meaning without experiencing feelings of emptiness, boredom and dissatisfaction. Such a life can lead a person to spiral into a depressive cycle, entrenching them in a rut. Furthermore, a life without purpose is devoid of motivation, and without such, it is difficult to find the incentive to pursue new opportunities, leading into a rut where a person simply flows through life, directionless and without a care to change the trajectory of their life.

 

These are just a few of the most common reasons why you might be stuck in a rut. You could also be stuck in a rut due to the environment you find yourself in, your fear of change, your self-limiting beliefs, your fixed mindset or even your low self-esteem amongst many other reasons.

 

So how exactly can you get out of this rut?

SELF-LOATHING ISN’T THE ANSWER

In times when I have fallen into a rut, which has been a couple of times, I have often fallen into the habit of being hard on myself. I define myself as someone who is highly motivated and ambitious and I have feelings of intense guilt whenever I waste away my time. So when I find myself rotting in bed for an entire day, scrolling through my phone and doing other mindless activities, I end up feeling terrible about myself, which drains me of my energy, and which means that I spend even more hours wasting away my time while guilt and shame literally eat me alive. This becomes a toxic cycle that can last for weeks.

When in a rut, especially as a person who knows that they can be better, accomplish more, as a person who actually wants to do a lot more with their life and dominate the world, it is easy to reach a point where you are overwhelmed by the feelings of self-loathing and uselessness. Because if you can identify the things you need to do to become the person you want to be and you consistently don’t do them, it is easy to see yourself in a very negative light. You can become resigned and very critical of yourself.

However, one thing that helps is understanding that a lot of people experience periods in their life where all motivation seems to have been sucked out of their body and they visibly lack the ability to put in any effort anymore. Being in a rut does not necessarily mean that you are stupid, lazy, that you have issues and that you inherently lack the ability to make a name for yourself in life.

 

DON’T BE HARSH ON YOURSELF, BUT DON’T SETTLE

Nevertheless, you need to realise that the state that you are in is not okay. It’s not alright to live life on autopilot, to spend days and weeks unmotivated and unproductive. If you decide that you are fine in the position that you are in, you will become complacent and dwell in the comfort of your rut. However, when you acknowledge that the position you are in is not normal or fine, you can then begin to generate the emotional impetus to force yourself out of the rut. That feeling of being unsatisfied you get when you realise that things are not okay the way that they are will give you all that you need to propel yourself forward.

 

REST FOR THE BURNT OUT

Photo by madison lavern on Unsplash

When you are in a rut because of burnout, before you begin to seek ways to propel yourself out of the rut, the best way to get back into shape is to take the time to actually rest, not just rot in bed and feel guilty about your lack of productivity. You see, when you are burnt out, it may look like you are resting because you are not actually doing anything productive but the reality is that you are just so stressed and overwhelmed that you are paralysing yourself and that doesn’t count as rest.

When you are going through this, you have to remind yourself that resting and taking an off day to take adequate care of yourself is the most productive thing that you can do. Your goals can wait. Your to-do list can wait. Take some time to have a factory reset.

 

BABY STEPS

Most people wait for motivation to hit them for them to begin to climb upwards and whilst the negative emotions you feel about your situation might serve as adequate motivation, if you wait around for the motivation for change to hit you like a bomb before you begin to take the right actions towards change, you might end up waiting forever. This is because motivation follows action. Sometimes, what you need to get the motivation to change your life is actually to begin to take steps to turn your life around. Just take one step, a simple step like finally getting around to doing your chores and making your environment look like a nice, breathable space, and watch as motivation propels you forward to finally open your laptop or book or send that application you have been hesitating to send. Therefore, instead of waiting around for your motivation to suddenly appear, try taking action first instead. Once you take action, there is a very high chance that you will discover motivation along the way to keep going.

However, if you still need some more motivation, you can go out of your way to read self-improvement books or you can watch some inspirational videos (not recommended if you have a YouTube addiction), or perhaps listen to some motivational podcasts.

 

DON’T EXPECT YOUR REBOUND TO HAPPEN IN ONE DAY

In reconnecting to the old productive version of yourself, you have to realise that you cannot go from zero to a hundred in a moment. Focus on getting on track one step at a time. You don’t need to create an elaborate routine, delete all apps instantly and think that you can just take a crash course towards recovery. You might be able to pull that sort of stunt for one day, perhaps two, perhaps even a week. But because your body has not yet acclimatised to that sort of routine and lifestyle, you would eventually revert to square one. You don’t force yourself out of your comfort zone, but push yourself out of your comfort zone slowly. If you decide, perhaps in one 2 a.m. burst of motivation, that you are going to get out of your comfort zone by doing things that you know very well that you will not be able to do long-term at the level you are in at the moment, you are setting yourself up for failure. You are going to reach a point in which you scare yourself back into the rut.

So perhaps your rut has you scrolling for hours on end on social media apps. Getting out of the rut does not mean instantly deleting the apps and thinking that you will suddenly transform into the productive person that you once were or that you have always aspired to be. Trust me, I have tried that. Eventually, you find yourself reverting, or finding some other app that replaces the one that you discarded because you have not yet built yourself up to be the kind of person that is no longer addicted to social media. So you delete YouTube because your phone tells you that it is the app that you spend the most amount of time on. Suddenly, TikTok, an app that you have probably never had an interest in, becomes the most interesting thing to you. After a few weeks, you realise that TikTok has taken the place of YouTube and you delete it. Guess what? Instagram and Facebook become captivating to you. And even if you manage to delete those apps, guess what? You find a couple of websites and blogs on Google that occupy that vacant time that you used to spend mindlessly scrolling on social media apps. And even if you stop purchasing data, the games on your phone take that place until you get completely fed up and find yourself pining for the apps you deleted. And the cycle goes on. This is because you have not levelled yourself to the point where you are freed of your addictions. Going cold turkey is not the way. You just don’t have enough willpower to pull off that stunt.

Here’s a better way to tackle this. Don’t delete those apps. Get a tracker that monitors the amount of time that you spend on those apps. Then strategically decrease the amount of time you spend. What happens when you do that gradually is that you slowly recharge your willpower to desist from those bad habits that have placed you in the rut that you are in. You slowly train your willpower whilst looking for productive activities that you can use to replace the times that you have spent indulging yourself.

 

YOU’VE GOT THIS!

The thing is, most times, people fall into a rut because their limbic system loves the dose of dopamine it gets from being unproductive, lazy and lethargic. That dopamine addiction that you have gained is very hard to quit and removing all sources of dopamine from your life all at once is really not the answer because you would eventually relapse. Getting out of a rut is not going to happen overnight. It takes time, patience, and the ability to be gentle with yourself. Don’t expect yourself to get back to your best self immediately. Reward yourself for the little accomplishments you make along the way as you slowly climb back up.

And with increasing focus, determination and effort, you will be able to get out of your rut. I assure you