Making the "Right" Friends

Making friends in school is difficult. That much anyone can attest to. What's even more difficult however, is making the right kind of friends. The right friends to make in school are ones that will help you study and you can help study in return. Essentially, the best friend to make in school is someone who has a similar GPA or a similar outlook on how to handle school.

As your school career gets longer, you'll be asked to read and write more and more and more to the point where if you have a job in addition to going to school, it will not be physically possible to read all the required material and write every essay at the required length while also maintaining a social life.

In secondary school, the key to succeeding is to make friends who share similar classes and teachers. While I always encourage people to make friends with as many social groups as possible, it doesn't very much help you to befriend athletes or people in the school band if you don't share classes with them and you are looking for a study partner.

In a collegiate setting, befriending people who share your major is imperative. While discussing your passion for a subject is nice, what is even more advantageous is the prospect of picking and choosing classes based on students who will help you succeed. Of course, within every major you will find people who simply want to graduate with minimal effort and other people who want to graduate at the top of the class. For this reason, you should not study with people who do not share a similar outlook on school or its purpose. The results you get are minimal at best and you could even lower your grade by studying with people who are not as good students as you are.

The TV show Community uses the narrative of the study group to demonstrate people from different lifestyles and outlooks on education. The Spanish study group becomes one about a group of students teaming up to tackle Professor Chang's impossible Spanish class. Jeff and Britta make up the "slacker" mentality, Annie and Abed make up the "studious" mentality, Shirley and Pierce make up the "fun" mentality, and Troy is the wild card that is pulled around by the different factions. On average, the study group has probably a 2.99 GPA mentality. I would estimate that based on their personalities and reasons for going to school, Annie is a 4.0 student, Abed is a 3.75, Shirley is a 3.49, Pierce is a 3.0, Troy is a 2.5, Britta is a 2.25, and Jeff is (intentionally) a 2.0 student. Because they study together, ultimately Britta does better in school, but Annie does much worse. This is not a successful study group by any stretch and should never be the model followed by students!

Ultimately, you should do what works best for you. If something isn't working, try something else! If you keep repeating the same method and do not get different results, odds are that you will continue to get undesired results.

How do I Get a Better Grade?

Full disclosure: I have probably never effectively managed my free time to be productive. Despite that, I have done relatively well in school because of the way I take notes and study.

I believe the five-letter American grade scale to more accurately be a grade of how well you have prepared for a class or subject:

A: Religiously attended class, took good notes, studied well for tests. 

B: Attended a majority of classes, took good notes, mildly studied for tests. 

C: Attended class semi-regularly, took satisfactory notes, mildly studied for tests.

D: Attended class semi-regularly, took poor notes, did not study for tests. 

F: Rarely attended class, took poor (or no) notes, did not study for tests. 

I have yet to meet a student who got mostly As by coasting through all of their classes and I do not think it is possible to get an F while also taking attention in class. I strongly believe that the biggest factor in earning one grade to another is in note-taking ability.

If you are a pen-and-paper note-taker, I recommend utilizing the Cornell method of note-taking (Click link for a video explaining). Cornell Notes are an excellent tool for classes that require you to synthesize your ideas into a cohesive argument. This applies to English literature classes, the humanities, and even natural science classes.

With the advent of both the slim laptop and the tablet, there is a noticeable rise in students who exclusively take notes with an electronic device (myself included). I find that digital notes are far easier to edit and they are easy to share with classmates. Because I am not limited by the amount of paper in my notebook and can take notes as quickly as I can type, I have the freedom to type as much as I want. The key to taking good digital notes is to include internet links to clarify things that may not have been properly explained. 

However you take notes, make sure that you simply do! You can take picture notes if you are a more visual learner. What is important is that your notes make sense to you. 

The Importance of Typeface in Your Papers

One of the most important things that a student should consider before he or she starts a term paper, essay, research paper,  etc. is what typeface or font the document will be presented in.

Although most teachers and professors are sticklers for uniformity, in reality they welcome things that are outside the norm. If your instructor does not specifically mandate a certain font to be used, then you should never, under any circumstances, use Times (New Roman) or Arial.

Times (New Roman) is one of the most overused typefaces in academia. Most professors will not know the difference between one paper to another and that in itself is part of the problem. Instead, you should use a serif typeface similar to Times, but different, such as Palatino (Linotype), Cambria, Garamond, or Georgia, the font used in this blog. Make your paper stand out! Don't be afraid to be noticed.

The Chicago Manual of Style is intentionally vague on what typeface to use. Turabian's guide suggests using a readily available font that is easy to read, such as Times New Roman, Courier, or Helvetica and further recommends a font that has a true Italic font that is easily distinguished from the standard font. Although Helvetica is a suggested typeface, it is not readily available; only Apple devices come with Helvetica pre-installed and Windows devices come with Arial as the closest approximation (I have a different post on the evils of Arial later). For many older teachers, Courier can prove difficult to read on paper and should be avoided unless your teacher is old enough to have used a typewriter to type their papers instead of a computer or word processor. You probably aren't typing essays on a typewriter, so don't pretend that you are. Of course, this leaves us to only Times as the safe option.

Because Times New Roman was the default font in Microsoft Word for so long, it now carries a connotation of laziness. You didn't even bother to change the default font before typing your document? Brian Hoff, a graphic designer, describes using Times New Roman on a résumé as wearing sweatpants to a job interview. While I believe Times to be a very aesthetically pleasing font, it has saturated documents ever since the personal computer took off and now looks pedestrian.

MLA and APA are a bit more strict on what typeface you should use, but if you want to really wow a teacher, use a typeface outside the norm like the ones I recommended. The simple rules you should follow are 1) Can you read this? and 2) Is this aesthetically pleasing? If you can answer yes to both, you have successfully picked a good typeface. 

What This Blog Contains

My name is Enrique A. Marquez and I am currently working on getting my Bachelor's Degree in history from California State University, Northridge. I was previously a student at my hometown high school, Westlake High, and my local junior college, Moorpark College, where I obtained my Associate's Degree in history.

This blog will focus on my journey as a student of history and helpful hints to succeeding at all levels of academia. One of the biggest misconceptions about higher learning is that you must be intelligent to get a college degree. This is patently false, evident from the classmates I have encountered in my path and even some of the teachers I have learned from.

Each day I will post a story or anecdote that corresponds to a lesson that students (and even instructors) can learn about succeeding in school. This blog will be focused for mostly history majors, but most of the things you learn in school actually apply to all subjects. 

You will learn how to take notes better, study more effectively, write better term papers, and impress your instructors like you never thought possible!