STUDY HABITS
University students struggle with several issues in their day to day lives as they attempt to strike a balance between studying and attending to daily obligations. With the current industrial revolution, companies tend to prefer top-notch and highly competent students to offer job contracts. Due to the competitive nature of the job market, students are aware that they have to secure a job position by becoming the best in various disciplines such as economics, law, medicine, engineering, and technology. To earn good grades and progress from one academic level to another, university students are obliged to at least study for a few hours during the day and night. However, it is not just about studying but how smart studying habits prove useful for the student to earn good grades. Upon transition from high school to the university, a significant number of students have realized that the former studying habits used in high school aren’t proving useful. A significant number of college students are perturbed and seek answers to how they can use mechanisms to perform exemplarily in continuous assessment tests and end of the semester examinations. In a number of interviews conducted with fellow university students on the challenges they face in adapting to the university norm of studying. The grievances were more inclined to less professor involvement, classes are much rigorous, reading becomes more intense, exams are much more, and the lecture rooms are also bigger than most of their previous classes in high school. Other than the identification of major problems faced, a significant number of students also shared how they have adopted study habits that have acted as a game-changer and has delivered them from the sorry state of academic performance. They have since been able to breeze through with the bare minimum effort. The smart study strategies outlined included being organized, creating a study plan, creating study groups, among many others.
Studying in the university exposes students to a significant number of hurdles, including finances, socializing to make more friends, and transiting to the new university life from the former high schools. Based on the group’s evaluation of the listed core prevailing problems experienced by university students, we channeled our research towards student’s study habits. The main attribute to this study is because in school, the core business is to study to get more knowledge, become competent in various disciplines such as law, medicine, economics, and technology which significantly impact an individual and the world as a whole. Students need to identify strategies to help improve their study habits since a significant number linked underprivileged academic performance to poor studying habits they possess due to various background, family, gender, and situational challenges. In the group research, we decided to formulate several questions that we thought were hefty and cloud provide us with more insights on the study problems making I difficult for students to perform well in continuous assessment and main examinations. From the online materials used to conduct the research, we chose to include the question of procrastination since it popped up on a significant number of contents from the online content used as our reference. University students are also entitled to other daily activities since they need to strike a balance between work, life, and succeeding in academics. Due to the fact that there may be external prevailing factors hat impact either positively or negatively on their study habits, we as a group decided to include the question of life influence and its effects on the development of individual study habits. Because of the contradicting opinions of group members as to whether studying alone or as a group yields more results, we decided to include the question of how the environment influences the study routine to gain more cognizance.
To widen the research and make a more valid conclusion, a research question on how procrastination impacts academic performance was included. To explore the topic of how study habits as a problem affect the academic performance of university students. I chose a number of university students and related stakeholders who could benefit from our group’s proposed solution to help me gain more insights on the subject matter. From a list of proposed interview questions, I was able to draw a number of intuitions from the type of questions that I used as my interview question. From the conclusions made from the interview, the problem of procrastination stood out to be a significant problem causing a deteriorated academic performance of university students. Procrastination is the scenario whereby an individual avoids performing his obligations to tasks that need to be complete before a certain deadline. It can as well be defined as an intentional delay or a habitual delay of finishing or starting a task irrespective of the detrimental effects that the failure to beat the deadline bears. A significant number of students attributed poor studying habits and poor academic performance to this factor. The majority of the students had formed habits of working on their provided projects and assignments when the deadline was close. This, in turn, limited the depth of their research, and by hastily trying to beat the issued deadline, they were not able to fetch the maximum scores from the assignments and projects. Another portion procrastinated and interfered with their developed study plans. This forced them to study for the exams a day or night before, and they did not have enough time to memorize the entire required unit’s content leading to their failure.
The other question that issued more insightful answers from our employees was the question of how various study environments influence the study routine of the students as they attempt to grasp more of the various unit’s content that is very vital for the success of exemplary academic performance. In drawing conclusions of the interview, I gained a significant number of insights formerly not known to me about the study habits of university students and what problems it causes to a significant number. The first insight I draw from my interview with various stakeholders and the affected students was that many students were not happy with their current study habits as compared to how they used to study in high school, hence needed a change in order to breeze through the academic journey smoothly. Students attributed the poor academic performance to various poor studying habits. They further mentioned depth research on good studying habits as a game-changer; as a result, they were able to draw smart studying habits from academicians who were able to breeze through the academic venture with the bare minimum efforts. Some of the unscrupulous study habits mentioned by the students included; studying with the wrong people, studying a night before the exams, turning on destructions, studying in the wrong place, and finally procrastination; a problem faced by almost all university students. Another insight gained was that environment has got different effects on the study habits of university students. As it has always been stereotyped that studying in the library and in a silent place yields the best academic performance. Some of our interviewed respondents firmly disputed this belief they went the extra mile to prove that even studying away from the library at home and studying with friends yielded them the desired results.
The final insight gained was that there exist other life factors that affect an individual’s study habits. One of the respondents mentioned social life as a factor that has an impact on his study habits. However, having a social life is very important. The social circle should have mentally upright individuals that help the student strike a balance between the social life and books since dedicating all your emotional well- being to school has got a negative effect on health. The respondent further went ahead and mentioned that when he was caught up in more parties with fellow students and friends, it became a challenge to complete projects and assignments and submit them on time, unlike when he strives a balance and partied les frequently. The other interviewee also mentioned an effect of health on study habits. She went ahead to state that she had recently lost a loved one, and due to the high-stress levels, he was not able to give her books the much-deserved attention. She further went ahead to state that the rate at which she used to grasp concepts before the change in situation was higher than when she got bereaved. Her academic performance was directly influenced by her mental health at that time. After hefty group research and interviewing of esteemed stakeholders and university students, I concluded that procrastination proved to have a significant effect on the student’s academic performance. Finally, to enhance the study habits for the purpose of achieving good academic performance, university students should adopt smart studying practices such as avoiding procrastination by planning their time properly, choosing conducive environments to study in, forming study groups, and maintaining good social life since a good social life has got effects on the mental health which proves also to affect the study habits.