Start Fixing Your Grades After Halloween

Tips From a Private Irvine Tutor: Start Fixing Your Grades After Halloween

Halloween is a fun holiday that presents a nice reprieve from school work (even if most students still have school on October 31^st).  However, it is also useful to recognize it as a turning point in your grades for the semester or quarter.  Halloween marks the end of October, meaning that there is only November and some percentage of December left for your classes and grades this period – book your private Irvine tutor today.

This means that your time is limited to achieve the grades that you want – but not so limited that you can’t make an effective change.  Halloween gives you a mental break and stress relief to then focus on making a change afterward.  Here are some things you can do to start fixing your grades after Halloween:

Talk to Your Teachers

One first step you should take in improving your grades is to talk to the teachers or professors in the classes where you are struggling.  Ideally, you would do this in a meeting or during office hours rather than just a few minutes after class or over email.  Your teacher is the one who knows the assignments and grading policy and is the best equipped to give you practical resources.

Your teacher can tell you what grades are possible for you to achieve, what grade you are on track for, what assignments you will need to do well on, and what you should be doing now.  If you are going to improve your grades, then you need to know where you’re at now and where you can realistically get to in the next two months.

Make an Early Finals Study Plan

If your class has a final – especially if it is a cumulative final – then you can get a head start on preparation now while you are motivated and not overwhelmed with end of semester stress.  Make a clear and concise study material now.  Make flashcards, outlines, or practice questions.  My ideal approach is to pretend you are the teacher and make a test for yourself based on what you’ve learned so far.  You don’t even have to take the test you make; the act of making it helps your learning, and you can save it for the final time to take it again.

Get Started on Final Projects or Papers NOW

This is advice that everyone knows, and no one takes it.  If you have a significant final project or paper for the end of your semester, then you should start it early.  Don’t tell yourself that you have plenty of time.  Don’t tell yourself that you haven’t learned enough yet to finish it.  Start something and make a contribution now while you are motivated and ready to make a change.

It can be as small as a simple paragraph or a title and a few notes.  Just put some amount of work in now, and you will thank yourself for it later.  It can also help you find areas of confusion that you can bring up to your teacher while you still have plenty of time.  The only way for your teacher to help you with a big project that is a large part of your grade is if you make an effort to start it early, so you have time to ask.

Hire a Private Irvine Tutor

These tips all require you to hold yourself accountable and be motivated enough to realize change.  Having someone else there to help and keep you on track can be a huge incentive actually to making the change happen without being on your own.  A tutor can make sure you start studying early, make sure that you reach out to your teacher and help you conceptualize your syllabus, and make sure you are on track with big projects or papers.

A tutor can also help you catch up at old material or excel at new material.  While starting and early and being focused can be effective in improving your grade, it can only help so much if you simply don’t understand what you’re learning in class or fell too far behind.  A tutor can help remedy these problems in a way that you likely couldn’t achieve on your own.  Make sure to look for an experienced tutor and be clear about what your goals are and what you want to get out of the experience.

Let Halloween be more than just a fun holiday and use it as a catalyst to make a real and effective change in your academic career.  You’ll thank yourself for it when you get your final grades if you just put in the effort to start now.

Don’t wait until the last minute to book your experienced Irvine tutor.

Michael C. is currently a private math, science, and standardized test tutor with TutorNerds in Irvine and Anaheim.