Nice to see you in the substack community Baxate Carter ! Your article reminds me of parts of my experience in university. Most of my courses in university were weighted heavily on the hands-on assignments, so my strategy shifted towards how to do those well. I found that these strategies worked for me (and maybe one can adapt it to other classes):

• Start each assignment early: Especially for hands-on assignments, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, so why take the risk of starting things at the last minute? Plus, you have to let some problems marinate to stimulate the flow of ideas

• Doing a little bit each day really helps when you trace the dots. I’m currently taking Computer Networks in grad school and I didn’t come with prior knowledge of the material, so I had to do a little bit day by day so that everything doesn’t snowball.

• I would also recommend practicing asking for help or a question. Yes there is the camp of “I’ll self teach everything” but that leads to a more common problem of “banging your head against the wall for hours when a 5 minute answer from someone could have unblocked you”.

  • I used to have a habit of going to office hours with the TAs too early to have someone to tap on the shoulder if I had questions about the assignment. Yes, I got my assignments done on time and could proficiently explain my understanding. The tradeoff was that I didn’t develop the habit of “being independent” and “struggling enough”

  • I would still recommend practicing going to office hours and asking for help since everyone needs it from time to time. The caveat is that when you’re stuck on something, try for at most one day to self resolve the issue. If you’re still stuck, go to office hours and when asking your question, present what you’ve tried so far. Help others help you!