Hollywood has always shown us that succeeding in school is for taped-glasses nerds and overzealous freshman. It’s simple, being smart and successful just isn’t cool anymore. We here at the UVU Review believe that to truly succeed, you’ll first have to fail. We’ve taken the time to interview the teachers, counselors, and students of UVU, collecting the top ten tips and tricks for achieving poor grades. If you have any respect for your collegiate social career, you’ll put down those musty old textbooks right now and read up.
What you may not know about failing a course is that it begins before you ever enter a classroom, during registration.
- Tip One: Register for classes that compete with your sleep schedule. Are you a night owl? Easy, schedule your classes super early. Sure you’ll be exhausted, but that makes it all the easier to sleep through class. UVU offers a wide variety of class times so it should be easy to find a class schedule that forces you to abandon your best hours of R.E.M., allowing you to sit through your classes half-dazed.
- Tip Two: Take more classes than you can possibly handle. The more the merrier, right? UVU allows students to take a maximum of 18 credits per term. We suggest you match this, especially if you’ve got a part-time job or lots of time-consuming activities outside of school. The idea is that you’re setting yourself up to fail by overwhelming yourself with an impossible workload.
Now that you’re registered, let’s skip forward to the day before class…
- Tip Three: School shopping? Don’t bother! Many teachers at UVU require a textbook and specific tools for their classes. They use these to expound on topics that cannot be covered during class and to help students better understand subject matter. I think you know where we’re going with this… don’t buy the books. Textbooks are expensive, save the money. Buy some French fries or go see the latest “Transformers” or something. If you really want to fail, we suggest going to class sans school supplies.
- Tip Four: Have you ever heard the expression, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead?” Well we have, and we like it, but we offer a slightly different mantra for UVU students: “I’ll sleep while I’m in class.” We all know college was made for partying, so carpe diem and stay up all night, every night. There is no better way to tune out a boring lecture than by being unconscious through it.
Okay, you’ve arrived in class drowsy and already staggering under the load of homework you’ve received from your over-stretched school schedule, now what?
- Tip Five: Distract yourself at all costs. Like it or not, the longer you listen to your teacher the more information your brain stores from their lecture. Use your laptop to check Facebook, play Tiny Wings, or engage in a classic “daydream and doodle” combo.
- Tip Six: Do not, for any reason, ask questions. Confused about something? Good, you’ve been taking the right steps. Raising your hand for the opportunity to shout, “That’s what she said” in an attempt to impress the pretty brunette two rows from you is, however, encouraged. It’s totally weird, but some teachers will actually give you a grade for participation, so be sure that you shirk any opportunities to chime in on discussion topics or to be helpful to the hard-working kids you got stuck with for a group project. We encourage you to slouch, sit near the back of the room, and send a good eye-roll at anyone who offers you help.
- Tip Seven: If you have to flip open your notebook, please don’t write down anything the teacher is saying, especially if it involves due-dates or testing tips. Avoid nicely structured note taking that outlines lectures by subject and involves titles like “important topics” and “things to remember.” Forget about homework planners too. Stick to creating a flipbook in the corner of your sticky-notes or writing your boyfriend’s name hundreds of times in cursive.
- Tip Eight: This is probably our most valuable piece of advice. UVU staff and students agree that the all-time number one way to fail a class is to skip it entirely. As our own Dr. Nichols explains, it’s as simple as, “Just don’t come to class.” Poor attendance guarantees that you’ll completely miss out on any learning that could possibly take place. In fact, you don’t even have to miss every class. Many teachers factor attendance into your grade, so besides missing the lectures you’ll also loose points by missing role-call.
If done properly, these tips have allowed you to catch up on some sleep during class and ensured that you remember nothing from your lectures. But what do you do with your large stack of assignments?
- Tip Nine: Hail back to every student’s favorite past-time, procrastination. If there’s one college tradition that we endorse, it’s cramming. Your parents did it, you grandparents probably even did it, and now it’s your turn to plan poorly and stay up until 4 a.m., studying for a test last minute or writing that paper that you’ve known about for months.
- Tip Ten: It may be a no-brainer, but the best way to fail a class, after lack of attendance is to do no work at all. Paper airplane those papers and go have fun!
All in all, your task won’t be an easy one. Between UVU’s highly qualified teaching staff and wide range of student success services, it’s no easy task to fail completely. But we can assure you that if you follow these guidelines completely you’ll be a failure in no time at all.
