Unpopular study tips you might need for back to school.

It's September, school has restarted pretty much anywhere, and Internet is now overflowing with content showing tips on how to start fresh and thrive in the upcoming school or academic year.

I love these sorts of videos because it helped me reset and enter the spirit of the new school year. Despite this, I feel like sometimes they are promoting toxic positivity and toxic productivity, although I believe that their creators are genuinely well-intentioned.

As a student, I have always felt in a grey area - not athletic enough to focus on sports and P.E., not skilled enough for crafty subjects, not consistent enough for overly complicated academic work despite my good grades. I have also felt, to a certain extent, that my school system had somewhat failed me, so it is only inevitable that I find these tips to be quite limited.

Therefore, I will give you a couple of unpopular but realistic tips that you might also need this school year.

Competition and isolation makes it harder for you to succeed.

While a lot of people talk about the toxicity of wanting to fit in, I feel like we do not talk about the toxicity of competitiveness enough.

I know that there are cases where competition is inherently necessary, for example in sports, but besides that, it is not only unnecessary, but absolutely unproductive.

Being competitive means that you'll end up being so worried about what your peers are doing that you might lose sight of your personal goals and the work that you have to do to achieve them. Not only that: seeing your peers as sole competition can lead to you isolating and missing out on important things.

This is especially the case in college or university, where it is often hard to get information on courses, professors, and exam topics. Having a community to help you with the organizational stuff can generally make you feel less lost. If said community also offers mutual help with studying through a chat or in-person study groups, it's even more beneficial.

Studying in groups also has benefits on its own, such as improving your communication skills, being more engaged with your studying material, giving you a reality check on your preparation, getting help from other group members, and so on.

Obviously, this does not mean that you let other competitive people walk all over you. An overly competitive person also tends to be isolated because their attitude might have a negative impact on certain people, or people might feel like it is too anxiety-inducing for them.

In extreme cases, overcompetitive people might also try to sabotage your work. The frequency of these actions depends entirely on the environment involved (the major, the university, the overall culture and work ethic of the country). If you find such a person in your study group, you obviously have every right to distance from them without remorse.

If these reasons are not enough for you, consider this: in a couple of years, once you have moved on with your life, you will look back at your overcompetitive self at some point. What will you see then? Someone you're proud of or someone you cringe at? My guess is: probably the latter.

Studying and working hard might not always get you the best grades.

This is a truth that many studygrammer tend to gloss over. Sure, it's cute to have a motivated and orgaized person on your "for you" page to act as a sort of role model, but it tends to overshadow a harsh fact: your evaluator cannot detach rational thinking from their feelings and biases. This means that grades tend to depend on your teacher's mood to some extent.

During my years at school and at university, I have witnessed this at my expense or at the expense of other coursemates, more or less extremely.

Spotting such behavior and admitting it to yourself is not easy, as most of the times our first thought is that it was probably our fault and that we should work harder next time.

However, if you see a large group of your coursemates having the same problems as you, whether they tell you or you simply witness it, it could be time to accept that putting so much effort might get you nowhere.

This does not mean that you have to stop studying for a certain subject altogether. What I mean is that you should not go out of your way for it. Study enough to be confident in the fact that you know the topic, regardless of what your evaluator will have to say. Prioritize the subjects that you like and the ones where you feel that you can actually achieve a high result by studying equally hard. That's where your efforts will pay off.

It may sound very counterintuitive, but when I adopted this "whatever" mindset for certain subjects in high school, my grades ended up improving drastically.

Your projects do not always have to be groundbreaking.

This does not apply to any single one of us - if you want to do a PhD, for example, you will need a high GPA and an interesting dissertation to be considered eligible.

However, if you have other plans, hear me out: the main goal of most of your project and paper-focused tasks is not to create something Nobel Prize-worthy, your goal is to do something good enough to pass the course.

It is completely okay to want to do something creative or somewhat original, but sometimes the idea just do not come out because of a variety of reasons. If you focus on the core goal of your task, it will be easier for you to start preparing something so that at least you can pass your course.

While you're tackling the material, then, who knows, maybe you will get the brilliant idea you were looking for! If not, you will still have something ready. Be gentle to your stressed-out brain and keep in mind the core goal of your tasks: to get through.

The power of "negative" motivation and community

Now, some of you might think that I am giving this advice out of a place of frustration, and I probably am. Nevertheless, it is crucial to be realistic: tiredness, stress and burn-out are going to suck away your motivation at times, sometimes you will not feel physically or mentally fine at all but you will have a deadline regardless. What are you going to do, then? Fail a class while waiting for "genuine passion", "feeling like you're studying for yourself" and such?

What if "studying for yourself" also meant being able to cross an item off your academic to-do list, no matter how insensitively?

At the same time, finding a community is crucial if you do not want to turn this dryness into pure frustration. Having people to share your struggles and maybe even laugh about that one egocentric teacher can really work magic.

So, what do you think? Do you like "back to school" content? Have you ever had these thoughts? Tell me in the comments and, with that said, I wish you all a (somehow) happy new school or academic year!