Good results? Always? Too easy? Beware!

So you have always found schoolwork easy. Consider yourself blessed. Many don't and struggle even in the early years. The first ten years of school often lacks any challenge and, therefore, interest for many students. They receive sound reports and comments from school, suggesting they are going well. Indeed all that you can see points to them going on to appear in awards lists in the last years of school, going on to College and University after successfully passing through the rigors of the first major part of their academic career. Are you a student like this? Time for caution. When the passage through school is relatively easy, lacking challenge, you can develop the bad habits that result from lack of pushing your brain to its limits. Those habits can become ingrained and cause hurdles in the next few years. They may reduce your chance of success at school.

Beware. Be cautious. Be warned. Those poor habits may reduce your potential for the highest grades and hobble results to the second top tiers as you struggle to overcome structures you find irrelevant. Make sure you push yourself, even if the curriculum doesn't. Be careful that you go beyond the routine required by your brain. The Senior years of school require several elements not evident in the lower years. These include more emphasis on clear, written detail of your problem solving pattern; evidence of individual research; increased volume; improved presentation structures; a larger number of theories joined into the same assigned task; much larger assigned tasks. All these serve to take your skills to a point leading to College and University learning.

If you have had a school career that has offered little challenge so far and you are about to enter the final couple of years, do yourself a favor. Listen to all the advice you hear from your teachers and act on it. Get your brain strong ASAP. Most good teachers are fully aware that students with above average intelligence often resist the work requirements of the Senior years when they find the very comfortable, and somewhat lazy, effort needed so far is disturbed as greater pressure is placed on them to achieve the same excellence in their grades.

Complacency with your wonderful ability can lead to a slow and insidious rotting of clear communication channels within the brain, particularly those used to meet with challenge and problem analysis and solving. Your brain will work like cold mush. Keep it strong, keep it flexible. Keep it creative. There are many ways to do this. Prepare well for the future.

Have a great day

School too easy? Make your own rules

Complacency can happen when we find the "challenge" of school not a challenge at all. Since a young age you may have found it easy to learn new tasks, methods, skills and content; too easy. No wonder you find school boring and think of it as barely useful; a time consuming stepping stone in the years of your career. Your friends and others in your circle such as family think you are doing OK and often reinforce that with you. Most people see success as passing tests or reaching certain grade levels. That certainly is part of the picture but the real image is formed by considering the background, ability and potential of each individual.

How close are your grade levels to your real potential or to a potential stretched by your imagination? Passing and this grade may be a long way apart. So you get that gap that creates some discomfort for you when you receive congratulatory comment on your results. In your heart and mind you may not be totally satisfied. Great. What you need to do here is find your limits, if you have any, and write them down. Think of them always as intermediate and fluid, changeable at any point you care to choose. The changes may occur of their own accord with regular assessment of challenges and targets. Plan to promote your future premier choices for further study or employment and training. Do this by improving the marks you are awarded and the comments written about you by people in school. In this case, you can begin to analyse your capabilities, write them down, target new levels, and know that you need that challenge.

Positions in the queue for employment, training, or student acceptance at College are often pre-set by those institutions. Your best grades and fine comments will move you further to the front of any queue. Where do you want to put yourself? As far up front as possible, naturally. The choices then becomes yours, not to be cut off because you did not reach the necessary pre-ordained numbers set by employers, Colleges and Universities.